Estonian banker lost access to ETH worth $1 billion, purchased in 2015

Estonian entrepreneur Rain Lohmus acquired Ethereum cryptocurrency for $75,000 during the initial coin offering (ICO) in 2015 at a price of $0.30, but subsequently lost access to the wallet.

Today, with the price of Ether exceeding $4,600, the value of his purchase exceeds $1.16 billion.

Lohmus is a co-founder of Estonian LHV Bank, one of the largest private banks in the country. He showed interest in cryptocurrencies as early as the 2010s and spoke about his purchase of ETH in public appearances.

In 2023, he admitted that he did not save the private key to the wallet and "cannot recover access" to the funds.

According to him, at that time hardware wallets were not yet widely used, and secure storage of cryptocurrency was hardly considered.

The wallet containing 250,000 ETH has remained inactive since the ICO.