I had a thought as I was looking through all of my old bitcoin articles and whatnot. I got to thinking about when bitcoin price had plummeted, people may have been discouraged, others may have given up, or there may even be some that had just started and completely forgot about it!
It makes me think, what if it becomes a hobby, to start going through all these old hard drives and old computers laptops etc., For peoples bitcoin they forgot about. I feel like it would be similar to looking for gold, at the beach in the sand!!
I can come up with TONS of reasons this may be possible, and people have moved past the drive, CD, flash, or whole computer since the creation. People originally may have: Thought they deleted a wallet, kids got computer taken by parents, had a backup on a drive they forgot about, abandoned bitcoin completely with active wallets, donated a drive to a school etc., The list goes on and on.
I think it would be a pretty neat idea, if you had a basic idea of where to look. (may need Googles help of course) I think this may be plausible now, or more so in the future. I think it might be more of a, "Oh wow, Jackpot", scenario though. I also think it might be comparable to digging for diamonds in reality; but still was a neat little ponderance. Thoughts or Stories?
It makes me think, what if it becomes a hobby, to start going through all these old hard drives and old computers laptops etc., For peoples bitcoin they forgot about. I feel like it would be similar to looking for gold, at the beach in the sand!!
I can come up with TONS of reasons this may be possible, and people have moved past the drive, CD, flash, or whole computer since the creation. People originally may have: Thought they deleted a wallet, kids got computer taken by parents, had a backup on a drive they forgot about, abandoned bitcoin completely with active wallets, donated a drive to a school etc., The list goes on and on.
I think it would be a pretty neat idea, if you had a basic idea of where to look. (may need Googles help of course) I think this may be plausible now, or more so in the future. I think it might be more of a, "Oh wow, Jackpot", scenario though. I also think it might be comparable to digging for diamonds in reality; but still was a neat little ponderance. Thoughts or Stories?
This is going to be a very infrequent event. More like a lottery search, especially if you found a machine that had a full block or two from mining. The reason is that during the low priced coin days there were VERY few users as a percentage of computers. Maybe 1 in 10,000 or less. Then they have to be forgotten and unencrypted. It could happen. It is not going to happen often. If it does, it may pay a hell of a lot of money.
