Man Recovers 11-Year-Old Bitcoin Wallet Password With Claude as Lost Coins Near 20% of Supply
Updated
Updated · Bloomberg · May 28
Man Recovers 11-Year-Old Bitcoin Wallet Password With Claude as Lost Coins Near 20% of Supply
3 articles · Updated · Bloomberg · May 28
An 11-year-old Bitcoin wallet password was recovered with Anthropic's Claude, restoring access to coins the owner had effectively lost after forgetting the credentials.
The breakthrough came after Claude helped identify a bug in the wallet's password setup and reconstruct likely phrases tied to how the password had originally been created.
The case highlights a wider crypto problem: some estimates put lost or inaccessible Bitcoin at about 20% of total supply, much of it stranded in early-era wallets.
That makes AI-assisted recovery one possible path for owners locked out of old holdings, even as more extreme scenarios such as quantum-based cracking remain a broader long-term concern.
With AI now recovering lost crypto, could your old forgotten hard drive hold a digital lottery ticket?
When quantum computers crack old wallets, who legally owns the billions in 'unlocked' Bitcoin?