According to Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin, while theft is often discussed in crypto security, many people also lose significant amounts of crypto due to negligence and accidents, and wallet solutions must address these risks as well.
In his recent post on X, Vitalik Buterin brought the crypto community’s attention to the fact that many people lose their crypto through actual loss (due to forgotten passwords, software bugs, or lost devices) rather than theft. While conversations about crypto fraud have been rife, particularly in the wake of the $1.5 billion theft from Bybit (although the exchange fully covered the loss through loans, whale deposits, and Ether purchases), Buterin emphasized that actual crypto loss is overlooked in discussions of crypto security. He added that robust wallet security solutions should account for all forms of loss, not just hacking.
One of the most notable and tragic examples of crypto loss is the case of James Howells, whose hard drive containing 8000 Bitcoin (BTC), now worth hundreds of millions of pounds, was accidentally discarded by his ex-partner in 2013. The hard drive presumably ended up at a landfill site owned by Newport City Council. Despite taking legal action, Howells failed to recover the device. Now, with the landfill site closing in the next two years, Howells is weighing his options: he may either pursue a case at the Court of Appeal or attempt to buy the site with the help of investors. For Howells, retrieving his digital wallet has become his life’s mission. “This battle is my 9 to 5 – I won’t stop until I have my £620m of Bitcoin back,” said Howell.
Howells’ situation is an extreme case but it underscores a larger issue. Losing crypto because of negligence or accidents is far from uncommon. According to the 2020 report by Chainalysis, approximately 20% of Bitcoin mined at the time was considered “lost” because it had been trapped in wallets that had seen no movement in years (more recent statistics are not readily available).
That being said, there’re rare instances of recovery. One such example involves Stefan Thomas, who spent 11 years unable to access his IronKey hard drive, which contained 7002 BTC, after forgetting the password. However, he was able to recover it with the help of hacker Joe Grand and security researcher Bruno Requião da Cunha, who developed a novel approach to crack the password by analyzing the software used to generate it.
Despite occasional success stories, the reality is that crypto recovery is difficult. As Vitalik pointed out, the industry must not only focus on preventing hacks but also ensure that users can recover their crypto in the event of loss due to accidents or human error.
