Woman who bought Bitcoin for just $80 was locked out of $175,000 fortune after forgetting about it and making ‘awful’ mistake

Published 12:01 28 Oct 2024 GMT

An Illinois woman was locked out of her Bitcoin wallet for around 10 years while she could see its value rising

A woman has opened up about feeling 'hopeless' after getting locked out of her Bitcoin wallet for around 10 years.

We've all been there - forgetting our login details and not having written them down anywhere properly. Now imagine the panic you feel after being logged out of your emails knowing you have an urgent message you need to get back to on a deadline, but times that by a gazillion and that's probably how Rhonda Kampert felt after she bought six Bitcoins back in 2013 and then tried to log back in to her account after realizing her crypto's value had drastically increased.

After listening to a radio talk show chat about the cryptocurrency, Kampert from Illinois spent a total of around $480 on six Bitcoins.

Kampert spent a bit of the money but ultimately ended up forgetting about it for a while, before an announcement in 2017 about Bitcoin's value rising to $20,000 prompted her to go and check her account.

However, there was one issue - she couldn't log in.

Kampert told the BBC she had printed out her login details to her Bitcoin wallet but realized the printout was missing 'some digits on the end of [her] wallet identifier'.

So while she had her password, she essentially didn't have her username.

Despite trying 'everything for months,' the mistake was all too 'awful' and 'hopeless' for Kampert to grapple with so she ended up 'kind of' giving up.

But when Bitcoin's value continued to soar, Kampert decided she wasn't messing around any longer.

Enlisting the help of crypto treasure hunters Chris and Charlie Brooks, Kampert 'handed over all the details [she] could remember' and Chris was thankfully able to open the wallet for her.

And waiting inside? Kampert's three-and-a-half Bitcoin worth around $175,000.

Kampert paid the Brooks duo 20 percent of the wallet and then used some of the rest of the coins to help her daughter through college.

The other coins left over? Well, Kampert hopes they'll go up even further in value and so she's hanging onto them tightly, storing them in a USB-style storage device and making sure she's memorized her details perfectly this time.

And it's not just Kampert who's had a lucky save when it comes to accessing her Bitcoin wallet too with one man contacting electrical engineer Joe Grand - who goes by 'Kingpin' online - after getting locked out of his wallet for a staggering 11 years.

Thankfully, like Kampert, the Bitcoin owner was able to crack back into his stash and it was certainly worth it too, with $3 million of the crypto lying waiting inside.