An X user known as cprkrn purchased Bitcoin in 2013 for approximately $200. However, in 2015, while he was still a student, he changed the wallet password and subsequently forgot it. Since that time, his 5 BTC appreciated from around $2,000 to nearly $400,000. Over the course of 11 years, he attempted to guess the password, trying an estimated 7 trillion combinations without success.
Recently, he managed to recall the mnemonic phrase he had used prior to the password change, but it was ineffective with his current wallet file. As a final resort, he uploaded data from his old computer to Claude, which included various files, notes, and backup folders.
Claude was able to locate an older wallet file that had been generated before the password was changed. Additionally, it uncovered a flaw in BTCRecover, a widely used wallet recovery tool, which mistakenly combined the key with the password during the decryption process. Claude corrected this error, executed the recovery protocol, and successfully retrieved the private keys from the old backup.
To validate his claim, the user shared the wallet address, and blockchain records corroborated his story: the 5 BTC had remained inactive since 2015, with only a transaction occurring on May 13. This was not a case of hacking but rather a matter of retrieving the correct information. The user possessed all the essential data and might have recovered the wallet eventually, but the AI facilitated the organization and identification of what was necessary, akin to "finding the needle in the haystack."
The user described the day he regained access as the happiest of his life and humorously suggested he might name a future child after Dario Amodei, the founder of Anthropic.
Informational material. 18+.
