The Archive

№ 001 · CLOSED · opened 2010 · Laszlo Hanyecz

The Pizza

Two pizzas. Ten thousand bitcoin. The man says he'd do it again.

№ 002 · CLOSED · opened 2013 · James Howells

The Landfill

One hard drive, one dump in Wales, and twelve years of trying to dig.

№ 003 · UNRESOLVED · opened 2011 · Stefan Thomas

Two Guesses

A password, an IronKey, ten attempts. Eight are gone.

№ 004 · RECOVERED · opened 2026 · Claude AI · Joe Grand

The Machine Remembers

Brute force gave up at 3.5 trillion passwords. The AI just read his files.

№ 005 · RECOVERED · opened 2009 · Kristoffer Koch

The One Who Forgot

He bought it for a thesis, forgot it existed, and won.

№ 006 · SETTLING · opened 2014 · Mt. Gox

The Exchange

The exchange that held most of Bitcoin, until it held none of it.

№ 007 · CLOSED · opened 2018 · QuadrigaCX · Gerald Cotten

The Only Keyholder

The keys died with him — then investigators found the vault was already empty.

№ 008 · UNRESOLVED · opened 2009 · Chainalysis estimate

The Missing Fifth

Roughly one bitcoin in five may already be unreachable. Here's where that number comes from.

№ 009 · CLOSED · opened 1976 · Ronald Wayne

The Third Man

He co-founded Apple, drew the first logo, and sold his tenth of it for the price of a used car.

№ 010 · CLOSED · opened 2001 · Enron Corporation

The Match

They were paid in the company, they invested in the company, and the company was a fiction.

№ 011 · CLOSED · opened 2009 · Nortel Networks

The Blue Chip

It was a third of Canada's stock market and a fixture of every cautious portfolio. Then it wasn't there.

№ 012 · CLOSED · opened 2000 · Pets.com

The Sock Puppet

It had a Super Bowl ad, a sock-puppet mascot, and a plan to lose money on every bag of dog food it shipped.