Researchers crack 11-year-old password, recover $3 million in bitcoin

boem@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 455 points –
Researchers crack 11-year-old password, recover $3 million in bitcoin
arstechnica.com
45

You are viewing a single comment

This is also what a lot of people forget how it was at the time, thinking "if only" they had been early adopters and how they'd be millionaires. I was one, and had found it was great for traveling said "trade route", but also watched when Mt Gox collapsed and tanked the price 75% while stealing millions from people, and decided to take my winnings and leave the table.

How many people would see that shit and be like "Yes, I'm going to hold onto this for the next 10 years when it's worth something" and then sit through the number of 50+% loss events that happened?

You would have done exactly what 99% of early adopters did, and considered yourself incredibly lucky that you managed to make 1000% returns and sold.

Yeah it sat in my wallet for a long time and wasn't really gaining any value. I didn't have a need for the trade route anymore cuz I just used it once for some exotic spices that I didn't really care for. Mining wasn't an option for me because I didn't have a powerful computer as a broke college kid. So I just kinda checked out.

Still sucks to think about how I could have ended up with a great return, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

I still have bitcoins from 2011-2014 some of which I GPU mined. I'm patient. Of course I sold some, but I still have a couple full bitcoins. Not everyone sells the whole amount in one go

I recently got my first bankruptcy payout from the BTC I had in MtGox. I made more with them stolen as I certainly would have sold them at a lower price.

Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.