The wallet was created with Bitcoin Core in 2013 and encrypted without deliberate intention of the owner.
In May 2025 the reward was 0.23 BTC; today it amounts to 0.5 BTC (~USD 31,000).
Marcelo R. Bianchi, Argentine specialist in cryptocurrency wallet recovery, known in networks as @marcebit, published an open call in which he offers 0.5 BTC – equivalent to approximately USD 31,000 – to whoever manages to decipher the password of a Bitcoin Core wallet created in 2013.
According to Bianchi, the owner of the funds he encrypted the wallet without paying attention to the process and, when trying to withdraw the accumulated funds, I didn’t remember setting a password.
According to Bianchi’s publication, the version of Bitcoin Core in force in 2013 suggested using a phrase of ten or more random characters, or eight or more words, at the time of encryption, although this requirement was not mandatory. The specialist indicates that the owner you think the password might contain the words “wallet” or “wallet”which limits the search space for those attempting a brute force recovery.
It is not the first time that Bianchi has made this call public. In May 2025, he launched a similar call with a reward of 0.23 BTC—close to $20,000 at the time—with no results. In the current call, according to its publication, increased reward to 0.5 BTC and warned that those who collaborate in a relevant way, even if they do not solve the case, could receive smaller donations.
To facilitate recovery attempts, Bianchi published the Hashcat hash corresponding to the encrypted wallet, as well as a publicly accessible web tool hosted on GitHub to perform manual password tests without needing to download additional software.
AI as a bitcoin recovery tool
In a tweet after the call, Bianchi mentioned two alternatives for anyone who wants to approach the case with greater computational capacity: use Claude Mythos or Fable 5, Anthropic’s artificial intelligence model launched this June 9, or rent a cluster of GPUs through the Vast AI platform. However, the suggestion faces a specific limitation: as reported by CriptoNoticias, Fable 5 blocks queries in cybersecurity, biology, chemistry and model distillationredirecting those answers to Claude Opus 4.8. Recovering passwords encrypted with Hashcat falls within the categories that the model restricts by default.
The case exposes a recurring problem in the Bitcoin ecosystem: loss of access to funds due to errors in key or password management in the first years of adoption. According to estimates by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, about 20% of the circulating supply of bitcoin is considered permanently inaccessible for reasons of this type. Bianchi points out that he has carried out similar work since at least 2018, when he published an analogous case in the Bitcoin Argentina Facebook group.
After more than a year without resolving the case and with the reward doubled, the call remains open; The AI path that Bianchi himself suggested collides, for now, with the restrictions that the most advanced model available to the public imposes in the area of cybersecurity.