Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wants industry players to create better storage tools that defend both stolen assets and lost funds from simple mistakes.
Buterin explains through an X platform update that crypto theft receives widespread attention while users commonly lose access to their digital funds due to forgotten passwords device failures and misplacement. He wanted security systems to help users recover their crypto and fight theft at the same time.
The need for better wallet protection emerges after Bybit lost $1.5 billion. Bybit secured the losses by taking loans and accepting large deposits from whales alongside Ether purchases. Buterin explained that people tend to ignore crypto losses when they discuss security measures.
James Howells Fights to Recover Lost Bitcoin
In 2013 British IT worker James Howells threw out a hard drive that held 8,000 Bitcoin worth hundreds of millions of pounds thereafter. People believe that hundreds of millions of pounds worth of this device now rests under the landfill in Newport Wales.
Howells persists in his attempts to get back his hard drive though after multiple legal efforts he is looking at this final solution of acquiring the landfill site to recover his Bitcoin worth hundreds of millions of pounds before it closes permanently in two years. Howells stated:
“This battle is my 9 to 5 – I won’t stop until I have my £620 million of Bitcoin back.”
Crypto loss occurs regularly in different situations, even though Howells lost more than anyone else. The company Chainalysis studied in 2020 showed that 20% of the Bitcoin mined to date remained stuck in unutilized wallets that had not been touched for years.
Rarely have people succeeded in recovering misplaced digital currencies. After keeping his IronKey hard drive for 11 years Stefan Thomas had to face the inability to access 7,002 BTC because he forgot his password. He found his stolen money with assistance from hacker Joe Grand and security researcher Bruno Requião da Cunha, who created a method to crack the password using the software used to generate it.
Most times, it remains hard to recover lost cryptocurrency, even with some exceptions. Buterin’s message means companies should work to stop money theft and let users retrieve lost funds by accident.
