He mined #Bitcoin when it was under $0.05

He held the keys to 25,000 $BTC

The Tragic Story of how ALLINVAIN lost $1.6 billion in one of the biggest robberies in crypto history 🔥

2010, he launched one of the first Btc exchanges, Bitcoin Express, allowing users to buy $BTC with PayPal. It sold 1,000 BTC for $5—just $0.005 per BTC ‼️

He was also an avid BTC miner. Using only his laptop, he was generating a 50 BTC block every hour, totaling 1,200 BTC per day 🤯

This is what mining BTC looked like when it was priced at $10. He could mine using his home computer, generating $BTC with the push of a button.

By 2011, mining difficulty SKYROCKETED. “It’s as if everyone, their mother, father, cousin, and their dog started mining,” he said. The hashrate surged to 4 TH/S, an astronomical increase from 0.001% in 2010—an increase of 114,000%.

Despite the challenges, he was fascinated. He wanted to support the btc economy by buying and selling real goods for BTC.

he quickly became a btc whale, amassing over 25,000 BTC. He celebrated the price surge in early 2011 when it reached $30. He had $500,000 in digital currency.

Then, on June 13, 2011, DISASTER struck. He noticed a 25,000 $BTC transaction leaving his wallet. In an instant, ALL his btc was gone.

he was devastated and fell into depression. All his efforts to support btc seemed in vain.

The news went global. Forbes, The Atlantic, and NPR reported it, calling it the FIRST btc theft.

The magnitude of the heist sparked conspiracy theories. Some speculated that he staged the theft to spread FUD.

What REALLY happened? He admitted it was due to poor security practices. “It was stupid of me to trust my security that much,” he said.

He had backed up his wallet to Dropbox, Wuala, and SpiderOak, later deleting them after learning that Dropbox employees could access files remotely. However, the real issue was a hacker who stole his UNENCRYPTED wallet file.

He later discovered that it might have been a trojan virus disguised as btc mining software.