Man Spends $2.5 Million to Retrieve Lost Hard Drive with 7,500 BTC, but Loses Out to Bitcoin Cash
On March 6, 2023, a Redditor called Odlavso shared a rumor about a man who accidentally threw away a hard drive containing over 7,500 BTC in a garbage dump. The user claimed that the man spent years searching for the missing hard drive, firmly believing that it was full of a substantial amount of bitcoin. Finally, the man was able to locate the hard drive, but only after spending around $2.5 million on excavator rental fees, labor costs, and permits for digging in the landfill.
According to Odlavso, the unlucky man was overjoyed when he finally found the hard drive last month. He then worked with a professional data recovery company for the past four weeks to try to recover the lost bitcoin wallet. The man reportedly spent an additional $400,000 to retrieve the wallet from the hard drive.
Unfortunately, the recovered hard drive was found to be full of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a digital currency that resulted from a hard fork of Bitcoin. BCH is well known to have only a fraction of the value of Bitcoin, so the man is now left with a debt of approximately $1.6 million, which he incurred during his search for the hard drive in the landfill.
It is important to note that at this time, no official sources have confirmed the validity of this story. Additionally, the user who posted the rumor, Odlavso, wrote the story in the “Humor” section of Reddit, suggesting that it may not be entirely accurate.
However, if the story is indeed true, it serves as a stark reminder of the importance of keeping private keys and passwords secure when investing in cryptocurrencies. Losing access to a cryptocurrency wallet can have significant financial consequences, and in some cases, those consequences can be irreversible.
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