A few days ago, I transferred 10 bitcoins that I had kept for 11 years from my Bitcoin Core wallet to Binance, and received $90,000.
It’s been 11 years, and I feel a little emotional. Although I am not a person who likes writing, I also want to write something to record it.
In January 2013, I ended my 10-year working career in my previous company and started looking for entrepreneurial opportunities. At the same time, I was also studying for a doctorate at Shenzhen University and working on my graduation thesis. At that time, the direction of my graduation thesis was the optimization and acceleration of the TCP/IP protocol, and the corresponding product was a mobile phone Internet acceleration APP. In the 2G/GPRS environment, there was a certain demand for mobile phone Internet acceleration.
In June 2013, 3G was approaching, and the Internet speed was getting faster and faster. The demand for mobile Internet acceleration was greatly reduced, and it was not worth doing it anymore. At this time, I was interested in two directions. The first was entertainment drones, which were specially designed to follow the owner to take pictures from different angles. There were no similar products at that time, so there was something to do; the second was Bitcoin. At that time, I was searching for encryption technology information on the Internet, and accidentally searched for articles about Crazy Xiaoqiang and Li Xiaolai's investment in Bitcoin, which skyrocketed 6,000 times. It immediately aroused my interest. I spent half a month reading the Bitcoin white paper and some other introductory articles, downloaded the code, compiled and ran it, and I was impressed by the genius idea of using code to realize the perfect currency. It was so fun. From then on, I plunged into this industry, and my research direction was changed to the research of Bitcoin anonymity and anti-anonymity technology;
In July, when I was helping a friend look for investment projects, I met the famous angel investor Mai Gang. We accidentally talked about Bitcoin. Mai Gang studied finance, and his views on Bitcoin were very accurate and advanced. For example, the national reserve currency was what Mai Gang said at the time, and now it has become a reality. I have to say that Mai Gang is a very strong Bitcoin enthusiast. He greatly strengthened my idea of working in Bitcoin. He said he invested in OKCoin and introduced me to celebrities. I immediately withdrew all funds from the stock market and bought 800 Bitcoins from OKCoin.com, which was priced at $90 at the time.
These 10 bitcoins are 10 of the 800. Unfortunately, due to various currency exchanges and losses, and then starting a business and selling bitcoins to pay wages, I squandered all the other bitcoins in a few years. "The first bitcoin you own is the most bitcoin you will ever own in your life." This sentence is really true. Why bother? How nice it is to win without doing anything. . .
There is a reason why these 10 bitcoins can be kept. In January 2014, I withdrew 10 bitcoins and bought 200 million Dogecoins on BitTimes. After 1-2 months, I sold them on mintpal.com, and the 10 bitcoins became more than 60. I withdrew 12 of the principal first, thinking of keeping more than 50 to continue speculating in altcoins. As a result, mintpal ran away half a month later, and since then, I have been added to the mintpal rights protection group...
After I transferred 12 bitcoins to Bitcoin Core, I set a 26-digit password, which was very complicated. So I saved the password in an open source password management software and deliberately made three small mistakes. Half an hour later, what were those three small mistakes?
Just like that, after I forgot my password, 12 bitcoins were not worth much, and I was too lazy to recover them. . .
Until 2020, when I lost all the money I earned by luck and owed a lot of debts, I learned from the pain and disbanded the team, leaving myself alone... At this time, I had a lot of time and could finally concentrate on password recovery, which was what I liked to do and was also in line with my major in network security and cryptography.
I wrote a cracking program in C/C++, combined with my own password memory, made a dictionary, and ran the password with a very bad CPU. It took a total of 1 month, and the recovery was successful! ! ! When I saw the password on the screen, I was overwhelmed with emotions. 7 years! 7 years! Do you know how I spent these 7 years? ? ? After that, I used 2 bitcoins to pay part of the employees' wages, so I only had 10 left.
In 11 years, from 90 to 90,000, 1,000 times, that's enough. Don't try to earn the last penny, otherwise you won't be able to keep the pennies you have.
This incident gave me a good revelation that as the price of Bitcoin gets higher and higher, the lost cryptocurrency becomes more and more valuable, and the recovery business can be done.
The recovery business has obvious characteristics, and you need to find:
(1) A technician who has seen a lot of money. Otherwise, he will not be able to resist the temptation of huge wealth and will easily take it for himself after recovery.
(2) There is no need for a team. Even if the team leader can resist the impulse, the average technician cannot withstand the great test of human nature. Moreover, the success rate of business recovery is very low. It is common to fail to make a single order in a year. It is impossible to support a team.
(3) A safe and stable place. Sometimes, in order to increase customer trust, you need to meet and chat offline, but at this time you may fall into a trap set by others.
In contrast, I have the following advantages:
(1) He has seen a lot of money and pursues inner peace. He will not give up his current peaceful life for money or do illegal things.
(2) Strong technical skills and trustworthy. I have a PhD in cryptography, have been in the blockchain industry for 11 years, and have been engaged in password recovery for 5 years. My personal brand has always been good without any negative impact.
(3) I do not need a team. Most of the work can be done by me alone. Other technical personnel will temporarily do some auxiliary work and will not be exposed to core secrets.
(4) I live in Singapore for a long time, which is safer than China. We can meet and chat in person, and the client’s currency and personal safety are guaranteed.
Based on the above reasons, I think I have a great advantage in this area, so I added hundreds of graphics cards, assembled dozens of machines, used them as recovery computing power, and started the recovery business. Although I know that the income from mining is more stable, I don’t like it. I prefer password recovery that is challenging and surprising, and I have been doing it for 5 years.
In the past five years, I have seen the ups and downs of many customers. I like to hear the surprised voices of customers, see the surprised expressions of customers, see the series of exclamation marks expressing ecstasy in WeChat, and even see customers kneeling down to me. I also understand many situations of customers. Some customers are single-parent families, raising children alone, and can't even pay for tuition. When the money was sent to her after the successful recovery, she trembled and didn't know what to do; some customers worked in small institutions for decades, with limited wages and difficult lives. After the successful recovery, they bought two houses and lived a well-off life; some customers have been teachers for decades, living in poverty, and have despaired of recovering their wallets. After the successful recovery, they bought cars and villas and changed their social class. . .
The success rate of wallet recovery is very low, so there are more customers who put their hopes on me, hoping that I can recover their wallets immediately and change their fate. I always answer: I will do my best! Because I know how happy I was when my 12 bitcoins were recovered, and I know what kind of changes will be brought to them after the wallet is restored. Therefore, whether for the customers or for myself, I have to do my best. . .
All these things make me feel that I am helping customers solve urgent problems, improve their quality of life, and achieve class transition. Therefore, those who have forgotten their wallet passwords, don’t give up hope, the light is waiting for you not far away.
This is the story of me and my 10 bitcoins. Goodbye, my 10 bitcoins. I hope you will bring more surprises and happiness to your new owner.
