Remember the Clifton Collins case where 6,000 BTC were supposedly lost forever?
Looks like not all of it was actually gone. Irish authorities (with Europol) just managed to access one of the wallets and moved 500 BTC
Kind of flips the whole “lost coins are gone forever” narrative a bit
Do you see this as a one-off case, or a sign that some “lost” BTC might not be as lost as we think?
Irish authorities just unlocked 500 BTC from a “lost keys” wallet after ~10 years
byu/Enough_Angle_7839 inbtc
Posted by Enough_Angle_7839
5 Comments
When true, this is a real threat to BTC.
Anny wallet could be targeted then.
This is the old “lost my keys in a boating accident” case
> Kind of flips the whole “lost coins are gone forever” narrative a bit
Only if you’re naive enough to believe the law enforcement “we’re so clever we can decrypt Bitcoin keys” lies
Ask this: why is the law enforcement description of the operation full of buzzwords, and completely devoid of detail?
Because there was no brilliant forensic decryption at all. They probably found the keys on the criminal’s hard disk using a commonly available disk recovery app
Why don’t they just say this?
1. they don’t want to admit how easy it was, and how incompetent they are for not doing it when he was arrested 7 years ago
2. they want people to believe Bitcoin isn’t secure
No information on how they did it. I doubt they broke the cryptography. Likely they found more information that narrowed their search for the keys down.
If they can’t find they theyre lost, but if they recover the key, e.g. the convicted turns it over to be released or prevent action, it is not lost. Or the key could be in an encrypted file that is itself cracked.
They’re gonna buy so many potatoes