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How WIRED lost $100,000 in Bitcoin (wired.com)

Posted by msmash on from the tough-luck dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Back in 2013, the halcyon days of at-home Bitcoin mining, staffers in the WIRED San Francisco office turned on one of Butterfly Labs' mining machines and let it whir away, amassing a horde of 13 bitcoins -- now worth $100,000. But today we have nothing to show for our efforts. What happened to our loot?

The same thing that has happened to millions of other unfortunate miners, actually: We lost our private key, a 64-digit string of random numbers that not one of us remembers. And we've got basically no chance of recovering it: "Originally I was going to say that the closest metaphor I have is that we dropped a car key somewhere in the Atlantic," says Stefan Antonowicz, WIRED's then-head of engineering. "But I think it's closer for me to say we dropped the key somewhere between here and the Alpha Centauri."

4 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Why no "Idiots" tag? by aurispector · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All this does is highlight one of the many the serious problems relating to cryptocurrency.

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    1. Re:Why no "Idiots" tag? by Daneel+Olivaw+R.+ · · Score: 5, Insightful

      All this does is highlight one of the many the serious problems relating to cryptocurrency.

      I dont think this problem can be restricted to cryptocurrencies, my lastpass account behaves in a similar fashion. If I forget the password, all my 150 account passwords are gone. My account is very very secure, no one can hack into it and the price for it is me acting like an adult and storing private keys properly. What I am trying to say is, this applies to any proper encrypted stuff. If you lose the key and have no proper restore mechanism, it is your fault.

    2. Re: Why no "Idiots" tag? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Paper is still the safest method to store your passwords.

      No software update, no operating system change and no hacker will be able to hack your piece of paper.

      And if someone has access to your piece of paper, you have bigger problems to worry about.

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  2. Look for the quiet guy by petes_PoV · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We lost [ or destroyed ] our private key, a 64-digit string of random numbers that not one of us remembers

    Although all it needs is for 1 copy to still exist. You'd think that someone in the office would have thought "There's zero cost to me keeping a note of that -- what the hell".

    P.S. have they tried looking under the keyboard?

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