Being in the IT world, computer repair and data recovery business for quite a while, I did get encounters with people who asked me if I ever found old Bitcoins on old hard drives forgotten since they were worthless. Even three lost and found bitcoins would buy me a car nowadays. The answer is no, it doesn't work that way! But I did hear of people who have been looking for them for some reason.

In reality in the data recovery business we don't look through customer data at all, it's none of our business. We get paid to recover the data, verify integrity and deliver it back to it's owner in exchange for a fee. 

Technically even on abandoned hard drives, finding a Bitcoin and using it is still theft. The same as how someone would find a picture of a credit card and use it online. Even if a "walled.dat" file would be present in most cases the data is probably encrypted and locked behind a password which would make it worthless. This doesn't stop people from thinking about it.

Now I'm not a Bitcoin or Crypto currency expert in any way but if a Bitcoin is trapped or lost on some old hard drive, doesn't that mean that it can never be used, mined or discovered ever again? There probably are thousands of Bitcoins lost that way that will never ever enter circulation ever again. That is kind of sad.... A Bitcoin needs to see that the world is so much bigger that. What about Bitcoin wallets that are lost? Owners forgot their passwords? How many Bitcoins, and I'm saying that understanding that Bitcoins are issued in a limited number, are lost forever?

Regular government currencies don't seem to have the same problem especially with inflation as a tool to control value and numbers. I love crypto currencies and I love that it keeps being perfected and I look forward to seeing where this will go.

Originally published at http://hermessyndicate.com on January 9, 2020.