5 Stories About People Who Lost Their Bitcoin

It happens more often than you think

If you lose your keys you can call a locksmith to open your door or car. There are 26,000 locksmiths in the U.S., so clearly there is a need for this type of service. If you lose the private keys to your crypto wallet you are out of luck. Bitcoin, as well as all other major cryptocurrencies that came after it, is built upon public-key cryptography, a cryptographic system that uses pairs of keys: public keys, which are publicly known and essential for identification, and private keys, which are kept secret and are used for authentication and encryption.

If you lose your private keys you will not be able to authenticate that you are the owner of the wallet and you won’t be able to do transactions to move or sell your cryptocurrency. Here are five stories about people that lost their private keys and what it cost them.

James Howells And His 7,500 Lost Bitcoins

James Howells, a Welsh I.T. worker, began mining Bitcoin on a personal computer in 2009. By 2013, he had mined 7,500 Bitcoin which is worth about $56 million today. In 2013, he…