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Imagine having $1 billion and not being able to access it.

That’s the story of Rain Lõhmus, founder of Estonia-based LHV Bank.

“It’s no secret that I have a wallet with 250,000 Ethereum units, anyone can calculate for themselves what it’s worth,” Lõhmus told Estonian Public Broadcasting, or ERR, in 2023, confirming that he had purchased the asset in its early days but lost access to his wallet.

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As the story made headlines, Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) Product Director Conor Grogan was able to easily trace Lõhmus’ wallet, which was among the top five largest Ethereum wallets at the time.

Lõhmus had purchased 250,000 ETH for $75,000 during the 2014 Ethereum presale and had not moved any of the coins since. The stash is now worth over $1.1 billion, as ETH trades at $4,400, edging towards its record high of $4,900.

Lõhmus told ERR in 2023 that he was not stressing too much about it, but added that he could use help recovering the wallet. One idea he toyed with was the prospect of using advanced artificial intelligence to dig into his memories.

“My own best plan is to build Rain Lõhmus as an AI and see if he can get his memories back,” he said.

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Lõhmus said that he believed the lack of recovery options for most self-custody wallets was a weakness of blockchain technology.

“It’s very common for me to lose passwords. I went to renew my ID card passwords today; if it were crypto, I’d be in a big crisis again, but luckily the police and border police work,” he told ERR.

While the amount of assets lost is likely more than most, Lõhmus’ story is commonplace in the cryptocurrency industry. Most recently, a British man has dominated headlines for his efforts to recover a hard drive with 8,000 BTC that he claims his ex-partner accidentally discarded in 2013.

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Around 3.7 million BTC or about 20% of the supply are estimated to be lost forever due to human error, hardware issues, negligence or death, according to a 2020 report from cryptocurrency security outlet Chainalysis. Meanwhile, according to Grogan, at least 913,000 ETH has also been lost forever.