Drug Dealer Loses Private Keys For $57m Worth of Bitcoin

An Irish drug dealer who decided to hide his fortune in Bitcoin has lost the private keys to his wallets that contained around 6,000 Bitcoin (around $57m) on them.

According to Irish Times, The drug dealer lost his keys after hiding them with his fishing rod, which has gone missing. The dealer bought most of the bitcoin in late 2011 and early 2012 using cash he made growing crops of cannabis.

In early 2017 he had around 6,000 bitcoin in one account but he feared it may be too easy for a hacker to hack it so he decided to spread his Bitcoin fortune across 12 new wallets and transferred exactly 500 bitcoin to each wallet.

He then printed out the private keys for his newly created accounts onto an A4 piece of paper and hid the paper inside the aluminum cap of his case containing his rod at his rented house.

He was arrested for growing weed at his house in 2017 and jailed for five years. The landlord decided to clean up the house and trough the dealer’s belongings away to a dump.

Garda officers said they were hopeful advances in technology would one day enable them to access the bitcoin so it could be sold.

Losing private keys to crypto wallets is a genuine problem for crypto that needs to be solved.