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Sleeping beauty bitcoin wallets wake up after 14 years to the tune of $2 billion

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  • Maybe because I'm high, but you just made me ugly laugh on the bus. I just saw fireworks. And now I'm remembering that plan I had to go back to the early 90s, and buy stock in yahoo. But through a telephone error, I ended up buying cases of yoohoo instead. Still worth it. I got to go back in time and see a micheal jackson concert when he was still black, and a Nirvana concert back before they were heard of.

    Still though.....to be a billionaire.

    Sounds like you need another visit from Doc Brown. I heard he'll come visit, if you give him first pick of your trash

  • Maybe because I'm high, but you just made me ugly laugh on the bus. I just saw fireworks. And now I'm remembering that plan I had to go back to the early 90s, and buy stock in yahoo. But through a telephone error, I ended up buying cases of yoohoo instead. Still worth it. I got to go back in time and see a micheal jackson concert when he was still black, and a Nirvana concert back before they were heard of.

    Still though.....to be a billionaire.

    Whatever you’re on, can I please (please!) have some?

  • Maybe because I'm high, but you just made me ugly laugh on the bus. I just saw fireworks. And now I'm remembering that plan I had to go back to the early 90s, and buy stock in yahoo. But through a telephone error, I ended up buying cases of yoohoo instead. Still worth it. I got to go back in time and see a micheal jackson concert when he was still black, and a Nirvana concert back before they were heard of.

    Still though.....to be a billionaire.

    and a Nirvana concert back before they were heard of.

    I feel like a lot of time travelers would have this same idea. Maybe that's why they got popular....oh....oh no.

    New conspiracy theory just dropped, boys

  • Maybe because I'm high, but you just made me ugly laugh on the bus. I just saw fireworks. And now I'm remembering that plan I had to go back to the early 90s, and buy stock in yahoo. But through a telephone error, I ended up buying cases of yoohoo instead. Still worth it. I got to go back in time and see a micheal jackson concert when he was still black, and a Nirvana concert back before they were heard of.

    Still though.....to be a billionaire.

    We’re on the same wavelength lol

  • Somebody found their missing hard drive

  • This sounds fishy.

    What if somebody found out the private key for those accounts? Like, brute forced them?

    Is it even technologically possible?

  • This sounds fishy.

    What if somebody found out the private key for those accounts? Like, brute forced them?

    Is it even technologically possible?

    It’s possible but not plausible. It’s incredibly unlikely that’s what happened.

  • Two wallets. 10k BTC each. These wallets were created back when BTC was 78¢. When you spend $10k the IRS might ask questions. If you are "structuring" correctly you avoid spending $9,999 and $1 within a short time span or even in the same reporting period. 10k BTC back then was something you could buy that looked like it wasn't $10k but was really close. Spend it twice in two different wallets and if there are enough other transactions no one will notice.

    Anytime you see a transaction or set of transactions that add up to or are just shy of 10k USD, BTC or pretty much anything, there should be a little bell that dings in your head and causes you to think "this person is clearly thinking about US tax reporting laws and trying to dodge them."

    Who had all that money back in 2011 that decided that now was the time to tap those wallets that are worth a billion each? Obviously someone that hasn't needed the money until now. Someone that is planning on spending up to 2 billion. But not right away because if you try to sell 20k BTC in a hurry it will draw attention and potentially destabilize the currency. But you could sell it all off over the next year or longer without flooding the market.

    Who wants to spend up to $2 billion in the next year? What could you buy with that kind of money? Elon musk spent ~$250 million getting Trump elected. That's just an eighth of $2B. You could buy a lot of super PAC power with $2B. You could bankroll the primarying of every Republican that voted for OBBB. Weird that these wallets were dusted off so close to Elon saying he would primary anyone that voted for OBBB, and he has a strong affinity for crypto, and he had enough money in 2011 to buy that much BCT on a whim, and that he wouldn't have had to touch it to pay other bills as BTC went from 78¢ to more than $100,000 over the last 14 years.

    I wonder who these wallets belong to and what they will be used for?

    This is what conspiracy thinking looks like. It's me. I'm the one conspiracy thinking.

  • Two wallets. 10k BTC each. These wallets were created back when BTC was 78¢. When you spend $10k the IRS might ask questions. If you are "structuring" correctly you avoid spending $9,999 and $1 within a short time span or even in the same reporting period. 10k BTC back then was something you could buy that looked like it wasn't $10k but was really close. Spend it twice in two different wallets and if there are enough other transactions no one will notice.

    Anytime you see a transaction or set of transactions that add up to or are just shy of 10k USD, BTC or pretty much anything, there should be a little bell that dings in your head and causes you to think "this person is clearly thinking about US tax reporting laws and trying to dodge them."

    Who had all that money back in 2011 that decided that now was the time to tap those wallets that are worth a billion each? Obviously someone that hasn't needed the money until now. Someone that is planning on spending up to 2 billion. But not right away because if you try to sell 20k BTC in a hurry it will draw attention and potentially destabilize the currency. But you could sell it all off over the next year or longer without flooding the market.

    Who wants to spend up to $2 billion in the next year? What could you buy with that kind of money? Elon musk spent ~$250 million getting Trump elected. That's just an eighth of $2B. You could buy a lot of super PAC power with $2B. You could bankroll the primarying of every Republican that voted for OBBB. Weird that these wallets were dusted off so close to Elon saying he would primary anyone that voted for OBBB, and he has a strong affinity for crypto, and he had enough money in 2011 to buy that much BCT on a whim, and that he wouldn't have had to touch it to pay other bills as BTC went from 78¢ to more than $100,000 over the last 14 years.

    I wonder who these wallets belong to and what they will be used for?

    This is what conspiracy thinking looks like. It's me. I'm the one conspiracy thinking.

    This is what conspiracy thinking looks like. It's me. I'm the one conspiracy thinking.

    That's some quality reasoning and conspiracy thinking 👍

  • This sounds fishy.

    What if somebody found out the private key for those accounts? Like, brute forced them?

    Is it even technologically possible?

    Its possible some country or corporation has built a secret quantum computer with enough qbits to run Shor's Algorithm. But if its a secret, we wouldn't know about it.

    Eventually all the "lost" wallets will bet cracked by quantum computers.

  • Two wallets. 10k BTC each. These wallets were created back when BTC was 78¢. When you spend $10k the IRS might ask questions. If you are "structuring" correctly you avoid spending $9,999 and $1 within a short time span or even in the same reporting period. 10k BTC back then was something you could buy that looked like it wasn't $10k but was really close. Spend it twice in two different wallets and if there are enough other transactions no one will notice.

    Anytime you see a transaction or set of transactions that add up to or are just shy of 10k USD, BTC or pretty much anything, there should be a little bell that dings in your head and causes you to think "this person is clearly thinking about US tax reporting laws and trying to dodge them."

    Who had all that money back in 2011 that decided that now was the time to tap those wallets that are worth a billion each? Obviously someone that hasn't needed the money until now. Someone that is planning on spending up to 2 billion. But not right away because if you try to sell 20k BTC in a hurry it will draw attention and potentially destabilize the currency. But you could sell it all off over the next year or longer without flooding the market.

    Who wants to spend up to $2 billion in the next year? What could you buy with that kind of money? Elon musk spent ~$250 million getting Trump elected. That's just an eighth of $2B. You could buy a lot of super PAC power with $2B. You could bankroll the primarying of every Republican that voted for OBBB. Weird that these wallets were dusted off so close to Elon saying he would primary anyone that voted for OBBB, and he has a strong affinity for crypto, and he had enough money in 2011 to buy that much BCT on a whim, and that he wouldn't have had to touch it to pay other bills as BTC went from 78¢ to more than $100,000 over the last 14 years.

    I wonder who these wallets belong to and what they will be used for?

    This is what conspiracy thinking looks like. It's me. I'm the one conspiracy thinking.

    I mean, it's interesting for sure, in 2011 I think I hadn't even heard of BTC yet.

  • I mean, it's interesting for sure, in 2011 I think I hadn't even heard of BTC yet.

    Silk road

  • Two wallets. 10k BTC each. These wallets were created back when BTC was 78¢. When you spend $10k the IRS might ask questions. If you are "structuring" correctly you avoid spending $9,999 and $1 within a short time span or even in the same reporting period. 10k BTC back then was something you could buy that looked like it wasn't $10k but was really close. Spend it twice in two different wallets and if there are enough other transactions no one will notice.

    Anytime you see a transaction or set of transactions that add up to or are just shy of 10k USD, BTC or pretty much anything, there should be a little bell that dings in your head and causes you to think "this person is clearly thinking about US tax reporting laws and trying to dodge them."

    Who had all that money back in 2011 that decided that now was the time to tap those wallets that are worth a billion each? Obviously someone that hasn't needed the money until now. Someone that is planning on spending up to 2 billion. But not right away because if you try to sell 20k BTC in a hurry it will draw attention and potentially destabilize the currency. But you could sell it all off over the next year or longer without flooding the market.

    Who wants to spend up to $2 billion in the next year? What could you buy with that kind of money? Elon musk spent ~$250 million getting Trump elected. That's just an eighth of $2B. You could buy a lot of super PAC power with $2B. You could bankroll the primarying of every Republican that voted for OBBB. Weird that these wallets were dusted off so close to Elon saying he would primary anyone that voted for OBBB, and he has a strong affinity for crypto, and he had enough money in 2011 to buy that much BCT on a whim, and that he wouldn't have had to touch it to pay other bills as BTC went from 78¢ to more than $100,000 over the last 14 years.

    I wonder who these wallets belong to and what they will be used for?

    This is what conspiracy thinking looks like. It's me. I'm the one conspiracy thinking.

    That's some quality conspiracy thinking!

    But there are too many people who could have been early adopters and have any number of random motives for this to be "likely."

    Heck, I was watching Bitcoin when it was like $0.002 a coin and someone spent 10,000 (presumably home-CPU-mined) BTC to buy a pizza. There were a ton of people there at the beginning, the barrier to purchasing a ton was very low, and unlike me, a lot of them certainly had $20,000 to spare and believed in it enough to buy.

  • Two wallets. 10k BTC each. These wallets were created back when BTC was 78¢. When you spend $10k the IRS might ask questions. If you are "structuring" correctly you avoid spending $9,999 and $1 within a short time span or even in the same reporting period. 10k BTC back then was something you could buy that looked like it wasn't $10k but was really close. Spend it twice in two different wallets and if there are enough other transactions no one will notice.

    Anytime you see a transaction or set of transactions that add up to or are just shy of 10k USD, BTC or pretty much anything, there should be a little bell that dings in your head and causes you to think "this person is clearly thinking about US tax reporting laws and trying to dodge them."

    Who had all that money back in 2011 that decided that now was the time to tap those wallets that are worth a billion each? Obviously someone that hasn't needed the money until now. Someone that is planning on spending up to 2 billion. But not right away because if you try to sell 20k BTC in a hurry it will draw attention and potentially destabilize the currency. But you could sell it all off over the next year or longer without flooding the market.

    Who wants to spend up to $2 billion in the next year? What could you buy with that kind of money? Elon musk spent ~$250 million getting Trump elected. That's just an eighth of $2B. You could buy a lot of super PAC power with $2B. You could bankroll the primarying of every Republican that voted for OBBB. Weird that these wallets were dusted off so close to Elon saying he would primary anyone that voted for OBBB, and he has a strong affinity for crypto, and he had enough money in 2011 to buy that much BCT on a whim, and that he wouldn't have had to touch it to pay other bills as BTC went from 78¢ to more than $100,000 over the last 14 years.

    I wonder who these wallets belong to and what they will be used for?

    This is what conspiracy thinking looks like. It's me. I'm the one conspiracy thinking.

    Ross Ulbricht

  • Its possible some country or corporation has built a secret quantum computer with enough qbits to run Shor's Algorithm. But if its a secret, we wouldn't know about it.

    Eventually all the "lost" wallets will bet cracked by quantum computers.

    At that point though the whole concept of bitcoins will be moot. If quantum computers can crack lost wallets they can also crack active wallets, and at that point there's no reason to buy bitcoin at all, which will tank the value of bitcoin making it mostly not worthwhile to crack wallets.

    So if we get to that point, there will be one proof-of-concept wallet crack, and instantly after that bitcoin will cease to exist in any relevant fashion.

  • At that point though the whole concept of bitcoins will be moot. If quantum computers can crack lost wallets they can also crack active wallets, and at that point there's no reason to buy bitcoin at all, which will tank the value of bitcoin making it mostly not worthwhile to crack wallets.

    So if we get to that point, there will be one proof-of-concept wallet crack, and instantly after that bitcoin will cease to exist in any relevant fashion.

    There's a window between the proof of concept success and Bitcoin being worthless where the attacker could attack any wallet and collect/sell while people figure out what is happening. The only question at that point is do you attack and sell aggressively to beat the clock, or do you slowly and carefully attack to try and stay under the radar? If one person has the ability to break crypto, then it follows that other people working towards it only have to align the same pieces before the window shuts.

    Crypto is and always has been a scam.

  • Its possible some country or corporation has built a secret quantum computer with enough qbits to run Shor's Algorithm. But if its a secret, we wouldn't know about it.

    Eventually all the "lost" wallets will bet cracked by quantum computers.

    I hear this a lot but I don’t put any confidence behind it. This argument suggests that one day we’ll be able to brute force into lost wallets when we can break the encryption. Who knows how far in the future that will be.

    But if I recall correctly, Bitcoin’s protocol is consensus driven. If there is an imminent threat of quantum computing, the developers could just improve the code base to resist it. Or fork the protocol to one that is resistant (Bitcoin 2). Then it’s up to 51% of the Bitcoin node operators to adopt the protocol. As soon as 51% of them upgrades, you immediately stop the threat.

    I think the only reason Bitcoin is around is for two reasons: speculation, or the persons that actually believe it’s decentralised hard money free from control. I’d like to believe that there are a ton of people out there that run the BTC nodes to keep it decentralised. If there is an update that will resist quantum computing, I’m sure they’ll be eager to immediately upgrade their nodes and secure the network and those wallets. At least that’s how I believe it works, it’s been years since I first began researching it.

    As an aside,
    Bitcoin isn’t for me because I hate the environment impact. I hope one day it will become green, because it’s never going to go away. But I don’t blame the people that believe in it. In a world where the rich own everything and control the rules, these people are trying to opt out I guess - use a form of money that can’t be easily controlled or censored. Granted it’s all based on speculation, and whenever we run out of Bitcoin is probably when the system will become useless. Spending is discouraged when you run out of coins, so I don’t know how the Bitcoiners defend that argument. So definitely not for me.

    Edit, on mobile so fixed some typos and clarified the 51% attack.

  • Two wallets. 10k BTC each. These wallets were created back when BTC was 78¢. When you spend $10k the IRS might ask questions. If you are "structuring" correctly you avoid spending $9,999 and $1 within a short time span or even in the same reporting period. 10k BTC back then was something you could buy that looked like it wasn't $10k but was really close. Spend it twice in two different wallets and if there are enough other transactions no one will notice.

    Anytime you see a transaction or set of transactions that add up to or are just shy of 10k USD, BTC or pretty much anything, there should be a little bell that dings in your head and causes you to think "this person is clearly thinking about US tax reporting laws and trying to dodge them."

    Who had all that money back in 2011 that decided that now was the time to tap those wallets that are worth a billion each? Obviously someone that hasn't needed the money until now. Someone that is planning on spending up to 2 billion. But not right away because if you try to sell 20k BTC in a hurry it will draw attention and potentially destabilize the currency. But you could sell it all off over the next year or longer without flooding the market.

    Who wants to spend up to $2 billion in the next year? What could you buy with that kind of money? Elon musk spent ~$250 million getting Trump elected. That's just an eighth of $2B. You could buy a lot of super PAC power with $2B. You could bankroll the primarying of every Republican that voted for OBBB. Weird that these wallets were dusted off so close to Elon saying he would primary anyone that voted for OBBB, and he has a strong affinity for crypto, and he had enough money in 2011 to buy that much BCT on a whim, and that he wouldn't have had to touch it to pay other bills as BTC went from 78¢ to more than $100,000 over the last 14 years.

    I wonder who these wallets belong to and what they will be used for?

    This is what conspiracy thinking looks like. It's me. I'm the one conspiracy thinking.

    Btw, banks will flag multiple transactions of $9,999 even if the reporting threshold is $10k USD. Structuring to avoid the $10k reporting requirement is well known and no guarantee of remaining under the radar.

  • I hear this a lot but I don’t put any confidence behind it. This argument suggests that one day we’ll be able to brute force into lost wallets when we can break the encryption. Who knows how far in the future that will be.

    But if I recall correctly, Bitcoin’s protocol is consensus driven. If there is an imminent threat of quantum computing, the developers could just improve the code base to resist it. Or fork the protocol to one that is resistant (Bitcoin 2). Then it’s up to 51% of the Bitcoin node operators to adopt the protocol. As soon as 51% of them upgrades, you immediately stop the threat.

    I think the only reason Bitcoin is around is for two reasons: speculation, or the persons that actually believe it’s decentralised hard money free from control. I’d like to believe that there are a ton of people out there that run the BTC nodes to keep it decentralised. If there is an update that will resist quantum computing, I’m sure they’ll be eager to immediately upgrade their nodes and secure the network and those wallets. At least that’s how I believe it works, it’s been years since I first began researching it.

    As an aside,
    Bitcoin isn’t for me because I hate the environment impact. I hope one day it will become green, because it’s never going to go away. But I don’t blame the people that believe in it. In a world where the rich own everything and control the rules, these people are trying to opt out I guess - use a form of money that can’t be easily controlled or censored. Granted it’s all based on speculation, and whenever we run out of Bitcoin is probably when the system will become useless. Spending is discouraged when you run out of coins, so I don’t know how the Bitcoiners defend that argument. So definitely not for me.

    Edit, on mobile so fixed some typos and clarified the 51% attack.

    This is correct for a given transaction, but there's no consensus needed to open a Bitcoin wallet. That is usually just a private key in an encrypted envelope.

  • This sounds fishy.

    What if somebody found out the private key for those accounts? Like, brute forced them?

    Is it even technologically possible?

    Bitcoin private keys are 256 bit long. That means, there are 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936 (1.15*10^77) possible private keys.

    Say you are using a bitcoin miner that's roughly 4x as fast as the curretly fastest one at 1PH/s (1*10^15), they you'll need roughly 1*10^62 seconds or 3*10^54 years.

    Lets say you got a million of these miners, then you are down to 3*10^48 years, or 2*10^38 times as long as the universe has existed.

    I was going to calculate how much electricity this would consume and how expensive it would be, but the answer to that is plainly "too much to imagine".

  • 28 Stimmen
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    D
    The writing in this story is not accurate. Iran isn't turning it off for the country. They are talking about switching government services to use receivers that use Beidou as primary source of timing and maybe selectively turn off using GPS on those devices.
  • First Tesla Robotaxi Ride

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    How do you heil a Tesla cab?....you don't. Unless you want to end up rotting in a concentration camp in El Salvador. Fuck face is exactly the type who would rape you in the morning and then walk outside the room into the balcony and shoot an innocent bystander for no reason. See "Schindler's list". So you don't.
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    curious_canid@lemmy.caC
    AI is so far from being the main problem with our current US educational system that I'm not sure why we bother to talk about it. Until we can produce students who meet minimum standards for literacy and critical thinking, AI is a sideshow.
  • Browser Alternatives to Chrome

    Technology technology
    14
    11 Stimmen
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    L
    I've been using Vivaldi as my logged in browser for years. I like the double tab bar groups, session management, email client, sidebar and tab bar on mobile. It is strange to me that tab bar isn't a thing on mobile on other browsers despite phones having way more vertical space than computers. Although for internet searches I use a seperate lighter weight browser that clears its data on close. Ecosia also been using for years. For a while it was geniunely better than the other search engines I had tried but nowadays it's worse since it started to return google translate webpage translation links based on search region instead of the webpages themselves. Also not sure what to think about the counter they readded after removing it to reduce the emphasis on quantity over quality like a year ago. I don't use duckduckgo as its name and the way privacy communities used to obsess about it made me distrust it for some reason
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    N
    In this year of 2025? No. But it still is basically setting oneself for failure from the perspective of Graphene, IMO. Like, the strongest protection in the world (assuming Graphene even is, which is quite a tall order statement) is useless if it only works on the mornings of a Tuesday that falls in a prime number day that has a blue moon and where there are no ATP tennis matches going on. Everyone else is, like, living in the real world, and the uniqueness of your scenario is going to go down the drain once your users get presented with a $5 wrench, or even cheaper: a waterboard. Because cops, let alone ICE, are not going to stop to ask you if they can make you more comfortable with your privacy being violated.
  • 5 Stimmen
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    B
    Oh sorry, my mind must have been a bit foggy when I read that. We agree 100%
  • 156 Stimmen
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    M
    But they did give! They did not chose to deny and not have pizza.
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    V
    how does the author find it surprising in the slightest that it's easy to live without...