Note that many bitcoins were indeed lost during the cryptocurrency’s existence. This is because in the early years of the network, BTCs were literally worth a few cents, so investors could afford to lose them. Unintentional losses also occurred, as coins were often left “locked up” due to broken hard drives or even accidental purging.

Are the volumes of potentially lost cryptocurrencies large? Yes. According to analysts at Glassnode, the number of bitcoins that haven’t moved in a decade stood at 2,457,455 coins at the end of last week. Here’s the relevant graph.

Graph of the number of bitcoins that have been inactive for at least ten years

Occasionally, access to crypto does get restored. However, there are relative failures even among these cases.

How lost bitcoins are found

On his YouTube channel, Grand shared the story of how he helped a bus driver, Lavar from Seattle, retrieve crypto from his old mobile phone. The expert expected the find to be potentially worth “millions of dollars”, so he agreed to help. Overall, Lavar acquired the coins back in July 2016 in a “very unorthodox way” – he bought bitcoins from some man in a coffee shop, then transferred them to his cryptocurrency wallet on his old Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone.

Later, the investor stopped using the phone and forgot about it altogether, as well as the cryptocurrency wallet on the device. He saw it again in 2021, but Lavar was no longer able to remember the combination to unlock the smartphone, i.e. to access it. That’s when he turned to Grand, having seen his channel.

Here is the relevant video, which gives all the details of the situation. We recommend watching it if you can understand English by ear.

The programmer resorted to a bit of hardware manipulation: he swiped the device’s memory and figured out the coveted graphical password pattern – it turned out to be the Latin “L” on the screen. Lavar opened his wallet and found only 0.00300861 BTC, or slightly more than $105, though that bitcoin has fallen in value to $63 by now.

In other words, the specialist's time was hardly worth the profit made. However, why the cryptocurrency owner was oblivious to the relatively small amount of coins is unknown. Most likely, the information was simply forgotten over the years, and the sense of incredible growth of the coins from 2016 until today made the investor inflate his own expectations.

At the beginning of 2016, Bitcoin was worth just $434

According to Cointelegraph sources, most of the bitcoins acquired by Lavar had previously gone to cryptomixer BitBlender, which stopped operating back in 2019.

As a reminder, cryptomixers are special platforms that allow coin owners to cover their tracks. In other words, send crypto from one address and receive them at another. And crypto-assets are usually sent in multiple batches, making them very difficult to trace.

As one commenter under the video noted, even if all of the BTCs were in place, their value would now be just over $12,000, meaning Lavar certainly wouldn’t be a millionaire. Here’s his quote about what happened.

I’m a little disappointed. We didn’t find any money, but we certainly made a lot of new friends.

That is, the owner of the coins admitted that the efforts made were essentially useless. However, he is clearly happy with the outcome, as he got to know a lot of people during the recovery process.

That said, Lavar could start investing in crypto today. Especially since Bitcoin is practically safe – and even central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are not threatened. According to Mikkel Morch, executive director of hedge fund ARK36, a government-backed digital currency need not be a competitor to its decentralised counterpart.

CBDC development status around the world

The use scenarios and value proposition of decentralised digital assets “often go beyond simple transactions”. In a recent statement, Morch referred to US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who hinted earlier this year that America’s government would not prevent the coexistence of a “well-regulated, private stabilecoin” with a potential digital dollar from the Fed.

That said, however, an active commitment to CBDC development does not mean that other countries are unfriendly to non-state-backed cryptocurrencies. The expert suggested that CBDC development could even “encourage the spread of decentralised cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology”.


We believe that this story can still be considered a success story. Of course, the amount of the cryptocurrency did not make the investor happy, but at least now he will not be tormented by ignorance. In addition, the crypto's safety will surely prove a clear proof of the advantages of decentralised assets. Which means Lavar will have a new reason to accumulate crypto more seriously - as well as a chance to become a millionaire in a few years' time.


What do you think about it? Share your opinion in our millionaire cryptochat. We discuss other important news there, too.