A BITCOIN trader claims she enlisted the help of hackers to recover £129,000 worth of crypto off her old computer after she forget her wallet ID.
Rhonda Kampert, from Illinois, was granted the stroke of luck last year and claims she now has assets worth £31,000 each.
2
2
The mother first dipped her toe investing back in 2013 when crypto was considered an unknown quantity.
At the time Bitcoin was worth £60 each and Rhona decided that it might be worth a punt.
“I used to listen to a radio talk show and they started talking about crypto and Bitcoin so I got interested,” she told the BBC.
“Back then buying it was so complicated but I fumbled my way through the process and bought my coins.”
Rhonda said she ended up spending some of her digital money over the next 12 months and soon forget about it.
But in 2017, as Bitcoin started to rise in value, she remembered her purchase and quickly logged back into her own device.
Most read in Money
However, she soon discovered that she was missing some of the login details as the “awful” reality of her lost fortune set in.
“I realised then that my printout had missed some digits on the end of my wallet identifier.
“I had a piece of paper with my password but no idea what my wallet ID was,” Rhonda said.
“It was awful. I tried everything for months but it was hopeless. So I kind of gave up.”
FORGOTTEN TREASURE
Come 2021, the prices of Bitcoin soared above £36,000 and it seemed like there would be no hope of getting her lost investment back.
But with fresh determination, Rhona began surfing the internet for solutions and stumbled across father and son crypto duo Chris and Charlie Brooks.
“After talking to the guys online for a while I trusted them enough to hand over all the details I could remember. Then I waited,” she explained.
“Eventually we sat down together on a video call and watched everything happen. Chris opened the wallet and there it was. I just felt so relieved!”
What is Bitcoin?
BITCOIN got you baffled? Here’s what you need to know:
- Bitcoin is a virtual currency
- It’s traded between people without the help of a bank
- Every transaction is recorded in a public ledger, or “blockchain”
- Bitcoin is created by mining
- Mining involves solving difficult maths problems using computer processors
- Bitcoin can be traded anonymously, which can make it a popular way of funding illegal activities
- The value of Bitcoin fluctuates wildly
- Bitcoin is one of many different cryptocurrencies, but by far the most popular
Rhonda discovered a wallet of three-and-a-half Bitcoin which was worth £129,000.
She decided to gift her new heroes a cut of 20 percent and used a further £7,000 to help her daughter through college.
Rhona says she has since learnt from her mistake and has decided to keep the rest of her Bitcoin securely locked in a hardware wallet – with the login pin close at hand.
Now she hopes the coins will soar in value again and enable her to create a retirement fund.
She added her main motivation is to quit her day job as a trader in stocks and cryptocurrencies.
The risks of buying with cryptocurrencies
Investing and making a purchase in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin is risky:
Their value is highly volatile and City watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority has warned investors should be prepared to lose all their money.
Investing in cryptocurrencies is not a guaranteed way to make money.
You should also think carefully about making purchases with a cryptocurrency.
For example, Bitcoin has had wild price fluctuations in recent months and the price can change on an almost hourly basis.
The price of a Bitcoin was at $40,258 on January 9, according to Coindesk, but fell to $34,214 just three days later.
That’s a 15% drop.
These price swings are risky for a business as you could sell an item for a Bitcoin at one price and the value may drop soon after, leaving you with less money from a sale.
Similarly, the price of Bitcoin has soared by more than 21% since the start of this week so it can be hard for a shopper to get an accurate idea of the price of an item if its value changes on a daily basis.
While Rhona has learnt from learnt from her investments, others have been less fortunate.
One trader revealed he woke up to find he had lost nearly $500,000 on a cryptocurrency scam.
And another said he has claimed he convinced his aunt to invest £150,000 in Shiba Inu crypto – only for her lose tens of thousands of dollars in 24 hours.
Buying any cryptocurrency is incredibly risky.
With any investment, there is a risk that the value of your money could go down as well as up. That means you should only invest money you can afford to lose.
Crypto can be riskier than other investments because they are volatile and speculative – their price often rising and falls very quickly, sometimes seemingly for not reason.
