Bitcoin Life Lesson: User Claims Forgetting 'Brain Wallet' Worth $13M

A Bitcoin investor has allegedly lost access to funds worth over $12.9 million after failing to record the passphrase for their wallet.

In what may become the latest timely lesson for the wider Bitcoin user base, Reddit account u/lumanubrecon claimed that as of Nov. 26, their balance of 1,800 BTC was out of reach.

The user said the coins were originally stored in a so-called "Brain wallet" in 2016.

When attempting to recover the wallet using the passphrase generated at the time the wallet does not unlock.

A brain wallet is a form of Bitcoin wallet which normally involves no physical or digital record of its passphrase at all.

According to data from monitoring resource Bitinfocharts, only two wallets with an initial balance of around 1,800 BTC appeared in 2016.

A Reddit moderator subsequently marked the post as "Likely fake." BashCo, the moderator of the r/Bitcoin subreddit, took aim at brain wallets as a means of Bitcoin storage.

"Why is it called a 'brain' wallet when anyone with an actual brain would never do something so stupid? The story is so dumb I assume it is not real," he tweeted.

Regardless of the complaint's authenticity the need to protect the private keys to cryptocurrency balances continues to gain attention in 2019.

Known as Proof of Keys, the event demands anyone who owns cryptocurrency control their own private keys.