The rescue of the 8,900 BTC would represent more than 700 million dollars today
The process could be executed without exposing sensitive data, according to the researcher.
Bitcoin’s trajectory is marked by numerous episodes, such as the story of Stone Man, a user who in August 2010 lost 8,900 BTC due to a failure that caused the loss of access to his funds. Almost 16 years later, a developer claims to have found a technical way that would allow those coins to be recovered, whose value is around USD 697 million.
Before explaining the new finding, let’s review the context a little. The incident was caused by a combination of technical factors. Stone Man bought about 6,000 BTC and saved it to his computer, which was running from a temporary drive. Also made a backup copy of the file where the keys are saved (wallet.dat) to a USB stick.
To test that everything was working, he sent 1 BTC to himself. But he shut down the system before the transaction was committed and then turned it back on using an old copy of the file. When the network finished processing the transaction, its balance showed only 1 BTC. The other 8,900 BTC had been sent to an addressbut since he was using an old copy, he lost the key to access that money, as CriptoNoticias explained at the time.
In this context, the developer identified on Reddit as “CompetitiveRough8180” proposed a possible recovery path after more than a year of investigation. Their proposal is based on a tool developed with CUDA (a technology that uses the graphics card to make calculations much faster), which exploits precisely the weaknesses of that low-entropy environment, significantly reducing the space needed to reconstruct the private key. Factors such as the hardware used, the system version and the time of execution would allow us to narrow down the possibilities.
The method also contemplates a more direct alternative: if Stone Man still has the original wallet.dat, it would be possible to analyze the transaction signature registered in the chain and, based on the ECDSA algorithm, reconstruct the private key in a reduced time. According to the developer, the entire process could be carried out locally, without exposing sensitive information, and its intention would be to return the funds to their original owner.
The main obstacle is finding Stone Man after so many years. It is unknown if it still has the necessary files or if it completely left the ecosystem. Meanwhile, the community is closely following the case, which could become a technical and symbolic milestone in the history of Bitcoin if the recovery comes to fruition.