An Estonian banker has confirmed himself to be the owner of an Ethereum address with over 250,000 ETH worth nearly half a billion dollars – but says he lost the keys.
In a new interview with Vikerraadio in Estonia, LHV Bank founder Rain Lõhmus was asked about something he said years ago about getting into Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum in their early days but then losing access to his wallets.
Asked if he ever found his keys, Lõhmus says,
“No, and I haven’t made much effort either. It’s no secret that I have a wallet with 250,000 Ethereum units, anyone can calculate for themselves what it’s worth.
Interviewer: That’s hundreds of millions?
Yeah, and I can’t solve this alone; if someone thinks they can, I’ll take all offers. My own best plan is to build Rain Lõhmus as an AI and see if he can get his memories back.
Lõhmus said the dangers of handling your own keys and seed phrases was one of the weak points of crypto.
“I absolutely agree that this is a very weak point of this system, which makes you think that this perfect decentralization has other risks that you don’t usually think about. But 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.”
Based on the information shared by Lõhmus, on-chain analysts have identified his Ethereum address, and according to Etherscan, it is the fourth biggest holding of ETH excluding exchanges, the Ethereum Foundation, and the Wrapped Ether (wETH) address.
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Featured Image: Shutterstock/Tithi Luadthong/Natalia Siiatovskaia