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Bitcoin trader recovers wallet with help of Claude

tomshardware.com

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Re: Bitcoin trader recovers wallet with help of Claude

#111

Post by WarmWash »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #10

> Bitcoin trader recovers $400,000 using Claude AI after getting 'stoned' and losing wallet password 11 years ago — bot tried 3.5 trillion passwords before decrypting an old wallet backup Man. I wish I had a lost wallet worth a quarter of that even, technically didn't need Claude for this, just needed any password cracking software.

I had a high school friend that died about 10 years ago from an over dose. He was always tech forward and had talked in the past about getting drugs from the dark web to sell locally.

I wasn't particularly close with him after high school, but he was an only child, and I can only imagine his (older) parents just tossed his computer. I wouldn't be surprised if he had had a few hundred BTC on there.

Re: Bitcoin trader recovers wallet with help of Claude

#112

Post by unshavedyak »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #103
bavell wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MtGox Whew, that brings me back! I still think about the Bitcoin my buddy paid me for his half of a pizza ~15 years ago... worth 6 figures now haha.

I have a cousin who received around 2 BTC after playing some cards with some people. Wasn't worth much at the time. He sold the coins immediately. Better not to dwell on such things.

Yup. I was really close to buying $1000 (at $1) worth of BTC ages ago. I don't dwell because the stress of managing that through time would have eaten me away lol.

With that said, i do regret not at least mining/etc. Back then i could have mined in many ways, and getting into it as a hobby probably would have meant holding larger amounts of BTC in the long run.

Re: Bitcoin trader recovers wallet with help of Claude

#113

Post by tracker1 »

Kind of cool to hear... I had a couple computers running miners at home towards the end of my second marriage (which ended in 2010-2011), and after I had a few coins when realizing I couldn't actually spend them (IIRC $0.25 at the time), I just deleted the wallets. I had no foresight or faith that they'd be worth around $100k each in 15 years. I'm curious how many did the same, how many coins out there were just deleted altogether.

Re: Bitcoin trader recovers wallet with help of Claude

#114

Post by chasd00 »

nolok wrote: post #36
atonse wrote: post #14

I have a similar claude story (much less money though), with the IRS R&D tax credit. The auditing firm initially said we qualify for $0. But then I had claude analyze past R&D reports and our expenses and it found the problem. The auditor had miscategorized our company. So claude drafted an email even pointing to the right Internal Revenue Code (IRS Law), and specify why we fall under a specific category. The auditor…

To be fair regarding taxes it should be that you get all exemptions by default and the other side telling/justifying you why you don't qualify, instead of you not getting the things you should because you're not sure how to interpret the law or don't know this or that rule exists. Taxes shouldn't be that difficult, and the US version of it seems to be behind even the one I have here in europe (where my taxes are done…

i saw a meme once like:

IRS> Pay your taxes!

me> ok how much?

IRS> idk you have to figure it out

me> ...ok

IRS> if you get it wrong you goto jail

Re: Bitcoin trader recovers wallet with help of Claude

#115

Post by nso »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #10

> Bitcoin trader recovers $400,000 using Claude AI after getting 'stoned' and losing wallet password 11 years ago — bot tried 3.5 trillion passwords before decrypting an old wallet backup Man. I wish I had a lost wallet worth a quarter of that even, technically didn't need Claude for this, just needed any password cracking software.

Someone gifted me 87 bitcoins back when they were worth ~0. They are still in some wallet somewhere I guess, and I saved the password on a harddrive I threw out around the same time

Re: Bitcoin trader recovers wallet with help of Claude

#116

Post by leros »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #10

> Bitcoin trader recovers $400,000 using Claude AI after getting 'stoned' and losing wallet password 11 years ago — bot tried 3.5 trillion passwords before decrypting an old wallet backup Man. I wish I had a lost wallet worth a quarter of that even, technically didn't need Claude for this, just needed any password cracking software.

I have a lost wallet with about 300 Bitcoin sitting in a landfill somewhere. I tried out Bitcoin really early on and mined those over a few weeks. But they were worthless back then and I was burning electricity for "nothing" so I stopped. This was before that 10k Bitcoin pizza purchase happened. I have some regrets lol.

Re: Bitcoin trader recovers wallet with help of Claude

#117

Post by chasd00 »

tracker1 wrote: post #113

Kind of cool to hear... I had a couple computers running miners at home towards the end of my second marriage (which ended in 2010-2011), and after I had a few coins when realizing I couldn't actually spend them (IIRC $0.25 at the time), I just deleted the wallets. I had no foresight or faith that they'd be worth around $100k each in 15 years. I'm curious how many did the same, how many coins out there were just dele…

i distinctly remember a coworker many years ago offering to just give me like 10 bitcoin to see them and how it worked. i said "no, thanks". granted, hindsight is 20/20

Re: Bitcoin trader recovers wallet with help of Claude

#118

Post by nilamo »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #32
giancarlostoro wrote: post #10

> Bitcoin trader recovers $400,000 using Claude AI after getting 'stoned' and losing wallet password 11 years ago — bot tried 3.5 trillion passwords before decrypting an old wallet backup Man. I wish I had a lost wallet worth a quarter of that even, technically didn't need Claude for this, just needed any password cracking software.

Explaining your life to an llm, then having it generate permutations of passwords to try does sound like it would work a decent percentage of the time. A large percentage of passwords aren't a random string of characters but a memorable word + memorable number. There's existing projects that basically do the same, and 3.5 trillion doesn't really make it clear if one of those wouldn't have worked as well, but I can se…

The idea that someone (the NSA?) is training models on all of our collected info, and using that to predict all of our hidden information, is horrifying.

The best time to start using a password manager was 10 years ago. The second best time is now.

Re: Bitcoin trader recovers wallet with help of Claude

#119

Post by DANmode »

unshavedyak wrote: post #110
hypercube33 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All we need is something like Qwen3-coder-next but at Kimi K2.6 ability so it runs on laptop workstation hardware and we are set...soon?

I am eagerly awaiting being able to run a strong local model. I'd hand Apple $5k right now for a Claude in a box. I know the cost might not be there now, just saying that is around my ideal price point. $10k might even be worth it - but i'm assuming that the more expensive it is the beefier it is too, which also means more electricity.. and i already run ~6 computers/servers in my house. If a power surge happens i'm…

You can run 6-12 month old state of the art models for that type of money,

like, yesterday.

Re: Bitcoin trader recovers wallet with help of Claude

#120

Post by stavros »

echelon_musk wrote: post #104
stavros wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really thankful I put my bitcoin in a time vault back in 2012 or so. It was inaccessible until about last year, and my $10 is now worth $100k. Thank you MtGox.

A friend lost £2000 worth of BTC in MtGox which is probably worth a fortune at today's prices. The last time I spoke with him he said there was some sort of lawsuit for victim compensation. How did you recover your funds?

They emailed us during the course of the lawsuit, I followed the instructions and they sent me maybe half my BTC in the end.
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