Distrustful of Bitcoin, they erased their key in 2013 – BTCs are now worth more than $ 750,000.
Sometimes you have to have the courage to defend your ideas. Even if it means losing more than 750,000 dollars? In 2013, journalists from Wired magazine erased the private key for accessing a bitcoin stock (BTC), deeming the cryptocurrency to be too abstract. The coins are now worth a small fortune.
Journalists who did not believe in Bitcoin in 2013.
The 2013 article was unearthed by a Reddit user. Seven years ago, Wired journalists viewed Bitcoin mining with some suspicion. They had installed a mining machine in their offices and observed it producing BTC. This is thanks to a group that still exists: the Eclipse Mining Consortium.
At the time, the numbers seemed quite reasonable. In 2021, they make people dream.
“With Eclipse, we mined just over two bitcoins in about ten days. This did not consume much electricity: on average, between 43 and 44 watts. It’s not even enough to heat a cup of coffee.”
Gone are the days when you could easily produce 2 BTC ($ 113,424 at the current price) in just over a week. Wired reporters will be forgiven, however, for their ignorance, being neither seers nor omens. But maybe it would have been a good idea to keep some access to the wallet, just in case.
and which erase the private keys
What makes you smile is Wired’s flippancy. The journalists wonder at the end of the experiment how to use the few hundred dollars thus released (a BTC was worth about 327 dollars at the time of publication of the article).
They plan to donate the amount to a charity before opting for a more radical solution:
“The world’s most popular digital currency is nothing more than an abstraction. We are therefore going to destroy the private key used for our Bitcoin wallet. This leaves a growing stack of Bitcoin profits locked in a digital vault for all eternity – or at least until someone cracks the SHA-256 encryption that secures it.”
Good news: in 2021, no one has managed to “crack” Bitcoin yet! Bad news: these 13.34 bitcoins (BTC) are now worth more than $ 750,000, and they will never be accessible again. Let those who have never sold bitcoin too soon throw the first stone at them.
Are you still distrustful of Bitcoin?
