"Crypto's rapid ascent created vast fortunes, and at the same time, immediately created new ways to lose them. While some early hodlers sat on life-changing gains, others watched value vanish because of dead drives, lost keys or not taking the proper precautions to protect this asset. The market quickly taught a harsh lesson punishing weak hands and weak minds. Here, 24/7 Wall St. has ranked some of the biggest crypto losses of all time."
"Reporting these cases helps readers understand practical risks (custody choices, backups, inheritance planning), exposes recurring weak points in wallets and exchanges, and highlights regulatory and ethical gaps in an industry still finding its safeguards. Beyond technical caution, the stories show the social cost-ruined retirements, legal battles, and communities left wondering who's accountable. If you own crypto, work in finance, or cover policy, these narratives are both warning and roadmap: they explain what went wrong and how to avoid the same fate."
"In 2019-2020 cryptographer Michael Stay was contacted by an anonymous person who'd encrypted private-key files inside an old ZIP archive and then forgotten the password. The archive used legacy Zip 2.0 encryption (not modern AES), which left an exploitable avenue for deep cryptanalysis. Stay and a small team spent months working on an attack. What they ultimately did was adapt prior research on ZIP's 96-bit derived key, wrote custom tooling, used cloud GPU resources and fixed a critical implementation bug that initially st"
Rapid cryptocurrency growth generated enormous fortunes and simultaneously introduced new, immediate ways to lose value through dead drives, lost keys, and inadequate precautions. The market punished weak hands and poor security practices, producing high-profile losses with severe personal and social costs. A review of online publications and news sources identified and ranked major crypto losses by monetary or Bitcoin value, with supplemental details on amounts, locations, and causes. Reporting on these cases highlights practical risks like custody choices, backups, and inheritance planning, and exposes recurring weak points in wallets, exchanges, and regulation.
Read at 24/7 Wall St.
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