Many people have become interested in the cryptocurrency industry and as a result, amazing stories have emerged. We have selected the top 12 strange stories from the world of cryptocurrencies.
MURDER PAID IN BITCOINS
Although the history of the cryptocurrency industry is not lacking in cases where Bitcoin has been used for illegal activities, getting paid for a murder order certainly attracts attention. A woman in Denmark was sentenced to 6 years in prison for hiring a hitman to kill her ex-boyfriend. She paid for the job in Bitcoins.
Fortunately, the murder did not happen. The woman lost her money and her right to stay in Denmark. The payment of 4.1 #BTC was made at a time when this amount was worth around $4,000. The evidence in the case was a transfer to the Hitman's digital wallet.
MEN ALSO ORDER MURDERS
The case in Denmark is not unique. Scott Quinn Berkett, a 25-year-old resident of Beverly Hills, paid a hitman $13,000 in BTC to kill his ex-girlfriend.
According to CBS News, the man met the woman online in 2020. They became a couple a few months later. However, the woman decided to end the relationship, stating that Scott was "sexually aggressive". The man wanted to continue the affair at all costs.
Berkett hired a hitman to whom he handed over $12,000 in Bitcoins for the murder of his ex-girlfriend. His plan failed. Investigators contacted Berkett, who posed as the hitman. And the unsuspecting man gave them further details about the "order". He also offered them another $1,000 to prove the murder.
I would like it to look like an accident, but a botched robbery might work better. I would also like her phone to be restored and irretrievably destroyed," he said.
Berkett was arrested on May 21, 2021. He pleaded guilty.
CRYPTOCURRENCIES IN THE GRAVE
It used to be said that money and worldly possessions are unlikely to be useful after death, and that "you can't take them with you". Are you still sure?
It turns out that in an increasingly digitized world, cryptocurrencies are following their owners... even to the grave.
The case concerns Matthew Mellon, a crypto-millionaire who tragically died in 2018 while on his way to a drug rehab center in Mexico. This banking heir invested $2 million in #XRP . And after his death, the value of the investment increased to about $1 billion.
During his lifetime, Matthew Mellon told his relatives that his cryptocurrency wealth was carefully hidden on several accounts that only he knew. He hid the keys all over the country.
When Mellon died, the heirs were denied access to both the accounts and the keys. Mellon's fortune has not yet been found. It rests somewhere in the cyber equivalent of an unmarked grave.
UNFORTUNATE PROGRAMMER AND UNFORTUNATE ENTREPRENEUR
Although another story sounds like a movie plot, unfortunately, it is true. Stephen Thomas, a 33-year-old programmer living in San Francisco, had bitcoins worth about $220 million. How did he "lose" them? By forgetting the password and not being able to use it in practice.
Thomas became interested in the world of cryptocurrencies in 2011. At that time, one bitcoin was worth less than $4. He made a video explaining how the most popular cryptocurrency works. The material was well-received. One bitcoin fan gave Thomas 7,002 BTC. At the time, their value was about $28,000.
Then Thomas decided to secure his wallet and bought an Iron Key, an encrypted flash drive. Unfortunately, the hero of this story forgot the password he set more than 10 years ago.
He had only 10 attempts to guess the security. After exceeding the number of attempts, the flash drive automatically erases stored data. No wonder the man is crushed by the situation and constantly thinks about a strategy to guess the password. He said in an interview with the New York Times:
I was just lying in bed thinking about it: then I went to the computer with some new strategy that didn't work, and I was desperate again.
At the time of writing this text, Stephen Thomas's estimated portfolio value is approximately $154 million. There are more such cases
The same unfortunate situation also happened to Barbados entrepreneur Gabriel Abed. He lost his $25 million after his colleague reformatted the notebook containing the private keys of his BTC wallet. Abed, however, did not collapse with the situation and continued to actively operate in the cryptocurrency market. The bitcoins he lost represented only a fraction of the units he bought and sold.
FROM LOSER TO MILLIONAIRE
In 2011, when Erik Finman was 12, his grandmother gave him $1,000 as a birthday present. The teenager bet with his parents that he would become a millionaire and invested everything in blockchain technology. Two years later, he had $100,000! But he didn't rest on his laurels...
Erik decided to drop out of school. The young entrepreneur used his earnings to establish an online education company, Botangle. The platform provided video tutoring services. This idea quickly caught the attention of investors who offered the 15-year-old boy to sell the company for $100,000 or 300 BTC.
THE CRYPTOCURRENCY MOUNT EVEREST ENDED IN TRAGEDY.
The popular social media platform ASKfm prepared a rather unusual promotion for their cryptocurrency by burying some crypto at the top of Mount Everest.
Four cryptocurrency enthusiasts joined a team of Sherpas on this unprecedented journey. They were supposed to leave a nano book from ASKT and an ASKfm coin worth $50,000 at the top of Mount Everest. Someone brave enough to climb the mountain and find them could then retrieve the wallets.
Everyone reached the summit and the promotional campaign ended. What could go wrong?
In a statement on its Medium page, ASKfm explained the reasons for the journey:
It said that ASKfm is not afraid of facing challenges. They conquer Everest because it's conquerable. If they are brave enough to do that, they are brave enough to turn a social network into a blockchain ecosystem, and they are certainly bold enough to turn the market with their new product.
In good faith or not?
Social startup Ask.fm found itself in controversy after the Sherpa leading the four climbers sponsored by the company disappeared near the summit on the descent. No further details on how it happened were released, but the company insisted the marketing stunt was good even with such a tragic outcome.
According to in-depth reports from Financial Times and the climbing website Rock and Ice, Lam Babu Sherpa was left behind during the descent from Mount Everest. He is presumed dead. One backpack and one guide's coffin were found, but his body was not recovered. Lam Babu Sherpa was a veteran of three Mount Everest summits.
"LIFE ON BITCOIN"
It cannot be denied that financial matters often lead to conflicts in marriage. Therefore, it is worthwhile to establish some rules regarding money before marriage, such as rules regarding a joint account.
One couple in Provo, Utah, decided to use only bitcoins for the first three months of their marriage. They decided that if cryptocurrency is going to change the world, ordinary people will have to use it every day.
Austin and Beccy Craig recorded their experiment called "Life on #bitcoin ." In this documentary, they tried to convince their customers to pay in BTC. The couple accepted the challenge of finding food, lodging, gas stations, and a cell phone on the road. The first few months of their marriage began with this "cryptocurrency survival test."
One of the arguments of skeptics regarding cryptocurrencies is that they cannot be used to purchase everyday practical items in the same way as "traditional money." The Craigs wanted to prove skeptics wrong. The Life on Bitcoin documentary became popular because it documented the journey of a young couple who "lived on Bitcoin" at a time when cryptocurrency was hardly accepted as a payment method.
WATCH WHAT YOU THROW AWAY
The case of British engineer James Howells is one of many highly-publicized cases of property loss. In 2013, he accidentally threw away a hard drive containing approximately $285 million worth of bitcoins. Howells says he had two identical hard drives for his laptops and accidentally wiped the one containing the private keys while cleaning his house.
The hardware ended up in a landfill in South Wales. The British engineer repeatedly asked the city council for help in recovering the disk and offered a high number of finders to the local authorities. He offered a quarter of the value of the collected cryptocurrency if the local government helped him retrieve the lost assets. However, all of Howells' requests were denied due to funding and environmental concerns. The cost of excavating the landfill could run into millions of pounds, and it still is not guaranteed that the disk will be found. In addition, excavating the landfill could have an adverse impact on the environment in the area.
Although it is uncertain whether the disk will work after such a long time, Howells remains optimistic. He believes that the inner unit where the data is stored should be in working order, and there is a chance that it still functions. However, the longer it takes, the less likely it is that it will be found functional.
As for the cost issue, Howells said that these concerns would be addressed in a contract signed with the city. He also asked for the opportunity to outline his plans and answer any doubts the council may have. The city refused to listen to him.
The man assures that he has assembled a full consortium of experts in this field to refute the city council's claims. Howells contacted several environmental experts, engineers, and data recovery specialists to search for the hard drive. He also signed a contract with Ontrack, a professional data recovery company. Ontrack rescued a burnt and battered hard drive in 2013 after it fell from the Columbia shuttle, where 99% of the data was recovered.
The investor proposed a project to recover the hard drive, which provides funds for the purchase of two robotic dogs "Spot" from Boston Dynamics, which started selling in 2020. The price of one robotic dog is $74,500.
During the last two years, these robots have herded sheep, guarded parks in Singapore during the COVID-19 pandemic, and scanned construction projects. In this case, the robotic dogs would function as mobile CCTV cameras to secure the project and would also be used for land searches.
The investor stated that if the project is successful, he would like to name his dogs "Satoshi" and "Hal."
HACKERS HELPED FIND A LOST FORTUNE
Not all cryptocurrency stories have an unhappy ending. Rhonda Kampert bought six bitcoins in 2013 when each one cost around $80. She tells how it all started and what made her buy them:
"I was listening to a talk show on the radio and they started talking about cryptocurrencies and bitcoin, so it caught my attention. Back then it was so difficult to buy, but I went through the whole process and bought the coins."
Over the next year, Rhonda spent some of her cryptocurrency and forgot about the rest. But at the end of 2017, she saw headlines in the media announcing that the value of BTC had skyrocketed to almost $20,000. She happily went to her computer to log in and quickly cash out, but then a problem arose. Rhonda was missing some of the login details to her BTC wallet:
"Then I realized that my wallet ID was missing a few digits at the end of my statement. I had a piece of paper with the password, but I had no idea what my wallet ID was. It was terrible. I tried everything for months, but it was hopeless. So I just gave up."
Rhonda came across cryptocurrency miners Chris and Charlie Brooks online, who claimed to have recovered seven-figure bitcoins in a year. The hackers helped her find her lost BTC.
After a brief conversation with the guys online, I trusted them enough to give them all the details I could remember. Then I waited. In the end, we sat down for a video call and watched as things unfolded. Chris opened the wallet, and they were there!
The men received 20% of the BTC amassed in Rhonda's wallet for their help:
"I gave Chris and Charlie 20% of them and then the first thing I did was financially contribute to my daughter so she could go to college."
Rhonda says she holds the remaining cryptocurrency in a hardware wallet, and the PIN code is firmly etched in her memory.
JOURNALISTS FIGHT FOR THEIR LIVES WITH BITCOINS
Seema Mody, a CNBC journalist, published a skeptical report in 2017 describing her attempt to live for a week using only BTC as a means of payment. The report begins with Seema Moody complaining about the situation that there were no bars in New York that accepted BTC payments at that time. She also portrayed transportation as a big challenge. However, the journalist acknowledged that Uber credits could be purchased through an external company.
Seema ordered food from several restaurants and informed readers that paying with cryptocurrencies is an additional 30% more expensive than the regular price. Mody concluded that bitcoin is an inconvenient and demanding means of exchange that requires constant searching. Her week-long experiment was expected to bring an additional 40% in cash expenses.
Seema Mody is not the only journalist who has decided to document the hardships of life with bitcoin as a currency. Kashmir Hill presented a similar story and drew similar conclusions to its predecessor. He stated that he had trouble getting basic food for bitcoins.
Their concept was developed in 2021 by Morgan Spurlock of CNN. He said that while it might be fun to see confused journalists almost staggering around the city and bothering shop owners, asking about technology they have never heard of, it can be entertaining.
It is their reports that do not even mention the difficulties faced by many people using banks. In her report, Seema Moody cites the volatility of bitcoin prices. She claims that it is the main obstacle to the widespread acceptance of virtual currency as a means of exchange. However, according to CNN's Morgan Spurlock:
"The argument about the value of bitcoins ignores millions of citizens struggling to buy basic groceries because of hellish hyperinflation due to their national currencies. The dramatic and often daily drops in value experienced by currencies like Argentina, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe in recent years make price volatility seem calm in comparison."
According to his opinion, this experiment contributed to creating an absurd myth about the challenges of using BTC in everyday life.
SUMMARY
It is worth reminding that what surprises, saddens, or pleases someone may depend on their individual preferences or mood. However, if you made it to the end, we would like to know... what interesting stories from the cryptocurrency industry do you know? Write to us and follow 🔔
