.Many people who bought bitcoin 5 years ago didn’t anticipate that the price of the digital currency would increase by 50,000 folds in half a decade. Even though it is a story of who you ask, there are many investors that are benefiting from the surge in the value of Bitcoin. These are mostly those that invested in the digital currency a few years ago.
One of the ways that Bitcoin has continued to benefit the early investor is through the recovery of seed phrases of old wallets.
A seed phrase is a private key that enables the owner of a wallet to recover them even if they lost their passwords. If properly stored, a seed phrase to a wallet that contains some bitcoins a few years ago could give the owner access to a lot of funds.
Lost Valuable Wallets
There was a Bitcointalk user that used a Bitcoin faucet about a decade ago when Bitcoin was worth less than $50. Last year, the user started asking about how they could gain access to their faucet account.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t even remember the name of the faucet or how much they had in it. Assuming there were 2 BTC in their faucet account in 2011, it would be worth $94,000 based on the current price of the digital currency.
Granted, faucet are mostly a waste of time since they offer very small amounts of BTC. Nevertheless, small amounts of BTC 10 years ago are very valuable today.
Investors who bought some bitcoins without the realization that the asset would become so valuable have mostly sought out those old wallets. This is with the realization that the coins in them are now very valuable.
Unfortunately, there are many users who can no longer access their wallets because they lost the passwords that give them access. In this case, private keys or recovery seeds are the solution. If the owner stores these safely, they can still reach these precious funds.
When You Have Access To Old Bitcoin Wallets
Another Bitcoin forum user, Newchanka, said that they remembered a wallet that they hadn’t used for some time. This was because they were short of funds. They imported the old wallet using the private keys. This was when they found some funds that understandably made a difference to their financial emergency.
So I needed some funds to make up for a payment. I contacted three of my clients who were supposed to pay for some writing jobs but the payments were delayed. It was getting frantic when I remembered that one of my old Blockchain wallets. Wondered if the wallet I hadn’t used for years could have some valuable bitcoins. I also remembered that I had the seed words in my phone as a screenshot (crazy!) so I imported the wallet. Boy, you wouldn’t believe how much I had in there. Not up to all the money I needed but enough to make a difference.
I wonder who else has access to old wallets 🙂
What is obvious in all these is that old wallets that has some coins in them are surprising owners who can reach the funds.
