Bitcoin Developer: "Locked $700 Million for 16 Years Can Be Unlocked with 'This One Thing'"

▲ Bitcoin (BTC), cryptocurrency wallet / ChatGPT generated image

Market attention is focused on an emerging attempt to recover a Bitcoin wallet that has not moved a single time since 2010.

According to cryptocurrency specialized media BeInCrypto on May 2nd (local time), a developer is reportedly attempting to recover a lost wallet belonging to a user known as 'Stone Man' using a GPU-based CUDA tool.

The wallet holds 8,999 BTC, valued at approximately $688 million. This address has no transaction history for about 16 years.

The incident dates back to early 2010. Stone Man held approximately 9,000 BTC using an early Bitcoin client, version 0.3.2, at the time. During a transfer of 1 BTC, the system automatically moved the remaining 8,999 BTC to a new change address.

The problem occurred afterward. The user ran the program in a Linux boot CD environment, and the updated wallet.dat file was deleted during the system shutdown process. The existing backup did not include the new address information, and ultimately, without securing the private key, the assets remained inaccessible.

The newly introduced recovery tool is designed to reduce the private key search range by utilizing the low entropy characteristics of early Bitcoin clients. It uses CUDA-based GPU computation to find keys faster than traditional CPU methods. The developer stated that if this method is verified, it could be applied to wallets that were previously inaccessible due to similar issues.

Meanwhile, this attempt is noteworthy as it is a recovery case targeting a large-scale Bitcoin wallet that has been dormant for a long time.

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