One research found that there are around $140 billion unclaimed Bitcoins due to lost passwords.
Chris and Charlie Brooks, who claim to be “ethical hackers,” are working towards assisting those who have forgotten their Bitcoin wallet passwords and may be sitting on a wealth of undiscovered riches.
According to recent research by the cryptocurrency analytics firm Chainalysis, around 20% of roughly 18.6 million Bitcoin previously mined is deemed “lost” in wallets that appear to have become stuck. According to The New York Times, this translates to roughly USD 140 billion in unclaimed property.
Chris works as a programmer, and Charlie, his 20-year-old son, studies computer science in college. The father-son duo resides in New Hampshire. Chris said he first learned about cryptocurrencies in 2014, but it wasn’t until 2017 that he became interested in starting a company around it.
During this period, Chris regularly visited Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency forums. He saw a trend in which people who had invested in Bitcoin had forgotten their wallet passwords early on. It prevented users from accessing their wallets.
The process of breaking into a Bitcoin wallet is easier than it appears. However, it does need a thorough grasp of how people select passwords and a great deal of patience to cycle through all of the combinations of potential passwords.
Compiling a list of their best password guess is a really simple process. The more information users provide, the better, since it allows the duo to plan how they develop passwords and their process.
The two then work together to extend the list to “passwords of about hundred million or billion.” However, their attempts aren’t always successful, especially when someone’s recollection is a little fuzzy. According to Charlie, their current success rate is about 27%, lowered substantially due to false or incorrect claims.
Charlie claims that in April, they opened a wallet containing a quarter of a million dollars. Good communication and complete confidence in the process are essential for successful decryption.
It is a company built entirely on trust. The fact is, if they uncover the password, they have total control and access to assets.
According to the duo, the best method to figure out whether you lost cryptocurrencies is to track steps:
- Start right from the year you bought the coins.
- Consider where they were stored.
- Check through old email addresses for any proof.
- People can also check old hard drives or laptops to determine whether their passwords or wallet keys were saved locally.
Further expansion of business
The two stated that they intend to develop a self-serving platform that would allow individuals to access their wallets and not need a middleman at a cheaper cost. In the end, the duo wants to use their programming talents and cryptographic expertise to benefit the community as a whole.
