⚠️ This story makes no sense at all ⚠️
A British woman accidentally threw away a USB drive containing around £3 million in Bitcoin, which belonged to her partner Tom, who had bought the crypto assets back in 2013. She confused the device with old school materials and discarded it without knowing its value. The couple tried to recover the USB drive from the trash but failed, and the loss had a major emotional and financial impact.
⚙️ • Why❓
First of all, the supposed USB drive would have to be a hardware wallet containing Bitcoin. However, a hardware wallet (or cold wallet) does not actually store any crypto assets directly. Hard wallets only store the cryptographic keys that allow you to access and move your assets.
That’s why a hard wallet is considered safer than an exchange. However, self-custody also comes with high risks. For example, if you lose your seed phrase (a set of 12 or 24 words), or leave it exposed on a computer, saved in a notepad, a screenshot, or written down on paper and then lose the paper, anyone could access and move your assets from any computer or device.
In other words, if the couple actually owned crypto assets, they wouldn’t need the “USB drive” to move the funds again. They would only need the seed phrase. Finally, the article was published by a website that’s filled with ads, and analyses have shown that the image of the supposed couple is 99% likely to have been AI-generated.
⚖️ • Conclusion:
This case brings us back to the story of a British engineer who, in 2013, threw away an HD containing the key to a wallet with 8,000 Bitcoins, bought in 2009, and now, in 2025 are valued at around $800 million. In the HD case, he stored the private key in a wallet.dat file, common at the time before the seed phrase (BIP-39) became popular, and obviously without a backup. This couple's case doesn’t even specify what was thrown away and leaves room for interpretations and increasing engagement.
