Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/drug-dealer-lost-his-bitcoin-p.html
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Hmmm…so the guy with $60m was running around doing $2k drug deals in person?
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Is this how bitcoin ends, when eventually every single bitcoin is irretrievably lost and no more can be mined?
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he has come to terms with the loss of the fortune and considers it punishment for his own stupidity.
That’s a remarkable display of self-awareness for a 49 year old drug dealer.
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“Weed charge”
The war on drugs makes us all poorer
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I wonder the same thing. I know next to nothing about this kind of economic theory, but I would presume it would result in significant deflation of the currency, no? And since there is a fixed amount of the currency, it would be a permanent deflation?
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Despite having made $60,000,000, he sounds like he was a pretty small-timer. Growing his own weed and selling. His fortune came because he invested about 30,000 euros of his illicit gains in BitCoin, before the value skyrocketed.
Should have quit while he was ahead. Was he doing it for the love of the herb?
Also, I kinda suspect he has those codes and is just waiting a while, since if he produces them right now, the money will all be seized.
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This is the ultimate “one that got away” tale. But yeah, as others have stated, probably still has the PINs
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Everyone knows smart dealers still ply their trade in cash
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With that much at risk I would have had the pin tattooed somewhere discreet, like the bottom of my foot.
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Or on your scalp:
(Wasn’t there another movie where there was a pirate map tattooed on somebody’s scalp besides Cuthroat Island?)
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Stands to reason. This particular loss, based on extensively not reading the article and a back of the envelope calculation, only amounts to 6000 BTC, out of a total supply of about 21 million BTC. This page says maybe 20% of the total BTC supply is permanently lost.
Bitcoin value is driven largely (completely?) by speculation, right? So are inflation/deflation relevant?
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Password managers exist for a reason, people. Your landlord can’t dump your cloud storage in a landfill. I mean, probably, I don’t know exactly how it works.
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Or imprinted into a solid metal bar that a friend named Cory will know what to do with.
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Yellowbeard. The title character had the map tatoo’ed on his son’s scalp. He didn’t remove it, just the hair.
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Waterworld, too.
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I can definitively say…I dunno? I think my original questions may have been framing bitcoins as a “currency”, but the rules of currency may not apply to a simple vessel for speculation, as I think you’re pointing out? I mean, how useful is a “currency” whose value regularly increases and decreases by double digits over the course of months?
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