Key Takeaways
- X consumer @cprkrn recovered roughly 5 BTC value as much as $500K on Could 13, 2026, utilizing Anthropic’s Claude AI.
- Claude mounted a btcrecover bug to decrypt a legacy P2PKH pockets locked since 2014 or 2015.
- The restoration reveals Claude can deal with area of interest technical duties, elevating new hope for holders with outdated wallets.
Bitcoiner Recovers 5 BTC Value $500K From 11-12 months-Locked Pockets Utilizing Claude AI
The pockets, tied to handle 14VJySbsKraEJbtwk9ivnr1fXs6QuofuE6, had been inaccessible since roughly 2014 or 2015. Whereas in faculty, @cprkrn modified the pockets’s password whereas intoxicated and forgot the brand new one. He nonetheless had an outdated mnemonic, “lol420fu**thePOLICE!*:)”, however it now not opened the present pockets file.
He spent roughly $250 on skilled restoration makes an attempt over time and tried what he described as “like 7 trillion passwords” earlier than giving up on typical strategies. He waited till bitcoin crossed $100,000 to noticeably try restoration once more. By Could 13, 2026, the worth had pulled again to the $80,000 to $82,000 vary, however the funds have been nonetheless value pursuing.
His method was direct. He uploaded the total contents of his outdated faculty laptop, together with information, notebooks, and backups, into Claude. The AI positioned an older pockets file that predated the password change and recognized why the mnemonic now not labored on the present file.
The technical drawback got here right down to how the password was being processed. The btcrecover device, a extensively used open-source bitcoin pockets restoration utility, was concatenating a shared key with the password in an incorrect order. Claude recognized the bug, corrected the decryption logic, ran the method, and extracted the non-public keys in Pockets Import Format.
The recovered keys matched the goal handle. Claude’s output, which @cprkrn screenshotted and posted to X, learn: “ PRIVATE KEYS DECRYPTED! WE GOT IT!!! THE 5 BTC IS YOURS!” The pockets app screenshot that adopted confirmed an imported legacy P2PKH pockets with the total 5 BTC stability and pending outbound transactions.
“Simply mega dump your entire computer systems and notebooks into Claude,” @cprkrn wrote in a follow-up put up, summarizing the strategy for others in related conditions.
@cprkrn described the method as a last-ditch effort after months of digging by outdated information. In a separate put up he added, “Step 1. Obtain Claude. Step 2. Mega dump your entire info and pray.”
The X thread drew greater than 414,000 views and roughly 1,900 likes inside hours. Responses got here from throughout the crypto group, together with Nic Carter, Jesse Pollak, Laura Shin, and @bitcoinarchive. Some referred to as it a lifesaver. A smaller quantity raised questions concerning the safety implications of AI programs working with encrypted pockets information, although the restoration relied on the consumer already possessing the right, older password.
What Claude did was not a brute-force assault. It parsed information, understood the construction of legacy pockets software program, debugged an present device, and ran the corrected course of. The pockets format concerned was P2PKH, a legacy sort frequent in early bitcoin use earlier than 2015.
@cprkrn closed the thread by thanking Anthropic and its CEO, Dario Amodei, immediately. “Naming my child after you,” he wrote.
The pockets had final been publicly referenced by @cprkrn in August 2023, when he lamented the locked funds on the identical handle. The funds he obtained on April 1, 2015, totaling 5 BTC, sat untouched till they have been swept out the identical day the restoration was accomplished.
