A young American invested in Bitcoin in 2013. After losing her digital wallet’s identifier, she resigned herself to saying goodbye to her cryptocurrency treasure. Fortunately, two specialized pirates managed to recover his lost fortune.
Rhonda Kampert, an American living in Illinois, bought six bitcoins in 2013. That year, the price of the cryptocurrency did not exceed the 80 dollars. “I used to listen to a radio talk show and they started talking about crypto and bitcoin so I got into it. At the time, the purchase was so complicated, I had obstacles during the process but I managed to buy the parts”explains Rhonda Kampert to our colleagues from the BBC.
In the year following her purchase, the young woman spent part of the digital assets before moving on. At the end of 2017, she heard about Bitcoin again. For the first time in its history, the first cryptocurrency was approaching $20,000.
Related: FBI Seizes $3.6 Billion in Bitcoin Stolen in Hack
She finds her 3 bitcoins thanks to the help of two hackers
Attracted by the lure of gain, she wanted connect to your digital wallet on the blockchain. Unfortunately, Rhonda hadn’t carefully noted her wallet ID. On the other hand, she had carefully kept her private keys. “I then realized that my printout was missing a few numbers at the end of my wallet ID. I had a piece of paper with my password, but I have no idea what the wallet ID is”then realized the American.
“It was horrible. I tried everything for months, but it was hopeless. So I gave up a bit”, says Rhonda. Once the price of Bitcoin crossed the $50,000 threshold, she resumed her search for her lost treasure. Chris and Charlie Brooks, two hackers specializing in cryptocurrenciesgot in touch with her.
After multiple exchanges, she agreed to give them all the information necessary to regain access to her bitcoins. “After talking to the guys online for a while, I trusted them enough to hand over every detail I could remember. Then I waited”says Rhonda.
In the end, the two experts managed to find full ID of the digital wallet. “We got together on a video call and watched it all happen. Chris opened the wallet and it was all there. I felt so relieved!”adds the Internet user, who holds a little more than 3 bitcoins, or 175,000 dollars at the time of the facts.
“I gave Chris and Charlie their 20% and then the first thing I did was pull $10,000 out of my chips to help my daughter Megan get through college”assures Rhonda, who explains that she wants to keep the rest of her bitcoins on a cold storage solution, a hardware wallet which takes the form of a USB key.
It is not uncommon for investors to inadvertently lose access to their cryptocurrencies. At the end of 2021, you were told the story of this young man who was forced to say goodbye to more than 40,0000 euros in Bitcoin after losing his wallet password. According to a study by Chainalysis, a company specializing in blockchain analysis, 20% of the 18.5 million existing bitcoins are also blocked on lost wallets.
Source: BBC
