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Missing hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site

theguardian.com

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Re: Missing hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site

#21

Post by pilgrim689 »

ed209 wrote: post #16
edubart wrote: post #13

He is not the only one, back in 2010 I did mine 160 BTC, however at some point I stopped caring. Months later I had to format hard disk because ArchLinux did a great job breaking the whole system with an update, in the moment I just didn't remember that there were a BitCoin wallet in my system. Damn ArchLinux. Although I didn't lose much as him. Now I kinda feel relieved knowing his mistake, he lost much more than me…

When bitcoins are lost, are they lost forever? So the total pool of bitcoins will be 21m - your 160 and his 7000?

Yes. The "total pool of bitcoins" is actually less than 21m, considering the lost ones. Does it matter, though? Whether the max is 21m or 20.1321029 ...

Re: Missing hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site

#23

Post by Jtsummers »

ed209 wrote: post #16
edubart wrote: post #13

He is not the only one, back in 2010 I did mine 160 BTC, however at some point I stopped caring. Months later I had to format hard disk because ArchLinux did a great job breaking the whole system with an update, in the moment I just didn't remember that there were a BitCoin wallet in my system. Damn ArchLinux. Although I didn't lose much as him. Now I kinda feel relieved knowing his mistake, he lost much more than me…

When bitcoins are lost, are they lost forever? So the total pool of bitcoins will be 21m - your 160 and his 7000?

Potentially. There's a chance that someone could recreate the same keys for the lost wallets, but the odds are not in their favor (gross understatement). If this happened they'd be able to create transactions moving the bitcoins in the formerly lost wallets to their own wallet(s). However, until someone gets so lucky these bitcoins are locked out of the economy.

Re: Missing hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site

#24

Post by john_b »

chuckd1356 wrote: post #20

Pardon my ignorance, but how do you prove a) He doesn't have a copy of the private key? b) He's telling the truth about mining them? c) Actually threw away the drive?

What incentive would he have to lie about any of this?

Re: Missing hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site

#25

Post by eterm »

akkartik wrote: post #12

A not-unreasonable penalty for risking pollution of his ground water, especially since he probably did the same thing to electronics many times before. I can't believe nobody is talking about this. Illegal in many US states. http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...

Since this is in Europe, it's probably better to refer to the European legislation.

However, it looks like the UK implementation of the WEEE[1] is fairly narrow in scope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electronic...

Re: Missing hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site

#26

Post by chuckd1356 »

john_b wrote: post #24
chuckd1356 wrote: post #20

Pardon my ignorance, but how do you prove a) He doesn't have a copy of the private key? b) He's telling the truth about mining them? c) Actually threw away the drive?

What incentive would he have to lie about any of this?

He's already set up a wallet to receive donations. Imaginary internet points. Exposure.

Re: Missing hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site

#28

Post by dmix »

Jtsummers wrote: post #15
dmix wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does every bitcoin comment thread have this conversation? It doesn't matter if a tiny percentage of the currency does not exist in the marketplace or gets lost. 21 million / 0.00000001 = how many bitcoins can "exist". So considering that there's no real blocking factors in how many bitcoins can be distributed, why does it matter if some get lost? The value of the coins are hardly affected now that such a high lev…

The divisibility of the currency doesn't matter for this calculation. Currency represents wealth. There is a finite amount of BTC that will ever be available. Any BTC that is locked away like this means there is less BTC to represent the same amount of wealth (actually, it's a growing amount of wealth presently). This means the value (or potential value) of each BTC has gone up.

> This means the value (or potential value) of each BTC has gone up.

By an ever decreasing significancy as the market cap expands and BTC of value are held onto with care.

Re: Missing hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site

#29

Post by mbq »

edubart wrote: post #13

He is not the only one, back in 2010 I did mine 160 BTC, however at some point I stopped caring. Months later I had to format hard disk because ArchLinux did a great job breaking the whole system with an update, in the moment I just didn't remember that there were a BitCoin wallet in my system. Damn ArchLinux. Although I didn't lose much as him. Now I kinda feel relieved knowing his mistake, he lost much more than me…

Come one, Arch is maybe one of the easiest distros to break but certainly one of the easiest to fix using chroot from USB live image. Forums are very helpful, and also if some current update is possibly breaking there is a deep post on the homepage discussing how not to break the system and how to recover from a broken state.

Re: Missing hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site

#30

Post by maxerickson »

ed209 wrote: post #16
edubart wrote: post #13

He is not the only one, back in 2010 I did mine 160 BTC, however at some point I stopped caring. Months later I had to format hard disk because ArchLinux did a great job breaking the whole system with an update, in the moment I just didn't remember that there were a BitCoin wallet in my system. Damn ArchLinux. Although I didn't lose much as him. Now I kinda feel relieved knowing his mistake, he lost much more than me…

When bitcoins are lost, are they lost forever? So the total pool of bitcoins will be 21m - your 160 and his 7000?

They are pretty much lost, unless a plurality of miners decide to change the rules.
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