Almost a Bitcoin millionaire but only if he knew his password

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A South African resident has revealed that he mined 20 BTC when he was young, which means he is now almost a millionaire. Unfortunately for him, he lost his key and password for his Bitcoin wallet.

BTC password – as important as the BTC itself

Mark Michaels – a 24-year-old electronics engineer from Pretoria, South Africa – loved cryptocurrencies as a child. Over 10 years ago, when he was in 7th grade, he explored the internet to learn how to mine Bitcoin, and finally got started.

I believe I used the original Bitcoin wallet software, which required a wallet key and password to access it, Michaels said.

Working continuously for a few weeks, the engineer managed to mine 20 BTC. At the time, the dollar value of the main cryptocurrency was barely $ 0.0008. Other than the fact that its price was insignificant, there were also no crypto platforms that would allow it to sell the assets for cash:

“Eventually I got bored, because there wasn’t much else you could do on your PC while it was busy, and the Bitcoin you mined was virtually worthless.”

Keeping in mind that he was still young and that the coins were almost worthless, he casually stored his key and password for his Bitcoin wallet in a text document on his computer desktop. At one point, Michaels accidentally deleted the files while cleaning his device.

Security tips for your crypto wallets

However, when the price of BTC soared to $ 1,000 a few years later, the South African made his first real attempt to restore the lost virtual assets:

I remember collecting all the hard drives, USB drives, CDs, and DVDs in the house and examining them carefully. It took about a week. I also tried running data recovery software on my primary hard drive, but it didn’t help much. By that time, this drive had been formatted and reused several times.

Michaels’ possession of Bitcoin is worth around $ 940,000, calculated using today’s prices. Nonetheless, he said he made peace with the loss of access to his assets, likening his case to predicting the winning numbers on a lotto ticket and then deciding not to buy it.

The man who lost access to 7,002 BTC

The case of Mark Michaels is not an isolated example. According to cryptocurrency data provider Chainalysis, around 20% of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin has been lost or is in blocked wallets. This only shows the importance of storing the private key.

While the South African engineer cannot manage his 20 BTC, Stefan Thomas – a programmer of German origin living in San Francisco – cannot remember his password and thus lost the access to 7,002 bitcoins. Doing the math means he would have had around $ 328 million.

In 2011, Thomas produced an educational video titled “What is Bitcoin?” For another crypto fan, who sent him 7,002 BTC for his services. The German didn’t pay much attention to it, as the virtual asset was almost worthless at the time and lost the digital keys to the wallet.

His attitude completely changed when the value of BTC exploded over the following years, making several attempts to access funds. Its wallet allows users ten attempts to guess the password. So far, Thomas has used eight of his most common assumptions, but to no avail:

“I was just staying in bed and thinking about it. Then I would go to the computer with a new strategy, and it didn’t work, and I would be desperate again.

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