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Real People Who Lost Their Bitcoin Fortunes

Real People Who Lost Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is a booming industry, but it can be lost in seconds. Some people lost bitcoin passwords, some lost their hard drives with the cryptocurrency on them, and some lost bitcoin because they never claimed it. This blog post features real people who lost all of their bitcoins. Some of these stories are heartbreaking, but there are lessons to learn from each one!

There are many public accounts of users who lost their Bitcoin fortune for instance;

James Howells – Programmer from Welsh – 7,500 Lost Bitcoins

James Howells - Programmer from Welsh - 7,500 Lost Bitcoin

James Howells had 7,500 Bitcoins on an hard drive that he bought in 2010. Unfortunately, in 2013 he threw the hard drive in the trash can and didn’t realize what he had done for months. After that, he tried to search through the landfill with no luck.

Stefan Thomas – Software Developer from San Francisco – 7,002 Lost Bitcoin

Stefan Thomas - Software Developer from San Francisco - 7,002 Lost Bitcoin

Stefan Thomas from San Francisco, owns 7,002 bitcoins worth around $346 million dollars. His bitcoins were stored on a digital wallet which he lost the password to. He thinks he still has the password to his lost bitcoin on a IronKey encrypted flash drive. The IronKey flash drive gives you 10 password guesses to decrypt the data. After that it deletes all of the data on it forever. He only has two guesses left.

Gabriel Abed – Entrepreneur from Barbados – 800 Lost Bitcoins

Gabriel Abed - Entrepreneur from Barbados - Lost 800 Bitcoin

Gabriel Abed lost 800 bitcoin in 2011 after his laptop was reformatted. Today that would be worth around $39,000 dollars.

MT. Gox – Bitcoin exchange – 850,000 Lost Bitcoins

MT. Gox - Bitcoin exchange

In 2014 Mt. Gox was the biggest bitcoin exchange in the world. They were handling more than 70% of bitcoin transactions. However, in Feburary 2014 they shutdown after losing roughly 850,000 bitcoin that belonged to it’s customers. Reports have concluded they were stolen straight out of the MT. Gox hot cryptocurrency wallet. That’s probably one of the largest accounts of lost bitcoin being worth around 42 billion dollars in todays value.

Campbell Simpson – Journalist for Gizmodo – 1,400 Lost Bitcoins

Campbell Simpson - Journalist for Gizmodo - Lost 1,400 Bitcoin

Campbell Simpson purchased 1,400 bitcoin for $25 in 2010. Unfortunately, he threw out his hard drive after breaking up with his girlfriend. A mistake that at todays value cost him about $70 million dollars.

Brad Yasar – EQIFI CEO – Thousands of Lost Bitcoin

Brad Yasar - EQIFI CEO

Brad Yasar has lost a few thousand bitcoin and spend hundreds of hours trying to recover them. Fortunately he didn’t lose all of the bitcoin he mined back in the day and seems to be doing quite well.

Fortunately, there are ways to recover lost bitcoin. Some people were able to get their bitcoins back by using cryptocurrency recovery services like Professional Crypto Recovery.

Whatever happened, these people’s stories provide valuable lessons for all of us in the cryptocurrency world. We should always be careful with our passwords and back up our data! And, most importantly, we should never give up on our bitcoin fortunes, because there’s always a chance that they can be recovered!

We hope you enjoyed this blog post. Be sure to check out our website for more information about cryptocurrency and bitcoin recovery services! Thanks for reading!