Pot Dealer's Seized €54M Bitcoins Up in Smoke After Keys Thrown Out With Fishing Gear
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
"In early 2017, he had just over 6,000 Bitcoin in one account, but he feared it may be too easy for a hacker to access," the Irish Times noted this month. "He decided to spread his wealth across 12 new accounts and transferred exactly 500 Bitcoin, worth almost a4.5m, into each of them."
The keys to those accounts were written on a piece of paper and stashed with Collins' fishing rod for safekeeping.
But later that year, Collins was cuffed and jailed for five years for drug possession, as dealers are prone to do. Believing his tenant was no longer able to make rent, Collins' landlord emptied his house and threw out, among other things, the pot peddler's fishing gear.
As it turns out, within the aluminum case of the weed-slinger's fishing rod was the sheet of A4 paper on which the digital keys to 12 Bitcoin wallets was scribbled. The paper was, among Collins' other belongings, sent to a dump in Galway and, it is believed, ultimately incinerated at a facility in either Germany or China.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.