In 2013, a British man’s girlfriend accidentally discarded a hard drive containing approximately 8,000 bitcoins. Years of legal battles to recover it from the landfill proved futile. This, along with four other cautionary tales, highlights the importance of safeguarding crypto assets.
“The computer part had been disposed of in a black sack along with other unwanted belongings, and he begged me to take it away, saying, ‘There’s a bag of rubbish here to be taken to the tip.’
I had no idea what was in it but I reluctantly dropped it off at the local tip on the way home from going on the school run… I thought he should be running his errands, not me, but I did it to help out… Losing it was not my fault.”
