South African Man Accidentally Deletes Files Containing Bitcoin Wallet Keys

An engineer of electronics from South Africa is presently regretting why he had deleted files from his computer because he lost hope in Bitcoin some 7 years ago. However, after a period of 7 years, there isn’t a single day when he hasn’t tried his luck in restoring the deleted file but it was a mistake that he cannot undo but only regret his bad choice. He told that he had owned 20 Bitcoin and now all has lost because of his own mistake.

It is said that if you want to delete some old and unnecessary files from your computer, first make a backup copy and then delete. This is a good practice, however, it is hardly practiced by only a handful of cautious computer users.

There have been many instances in the recent past, where people thought that the files were useless and occupying unnecessary space. However, later they discovered that the files were worth their life saving but since they deleted them, they cannot be recovered anymore.

A similar unfortunate situation was faced by an electrical engineer from South Africa who is also known by his made-up name Mark Michaels. Michaels, who is only 24 years old, told that when he was 14 years old, he was a computer fanatic. He spent his day and night on his computer and his parents supported him because he was a computer genius. At that young stage, he also started mining Bitcoins, which, at that time was recently launched in the market. He earned at least 20 Bitcoins and believed that a day will come when his Bitcoins would be worth something.

That day did in fact come. Since the pandemic, he was actively involved in crypto and since he had a few Bitcoins, he was glad to see its value surging. He had Bitcoins with him when he was a student of the 7th standard. He also told that when he started to mine Bitcoins, the value of Bitcoin was around something US$ 0.08. As compared to today’s value of Bitcoin, the value of Bitcoin ten years ago was nothing.

Being aware that someday he would need to dispose off his Bitcoin against huge money, he also stored wallet’s key in a computer file. A few years ago he remembered the passcodes in his mind but his memory started to fade a little bit. He lost his interest in Bitcoin because there was no gradual value increase for Bitcoin. However, he relied on the computer file wherein he had stored Bitcoin’s wallet’s passcodes.

However, with no more interest left in Bitcoin, he decided to delete the files containing the passwords. It was the worst decision he could have made ever. It has been now more than 7 years and to date, he often tries to recover the file which he had deleted. But he couldn’t do anything but regret the mistake he made that day. Only if he could recover the file, he could gain access to his lost Bitcoins.

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