🪙 An Estonian banker has lost access to $1 billion worth of ETH purchased in 2015.
Estonian entrepreneur Rain Lõhmus bought $75,000 worth of Ethereum during its ICO in 2015, when the price was just $0.30 per coin. Today, with ETH trading above $4,600, that purchase would be worth over $1.16 billion.
Lõhmus is the co-founder of LHV Bank, one of Estonia’s largest private banks. He showed interest in cryptocurrencies as early as the early 2010s and publicly spoke about his ETH purchase.
In 2023, he admitted that he had lost the private key to his wallet and “cannot regain access” to the funds. At the time, hardware wallets were not widely used, and secure crypto storage wasn’t a priority for most buyers.
The wallet, holding 250,000 ETH, has remained inactive since the ICO.