Claude Helped Recover Access to a Bitcoin Wallet Worth $400,000

An X user cprkrn bought Bitcoin back in 2013 for around $200. But in 2015, while still a student, he changed the password to his wallet and forgot it.

Since then, his 5 BTC grew in value from about $2,000 to nearly $400,000. For the next 11 years, he says he unsuccessfully tried "around 7 trillion passwords."

A few weeks ago, he managed to identify the mnemonic phrase (the recovery seed) he had used before changing the password, but it didn't work with his current wallet file. As a last attempt, he uploaded the contents of his old computer into Claude, including files, notes, and backup folders.

The AI found an older wallet file created before the password change. It also discovered a bug in BTCRecover, a popular wallet recovery tool. The software was incorrectly combining the key with the password during decryption. Claude fixed the logic, ran the recovery process, and extracted the private keys from the old wallet backup.

To verify the story, the user shared the wallet address. Blockchain records matched his story: the 5 BTC had remained untouched since 2015 and were moved only on May 13.

This was not a case of hacking the password; instead, success relied on locating the right information. The user had all the necessary data and potentially could have recovered the wallet eventually. The AI helped organize and identify what was needed, effectively helping him "find the needle in the haystack."

The user described the day as the happiest of his life and joked about naming a future child after Dario Amodei, founder of Anthropic.

Happy for him?

❤️ — Absolutely
🔥 — Not entirely…

@hiaimediaen