Worst mistake of my life. Never back up to a cheap Chinese disk or USB ".
Bitcoin has made many people millionaires. Happy coin holders, who mined or bought them for next to nothing a few years ago, keep a close eye on the course - and add zeros to their state.
But there are those, who, for one reason or another, has lost possible wealth. And their stories are no less amazing, although tragic.
"It's a bad idea."
In summer 2013 of the year a resident of Wales named James Howells tidied up his desktop and threw away a hard drive from a broken Dell laptop. Unfortunately, after a few months he realized, what were stored on the same disk 7500 bitcoin, which were obtained by him back in 2009 year. By that time, one BTC was worth about $1000, so the cleaning cost him almost 7,5 million dollars.
Howells Feelings Can Only Be Imagined - Shock, rage, disappointment. Over the next years, he almost came to terms with the loss, until the bitcoin rate began to grow rapidly. So old wounds made themselves felt: still would, because today this hard drive could cost 80 million dollars.
Howells tells, that when he was mining, bitcoin was more of a toy for techies. So no one thought of backing up wallets..
According to the man, he stopped mining coins, when his girlfriend complained about laptop noise and heat, coming from him. So when the next year he spilled lemonade on the machine, I decided to take it apart piece by piece. And he kept that hard drive for several years., before I decided to throw it out.
"Have you ever had the feeling, when you throw something in the bin, and at the same time you think: "It's a bad idea". So here, I had it ", Howells says.
Also in 2013 year he told:
“I am in this situation, when i don't know, laugh or cry. Why don't I run to the junkyard with a shovel? Think, I just resigned myself to that, that I lost him ".
One can only imagine, how unhappy Howells feels today.
"Don't tell my wife"
Howells is not the only one who has experienced the pain of such financial losses.. Australian, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of his wife's anger, also told about thousands of missing bitcoins.
IN 2009 year Alex, let's call it so, mined "thousands" of bitcoins, being carried away by a new idea. Then, when the mining software became too large and cumbersome, he gave up, deleted it and hid my BTCs on a cheap USB.
“I thought so: they [Bitcoins] offline, not on my pc. So if something happens to the computer - for example, it will explode or be hacked - I will have a backup ".
At about the end 2013 of the year, when bitcoin price almost reached $1000, he suddenly remembered about his wallet:
“I have connected USB, to access files, but the flash drive died. It was one of those cheap Chinese. Worst mistake of my life. Never back up to a cheap Chinese disk or USB ".
So, Alex, like Howells, lost his millions.
Lost forever
Finally, here is another story about lost bitcoins. IN 2012 year, the editor of Gizmodo threw away the hard drive with 1400 bitcoins. He paid for the coins of everything $25: approximately by $0,015 for each. Now they would be worth almost 15 million dollars.
These and other cases have inspired a new study by analysts., which showed, what's about 4 million bitcoins were lost forever. But these estimates are very rough., since no one can tell, what state is 1 btc million, owned by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Nevertheless, a useful conclusion can be drawn from these stories.: digital assets are very easy to lose, even if they are not stored on the Internet.
So if you have bitcoins (or other cryptocurrencies), it's time to make sure, that they are safe. To do this, you need a bitcoin wallet. It allows you to make transactions, that is, buy and sell cryptocurrency. But the main task of a bitcoin wallet is to store a secret key., which is needed to access the bitcoin address and, accordingly, your funds. We have already told, what are bitcoin wallets and what are they like. And here you can find out, how to choose and start a bitcoin wallet, which suits you personally.
A source: https://ru.ihodl.com/lifestyle/2019-12-01/kak-ya-poteryal-milliony-istorii-byvshih-vladelcev-bitkoinov/
