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Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer?

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Re: Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer?

#52
post #21

I assume you already tried this, but here is google's data download page: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout If it aint in there then I assume it's gone and only the NSA and/or GCHQ will have a copy.

There's a chap I know in the Ferrari owners club who works at GCHQ. I'll ask him if he knows anything about unclaimed wallets. Oh wait...

Re: Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer?

#53
post #25
post #15

You are young. I promise you that life will present you with challenges and rewards in the future that will make this seem like nothing. Put it behind you, close the door, lock the door, and move on.

Hilarious par for the course HN response. Zero empathy for OP. "Oh you only lost 400K. Since it didn't happen to me, it's not a problem."

Anything completely outside your control ought not to be viewed as a problem. A circumstance, reality, boundary condition... yes. But not a problem.

Re: Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer?

#54
post #6

My wife always says that growing up, all her dad and brother used to talk about at the dinner table was "I should've invested in that stock when it was cheaper!" or "I should've sold when it was higher!" I feel that way about Bitcoin/others. It's always regret all the way. It's like buying a stock. I had a chance to mine lots of bitcoins in 2011... never got around to doing it. It's now the same as "I should've bough…

You always remember the successful investments you didn't make, but not the unsuccessful ones. Think of all the money you didn't lose making bad investments.

If you're a little faster than average on the draw and have money to burn, the profits from the successful investments outweigh the money lost on the unsuccessful ones. E.g. if you have $50k, and spend it on five companies, only one of those companies has to be Apple for you to make way more than you started with...

Re: Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer?

#55

What about contacting Ethereum Foundation? They must have that mail.

Maybe they don't have the key but prove that they sent you a key. then maybe your lawyer will be able to force a hardfork. In which case you'd get killed by the community; which is worth it.

Re: Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer?

#56
post #45
post #15

You are young. I promise you that life will present you with challenges and rewards in the future that will make this seem like nothing. Put it behind you, close the door, lock the door, and move on.

That's quite a bold promise.

Marriage, divorce, your first child, death of a family member, professional success, getting fired, etc., etc. Life is quite a ride.

Re: Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer?

#57
At least you should try to get your account number from the Ethereum Team. Then monitor your account once a year or so. in the unlikely event that someone (ex GHCS / google admin, ai, hacker, ...) ever sends money from your account there are ways to get them.

Re: Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer?

#58
post #53
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious par for the course HN response. Zero empathy for OP. "Oh you only lost 400K. Since it didn't happen to me, it's not a problem."

Anything completely outside your control ought not to be viewed as a problem. A circumstance, reality, boundary condition... yes. But not a problem.

Purchasing cryptocurrency, deleting the only copy of the wallet a year later, then posting on a forum two years ago that "please give me back all this money"?

If this was outside OP's control, what in the world is inside it?

Re: Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer?

#59

I doubt you are going to have much luck, probably best to forget the whole thing and move on. I mined 100BTC back in 2009/10 and then never backed up the wallet or bothered with the private keys because it wasn't even worth a dollar, today it's worth $221,711. I always comfort myself that I would have sold out when it hit $8/BTC or even less. No use crying over spilled milk.

Back around the summer of 2010 I decided to play around a little bit with Bitcoin mining while I was looking for a job after college. For a couple of weeks I let the computer mine and accumulated what amounted to pocket change, then gave up and forgot about it. I've spent many hours over the past year or so digging through old burned backup CDs, DVDs, and hard drives trying to find the wallet, with no luck so far. Ma…

If it makes you feel better, unless you had a good GPU, what you earned might not have been worth more than a few thousand dollars (at current BTC prices). Though the difficulty was certainly much less in 2010, so who knows.

Re: Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer?

#60
post #21

I assume you already tried this, but here is google's data download page: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout If it aint in there then I assume it's gone and only the NSA and/or GCHQ will have a copy.

someone at the NSA is $400k richer!
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