I think they have a check against that. 
A Bitcoin “wallet” does not actually contain the “coins”. It simply gives you access to them. A copy of a Bitcoin wallet would simply give you access to the same stash. Like a second key to a safe deposit box.
Well, we probably have to assume the first bunch of blocks were claimed by whoever came up with the scheme before they went public with it. And the supply is limited at 21 million bitcoins, so at the rate of 50 an hour per miner it would only take 500 people to mine out the entire supply in 35 days. We know that couldn’t have been the case because an exponentially higher number of people are still working at it today, with computers that have far more computing power than anything that existed in 2009.
Why in the world would he not have had a backup for something like that?
Because they were pretty much worthless at the time. Nobody dreamed they would hit $1000 apiece.
Fuck. I have an old computer in storage that has like 0.5 bitcoins on it. If they are worth $1000 bucks or even several hundred, that’s not chump change.
The landfill site is in Newport, which must now make it one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in Wales. 
Wow, according to my email history, I have over 0.9 bitcoins on that old hunk of junk. I think I’ll go dig it out of storage and make a sale 
I hope this doesn’t become the currency of the future, cause I sure don’t understand it.
Should be easy to find, right? I mean, 7.5 million of anything is going to take up a LOT of space.
[sub]Huh? Oh, nevermind[/sub]
Embarassingly, I have half a bitcoin in a disk image file right here on my laptop. A disk image file to which I have forgotten the password. :smack:
Do you mean the login password, or is the image encrypted?
It’s encrypted. :: sob ::
You’re not the only one. And in fact a bit coin doesn’t sound like much… a fraction of a penny if that? I have no idea.
Actually, one bitcoin is currently worth around nine hundred dollars. I just checked.
Do you have any passwords you habitually use? Try those.
The word “bit” refers not to the size but to the fact that it’s digital.
I actually bought 50 bitcoins when they dropped to around $5 and was thrilled when I sold them for $22…still had .43 that I had mined laying around and sold them when it was $1146.
But, as others have said, they get exponentially harder to mine over time.
Yeah, I know that, but I still don’t buy that there was ever a point where a few hundred dudebro’s on 2009 (or earlier) model Dell laptops could have cleaned out the entire supply of bitcoins in a matter of weeks.