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A few months back The New Yorker profiled James Howells, a man from Wales who is famous in the crypto world for accidentally throwing away a hard drive with $500 million in Bitcoin (BTC-USD). The profile follows his saga to convince the city to let him excavate the landfill and unlock his millions. So far, he hasn’t had any luck. Howells isn’t alone. Stefan Thomas, a programmer from San Francisco, only has 2 more password attempts to get back into his locked account containing roughly $250 million, or his data will be wiped forever.
Losing Bitcoin is one thing, but getting it stolen is another. This past week, the U.S. Justice Department arrested a New York couple on charges of laundering billions in stolen Bitcoin. Also in the New York metro, “Baby Al Capone” Ellis Pinsky was sued by a Silicon Valley tech executive for using sim-swapping to steal about $25 million of cryptocurrency. Pinsky was a high school student at the time. The stories go on and on, and I personally know a few people as well who have lost crypto or had it stolen. Learning from your mistakes is good–but learning from other people’s mistakes is vastly preferable. As the crypto industry has matured, the risks of this sort of chicanery have gone down immensely if you take the right precautions, but it pays to understand the landscape so you can own crypto safely and without paying excessive fees.
How to Own Bitcoin
If you’re completely new to crypto and you’re asking…
