A Tik Tokker has gone viral after sharing the story of how he lost access to his Hotmail account, within which he held the private keys for over 100 Bitcoin.
The history of Bitcoin is filled with stories of people who lost their Bitcoin and can’t get it back, like James Howells, a computer scientist from South Wales who lost 8,000 Bitcoin when he threw away his hard drive in 2013. He has been involved in legal battles with the local council to try to recover his lost keys.
An unlucky Tik Tokker lost access 100 Bitcoin from 2010
Since Bitcoin started, the saying “not your keys, not your coins” has been very important, and the need to control your own assets has been highlighted repeatedly as centralized custodians have shown to be careless and unreliable. Because of this, the phrase “don’t trust, verify” has also become crucial in the Bitcoin community.
However, even more important than just taking personal custody of one’s crypto is the importance of ensuring that the Bitcoin is custodied responsibly – one unlucky Tik Tokker was forced to learn this lesson the hard way.
@ConspiracyCubed explained in a recent video that he cannot access his private keys since he stored them on his Hotmail account, and cannot log in to it.
He claims that in 2010 he bought 100 Bitcoin, which at the time wouldn’t have been worth very much, but is now worth almost $2m today. He remembers the password to the account, but someone apparently tried to log in to his account, meaning that he is being asked further security questions – and this is the reason he cannot access his account.
Apparently, @ConspiracyCubed does not remember who he listed as his best friend in 2005, since he does not remember who that was.
This Tik Tokker is now seeking further help, and would like to know if there are any lawyers who can help him launch a legal case against Hotmail.
A donation to the rest of the network
Satoshi was well aware of the fact that people would come to lose their keys over time, and embraced this as a feature of the Bitcoin network rather than a bug.
When people lose their coins, the Bitcoin is effectively taken out of circulation forever, which means that there is less potential selling pressure in the short term, and in the long term the asset becomes far more scarce.
There are varying estimates as to how many Bitcoin thus far have been lost by people who have misplaced or forgotten their private keys – estimates range from four million to seven million Bitcoin, meaning that the “true” maximum supply of Bitcoin isn’t, in fact, 21 million, but significantly less.
Svetski: Bitcoin rewards personal responsibility
Alexander Svetski is one of the more controversial Bitcoin maximalists in the space given his views that Bitcoiners shouldn’t try to welcome everyone into the space, and that Bitcoin is only for “the remnants”.
Rather than trying to understand Bitcoin as a tool that everyone can benefit from, he believes that it is a waste of time to try to achieve mass adoption with Bitcoin, and that the most important thing to recognise with Bitcoin is that those who understand it will be disproportionately rewarded.
In much the same way as many Bitcoin maximalists have argued in the past, Bitcoin is a technology that allows people with the highest possible degree of property rights, as long as they understand how to use it as a tool.
Of course, in the case of the aforementioned Tik Tokker, who claimed that he may have only spent £40-£60 on the Bitcoin at the time, and at a time when Bitcoin was not as well-understood as it is today, this appears to be a case of extraordinarily bad luck.
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