About 8 years down the line after the introduction of Bitcoin, there have been stories of people who turned into billionaires overnight. Just as Bitcoin billionaires have something to smile about when they look at the past, there are people who also wish for one more chance to go back into the past to correct a mistake that has cost them big time.  This post presents the tales of two different people who nearly hit the Bitcoin jackpot.

James Howells

James Howells was one of the early adopters of Bitcoin in the United Kingdom. Seeing a lot of potential in the cryptocurrency, he started mining bitcoins in 2009 with his computer. According to the available information, he broke his computer into parts and sold them online having kept the hard drive that contained 7500 mined Bitcoins.

One day, Howells cleaned up his room and mistakenly added the hard drive containing the mined Bitcoins into the waste and threw them into a local landfill site.

Howell would have earned $127 million in December 2017 when Bitcoin was trading around $17,000, meanwhile, the hard drive was somewhere under 350,000 tons of waste.

Steve Wozniak

The Co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, who is known to be an expert in technical stuffs became a victim to Bitcoin hackers after losing $70,000. According to reports, the way he lost the money could happen to anybody, henceforth, Bitcoin traders reading this post should take note. Wozniak received an offer for his Bitcoins.

After selling 7 Bitcoins for $70,000 (not today’s rate), for a credit card payment, the credit card got cancelled. The logical reason for this is that the buyer was using a stolen credit card.

From these cases, especially the story of the Apple Co- founder, traders should only trade on safe exchanges. Also, the exchange should only happen with a trusted buyer or seller. According to expert advice, “over the counter” trade should be avoided if possible. Furthermore, investors should be careful with storing their cryptocurrencies on the online exchange platform.

Using offline wallets and storing private keys in a safe place is a more secured way of dealing with cryptocurrency hacking. It is shocking to know that the number of lost Bitcoins is on the rise. With respect to this, ensure that there is a backup key for wallets, and they should be kept away from third parties.

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