A woman has shared her experience of feeling ‘hopeless’ after being unable to access her Bitcoin wallet for nearly a decade.
We’ve all experienced the frustration of forgetting login details and not having them recorded properly. Picture the anxiety of being locked out of your email when you have an urgent deadline, and magnify that by a significant amount to understand how Rhonda Kampert felt. She had purchased six Bitcoins in 2013 and attempted to access her account years later after realizing the dramatic increase in her cryptocurrency’s value.
Kampert, from Illinois, invested approximately $480 on six Bitcoins after hearing a radio show discussing the cryptocurrency.
She spent some of the money but eventually forgot about it. In 2017, an announcement that Bitcoin’s value had surged to $20,000 prompted her to revisit her account.
Unfortunately, Kampert faced a significant problem: she couldn’t log in.
Speaking to the BBC, Kampert explained that she had printed her login details for her Bitcoin wallet, only to discover that the printout was missing ‘some digits on the end of [her] wallet identifier.’
While she had her password, the absence of her username prevented access.
Despite ‘trying everything for months,’ the situation felt ‘awful’ and ‘hopeless,’ leading Kampert to nearly give up.
With Bitcoin’s value continuing to rise, Kampert decided it was time to take action.
She sought help from crypto treasure hunters Chris and Charlie Brooks, providing them with all the details she could recall. Chris, fortunately, succeeded in unlocking the wallet for her.
Inside, Kampert found three-and-a-half Bitcoins, valued at approximately $175,000.
Kampert compensated the Brooks team with 20 percent of the wallet’s value and used part of the remaining coins to support her daughter’s college education.
As for the rest of the coins, Kampert hopes their value will increase further. She is safeguarding them in a USB-style storage device and has ensured she remembers her login details precisely this time.
Kampert is not alone in having a fortunate recovery of a Bitcoin wallet. Another individual contacted electrical engineer Joe Grand, known as ‘Kingpin’ online, after being locked out of his wallet for an astounding 11 years.
Thankfully, like Kampert, this Bitcoin owner managed to regain access to his holdings, discovering $3 million worth of cryptocurrency inside.