Bit(ter) Coin

[d000hg]

Bitcoin: Newport man'''s plea to find GBP210m hard drive in tip - BBC News

I wonder how many BC have been lost over the years, and their total value. Not a topic I know anything about, does anyone track all the BC in creation or is that not how it works?

[northernladuk]

I joined one of those colab mining things many years ago when bitcoin just started and I'm sure I had approaching 1 bitcoin. Managed to get it on a couple of the work servers to soak test them and my employer didn't care. Everyone else was putting the Seti thing on. It was still working away a long time after leaving. Back in the day that was worth about twenty quid I think so didn't pay much attention. As I changed PC's over the years I didn't bother re-installing and checking to the point I can't even remember the platform. I've spent a lot of time going through backups to try find it but nada. It is what it is I guess.

[Hobosapien]

Bitcoin: Newport man'''s plea to find GBP210m hard drive in tip - BBC News

I wonder how many BC have been lost over the years, and their total value. Not a topic I know anything about, does anyone track all the BC in creation or is that not how it works?

The blockchain is publicly accessible and can be analysed to find wallet addresses and the number of bitcoin currently held in a wallet.

Estimates are that about 20% of bitcoin has been lost.

Lost really means the private key used to gain access to a wallet, so bitcoins can be moved (spent), has been lost or cannot be recovered. Currently there is no known shortcut to cracking a private key beyond guessing what it is, though that will likely change as technology improves as there is very little safe in cryptographic terms given enough juice to brute force it. It's all just math at the end of the day.

[northernladyuk]

I joined one of those colab mining things many years ago when bitcoin just started and I'm sure I had approaching 1 bitcoin. Managed to get it on a couple of the work servers to soak test them and my employer didn't care. Everyone else was putting the Seti thing on. It was still working away a long time after leaving. Back in the day that was worth about twenty quid I think so didn't pay much attention. As I changed PC's over the years I didn't bother re-installing and checking to the point I can't even remember the platform. I've spent a lot of time going through backups to try find it but nada. It is what it is I guess.

1 BTC = 5,000 hand jobs. How lucky your job is also your hobby.

[fullyautomatix]

This pops up every time Bitcoin zooms up. Fact is, if he paid peanuts for it, it worth peanuts.

[Hobosapien]

If it's locatable to a certain sector based on estimated date of dumping, I'm sure the tip workers will have trawled through it seeing as it was apparently worth £4m around the time of the accidental disposal and him going back to request access would have tipped them off.

Otherwise what are the chances the hard drive will work or will be recoverable after so long in a landfill where there are gasses and other deteriorations in play?

Maybe when bitcoin is worth £1m each he can get a loan to buy out the council and sell the land on to housing developers after scouring through it to recoup the cost if he is unsuccesful.