A Viral Revelation in China: Father’s 4000 Bitcoins from Years Ago Now Worth Over 2 Billion RMB

A message has gone viral on Chinese social media, particularly on Twitter, where a man reportedly found 4000 bitcoins his father had purchased in 2015 on an old Sony computer. These bitcoins are now valued at over 2 billion RMB. However, rumors suggesting that the wallet was cracked to recover these bitcoins seem to be fictional.

On Monday, May 27th, well-known Chinese influencer Morris tweeted: "He said his dad's 4000 bitcoins, bought in 2015, have been found."

The news quickly gained traction, attracting 1.2 million views.

According to Taiwanese media, a Chinese citizen recently told friends that his father had bought bitcoins in 2015 but lost them. Unexpectedly, they were found on the hard drive of an old computer. The hard drive was successfully cracked, and the bitcoins were recovered.

Screenshots shared by the citizen show a bitcoin balance of over 4000, with a staggering value. Calculated at the exchange rate with the US dollar on that day, the total value reached 2 billion RMB.

CNMO found that the highest bitcoin price in 2015 was $495, approximately 3586 RMB, and the lowest was $171, approximately 1238 RMB.

Thus, his father's 2015 purchase of 4000 bitcoins would have cost between 4.95 million and 14.34 million RMB. Calculating from the lowest purchase cost, these bitcoins’ value increased 143 times over nine years; from the highest cost, the value increased 57 times.

Chinese cryptocurrency media verified that the wallet address starting with 18eY9, mentioned in the chat records, indeed holds 4000 bitcoins. These bitcoins were transferred to the 18eY9 address on June 28, 2011, and have remained inactive since. This address currently ranks 410th on the bitcoin rich list.

The investigation revealed that the wallet.dat file associated with the 18eY9 address was listed for sale on the allprivatekeys website. In April 2020, a user on the well-known Bitcoin forum bitcointalk warned against purchasing wallet.dat files with lost passwords, including the one associated with the 18eY9 address.

Furthermore, 176 wallet files containing a total of 44,791 bitcoins are listed for sale on the same website.