The company Chainalysis analyzed how many bitcoins were irretrievably lost for all time. Their amount is 2.5 million BTC. The key reason for the loss is considered to be a frivolous attitude to the keys and media where the first cryptocurrency was stored. Many also did not understand the prospects of bitcoin at the dawn of its formation, at a time when its production was possible with the help of a home computer and it did not cost so much money. It should be borne in mind that 2.5 million BTC does not include 1 million BTC of Satoshi Nakamoto, who has not moved from his wallet for more than 10 years. And other wallets that keep Bitcoin without movement for years, but are not considered lost. In addition to the cryptocurrency that was lost, we can also talk about people who could make a fortune on it in a short time, but also quickly got away with nothing.
In this article, we will tell you about the miners or just large holders of BTC, who in 2021 could have become billionaires, but because of their mistake missed this chance.
James Howells
In the summer of 2013, programmer James Howells decided, on one of his weekends, to perform general cleaning at his workplace. It was his computer table. There were a lot of unnecessary things on this table that took up space. In one of the shelves of the table, James discovered an old Dell hard drive that he had not used in a long time. Trying to remember what might be on it, the programmer made a decision – he would no longer need the disc, and sent it to all other unnecessary things in the trash. Even then, he had a bad feeling about it, as Howells later said: he knew it wasn’t a good idea.
But the job was done. As it turned out, on a Dell hard drive, back in 2009, James was mining Bitcoin. It was possible to obtain about 100 BTC per day, but since it was cheap, it was not a means of earning, but rather a hobby. When the 10,000 BTC was extracted, he sent it to the hard drive and forgot. The year James decided to clean up, he didn’t know he was a millionaire, and thanks to Bitcoin, he had $7.5 million. At the time of the BTC’s historical peak, it could have had around $650 million.
Australian
The name and occupation of this person are unknown. The only thing we know is that he’s from Australia.
On the forums of the crypto communities, the Australian told his story of losing bitcoin. It all started in 2009, when he learned about the existence of the first cryptocurrency. He was interested in the topic and thoroughly studied what is what, he decided to do mining.
He did not name any specific number of BTC extracted, but apparently he has mined quite a lot. Over time, his computer stopped supporting the program for mining coins, and it was decided to transfer all the bitcoins to a USB drive. Four years later, the price of bitcoin has risen to the $1,000 mark. The Australian was eager to sell his mined bitcoins as soon as possible and connected the flash drive to the computer. But the truth is that the USB flash drive turned out to be of poor quality production and failed, without the possibility of data recovery. As the hero of this story himself said – there was so much digital currency stored on it that it would be enough for several carefree lives.
Campbell Simpson
Campbell Simpson, like a character from a previous story, originally from Australia. Editor from Gizmodo. Campbell became interested in Bitcoin in 2010 and decided to purchase it for $25, which he had earned at that time 1,400 BTC. He decided to put the keys to the digital assets in the file, along with the rest of the data that was important to his work. And everything was stored on the hard drive. According to Simpson, he almost immediately forgot his Bitcoin. He soon had a desire to move to another city and had to get rid of unnecessary and unnecessary things. He already bought a brand new hard drive and transferred all the working information to it, of course, forgetting about the private keys from his BTC. As a result, the old and seemingly unnecessary hard drive was scrapped. He remembered about his coins only in 2017, when their price rose first to $4,000, and then to $20,000. At the end of 2017, the lost fortune was estimated at $28 million. As Campbell Simpson himself says, he is not disappointed in the loss of BTC, but on the contrary, remembers it with a smile.
Clifton Collins
Clifton is a drug dealer originally from Ireland. Since 2011, he has started to transfer all his money to cryptocurrency and distribute it to 12 wallets. The keys to access the wallets, he wrote out on a piece of paper, which he hid in the case of the fishing rod. The case, in turn, was stored in one of the houses that he rented. In 2017, he already had about 6,000 BTC. At the end of the year, Collins was arrested by the police. After learning about this, the landlord of Clifton decided to get rid of all the things of the former tenant as soon as possible, so as not to contact the authorities once again. As you might guess, the case for the fishing rod, along with that piece of paper, also went to the trash. It is interesting in this story that Collins was ordered by the court to transfer all his savings to the state, but access to the wallets is lost forever.
Chinese businessmen
In 2012, five businessmen from China came up with the idea to invest in some interesting project or industry. One of them, who had long observed the cryptocurrency, asked his buddies to invest in Bitcoin. This idea was supported by all and it was decided to invest $9.5 million in the first cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was placed on a multisig purse and given five keys. So, in order to access BTC, businessmen had to enter exactly five personal passwords. Bitcoin was placed on a long-term basis, and who knows how much the entrepreneurial Chinese would have gotten if one of the investors hadn’t suddenly died of a heart attack in 2015. So the remaining four businessmen lost access to their purse.
Unsuccessful traders
In addition to short-sightedness and simple negligence, due to which people lost their funds and access to wallets, history knows a number of cases of novice crypto traders. They became insanely rich in an instant, thanks to a bullish rally, but because of their lack of experience, they did not understand that a sharp rise could lead to a rapid collapse. Huge sums were lost in this way. People started to think of themselves as professionals in the trading world because of luck, but in the end it ended very sad for them. Below we will consider the most interesting and well-known cases where crypto traders have lost a fortune.
Transformation in the crypt. How to turn 3 BTC into 300 and 300 BTC into 0?
The story was posted by an anonymous Reddit user in 2018. A poker player won 3 BTC in one of the games, at that time one bitcoin was equal to $1,000. After that, he decided to increase his capital through trading. Only thanks to his luck, he was able to turn 3 BTC into 200, but luck tended to run out, and the player had no experience, and the first problems began to appear.
At the conclusion of 2017, Bitcoin collapsed from $20,000 to $11,000. The right decision was made and our hero decided to buy Bitcoin at $12,000, $13,000, and $14,000, as Bitcoin then rose to $16,000. At that time the trader’s deposit was 300 BTC. Then he makes a total error. The trader increases the leverage for future positions and loses 150 BTC during the second reduction.
After looking at everything that happens, the investor concludes that the pump to $16,000 was a fiction, which means that you need to short positions. But as we know, bitcoin has soared to $17,000 and the poker player is losing another 50 BTC.
The trader also loses the remaining 100 BTC, in unsuccessful attempts to recover their lost coins. According to him, the mental state was terrible. Because of this, the failures followed each other. He remembers that all this happened in two months. During his trading, he stopped noticing the world around him and everything that happens around him. He plunged himself into trading, imagining that in the future he would have a cloudless and excellent life. His net worth at the time was estimated at $6 million.
How can you lose $10 million when you have $70,000?
Our next hero came to the crypto market in 2017, at the height of “crypto fever”. As a result, his investment in EOS and IOTA cryptocurrencies, amounting to $70,000, rose to $3 million. After this success, he decided to continue to invest. His first purchase on the Bitfinex Exchange was Bitcoin. After analyzing the market, he decided to invest $500,000 in Bitcoin, which at the time was $8,000.
Two days later, the price for one BTC rose to $14,000, which almost doubled the trader’s fortune.
Against the background of such events, he decided to buy up all the cryptocurrency that was presented on the Bitfinex exchange, while investing all his money, and there were already $7 million of them. But even this was not enough for him, the trader borrowed another $14 million. Every day he had to pay thousands of dollars of borrowed money, but due to the high volatility of the market, he had more than enough funds. Every spare minute he spent on trading.
His friend began to talk about him withdrawing some of his money and keeping it, but the clouded mind wanted more and more.
As a result, by the end of 2017, the “crypto winter ” began. And our unfortunate trader lost $10 million in a few months. Only then did he realize that he was not investing, but gambling.
There is no more detailed information about how much the trader lost during this period. But according to him, he does not regret that he survived all this and is going to continue to be more sensible about investments.
Raise from $2,000 to $6,000 and fall back
The character of the next story is named Anton. The prospective trader became acquainted with cryptocurrencies in 2012 and began trading and investing two years later in 2014. At the time, he was able to purchase 4 BTC for $250. He took them in the long run. But fate had it that after a couple of days Bitcoin raised his position to $300. After this news, Anton decides to sell his coins and soon invest again. The new investment was already substantial, amounting to $3,000. The new BTC increase had to wait four months. The beginner’s deposit was now $6,000. Anton liked the success and decided to try his luck a third time. Our hero lost his capital of $6,000 and returned to the $2,000 mark. Of course, it was because the value of the coin had fallen. The investor was forced to start over. What has happened to Anton’s trade to date is not known.
Start with $6,000, raise $16,000, and Lose everything
Bitcoin was at $4,000 in 2017. A new investor named Dmitri decided to invest in Bitcoin for the long term. But he hasn’t been able to start investing directly through the crypto exchange. The thing is, there were some problems with the money being deposited on the exchange, or maybe there was a need for identity verification, which Dmitri didn’t like. But in the meantime, the value of the first cryptocurrency began to rise.
On the horizon of our investor there is a new opportunity to join the ranks of traders, in the form of Russian brokers. They provided the opportunity to trade in cryptocurrency and at the same time took a fiat. In a few payments, over a short period of time, Dmitri invested a total of $6,000 in cryptocurrency. He invested in BTS, XR, XR, and LTC. In order not to lose their investment, the trader begins to study technical analysis, simultaneously subscribing to paid channels with signals. But the channels did not bring the expected results and Dmitry decided to rely only on his own analysis. He didn’t let him down. After a while, he manages to raise his investment to $16,000 on XP and XMR, thanks to successful open positions. But, as you already know, it didn’t last long. After successful trades, our trader continued to trade in the same spirit and lost all his savings.
Lose $100,000 During the Crypto Winter
The next story appeared on one trading forums, where the trader, under the name Steemkarma4u, decided to share his sad experience in trading.
Steemkarma4u’s friend advised him to play online poker, in which all payment and winnings were in digital currency. He was a good poker player, so he was able to earn several hundred bitcoins in a short period of time. At the time, the price per BTC varied around $25. This arrangement did not give our hero much encouragement, as the poker game was much better.
In the spring of 2013, the price of the main cryptocurrency rose to $100. Steemkarma4u decided to stop using BTC as a form of betting in the game. He wanted to start investing everything in digital currency. Having put all its bitcoins on the BTC-e exchange, our investor begins to open only negative deals. All of this was due, of course, to a lack of experience in trade.
In 2014, the Mt.Gox stock market collapsed, causing the course of the first cryptocurrency to fall. Like many at the time, in the general panic, Steemkarma4u translates all of its BTC into dollars.
In 2017, he decided to return to the stock exchange, but had already thoroughly studied the market, trading and technical analysis. 90% of his savings is invested in ETH this time, and the remaining 10% in BTC. Things went pretty well, he had a pretty successful trade, and investment capital went up to $100,000. But all good things have the property of ending, so when the next market crash came, the trader was not prepared. He subsequently went completely broke.
Conclusion
What conclusion can be drawn from all of the above? Cryptocurrency is not a means just a way to get rich, it is not gambling. Even traders who have been trading in traditional markets for many years are in no hurry to go to cryptocurrencies, because of the high volatility. Of course, there is always an option that, like our heroes, you will be lucky and in the shortest possible time you will be able to make a fortune. But no one can insure you against what happened to them after such a quick takeoff. If you rely blindly on luck, it will not lead to anything good.
But if you do want to start trading in cryptocurrency, then you have to remember a few things: be more careful about the keys and the repositories of your funds, explore the market, and never stop moving in that direction. There is another way to use RevenueBot services. The service offers the possibility to create trading bots for trading on topical crypto exchanges. More information about RevenueBot is available on the official website.