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🔍 Gone for Good? What Happens to "Lost" Bitcoin

Author

Hector Alvero
August 20, 2024

Welcome to the Rhino Roundup, your weekly dose of industry news, platform updates, educational content, and fun memes in the world of Bitcoin.

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Featured Article

How Can Bitcoin Be “Lost”?

A bitcoin itself can never be truly lost, but to access and spend it, a user must securely protect their private key. Due to the secure and unforgiving nature of Bitcoin’s cryptographic protocol, losing access to this private key results in the effective loss of the bitcoin it controls. Here are the main ways bitcoin can be “lost”:

  1. Forgotten Private Keys: Bitcoin ownership is secured by private keys, which are essentially complex passwords. If a user forgets or misplaces their private key, they lose access to their bitcoin forever.

  2. Hardware Failures: If bitcoin is stored on a physical device such as a hard drive or a hardware wallet, failure of the device without a backup can result in loss of access.

  3. Lost Devices: Devices holding the bitcoin private keys can be lost, stolen, or destroyed, resulting in the permanent loss of the coins stored on them.

  4. Death of the Owner: If the owner passes away without sharing the private keys or the method to access them, access to that bitcoin is effectively lost.

Want to find out the total amount of lost Bitcoin? Read the full post here to find out more.

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This Friday, don’t miss our COO, Hector Alvero, and his co-host, Tracy Elliot, as they interview the team behind Learning Bitcoin, an upcoming education event in Victoria, BC on September 28th.

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Meme of the Week