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Bitcoin Holder Says Claude AI Helped Recover Wallet Locked for More Than 11 Years

A Bitcoin holder says a years-long wallet recovery ended with about 5 BTC moved on May 13 after 3.5 trillion password attempts using btcrecover and rented hardware, though Claude’s exact role remains unverified.

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Fact Check
The core claim is strongly supported across multiple independent sources. The news.bitcoin.com article and coinpost.jp both provide consistent, technically specific details: Claude analyzed uploaded old computer files, discovered a pre-password-change wallet backup, identified a previously unreported bug in the btcrecover tool (incorrect concatenation order of sharedKey and password), and generated corrected decryption logic to extract private keys. The recovered Bitcoin address (14VJySbsKraEJbtwk9ivnr1fXs6QuofuE6) is cited and verifiable on-chain. The original X post by @cprkrn exists and references the same address. The ¥62 million figure from coinpost.jp is consistent with ~5 BTC at approximately $420K USD. Multiple secondary sources and the @grok summary on X all corroborate the same technical narrative. The small residual uncertainty (7%) reflects that the primary source is a self-reported social media claim and the wallet address balance has not been independently verified in this run, though the on-chain address is publicly cited.
Summary

A Bitcoin holder said Anthropic’s Claude helped recover access to a wallet containing about 5 BTC, worth roughly $320,000, after more than 11 years. The latest details say the recovery effort searched more than 1GB of data, tested about 3.5 trillion password combinations over eight weeks using btcrecover on rented computing hardware, and resulted in five transactions on May 13. Earlier reporting and expert commentary indicated Claude appears to have assisted with file analysis and the recovery workflow rather than breaking Bitcoin’s cryptographic protections. The wallet is also described as a Blockchain.com wallet in newer reporting, but the full claim still lacks independent technical confirmation or a statement from Anthropic.

Terms & Concepts
  • btcrecover: An open-source cryptocurrency wallet recovery tool used to test likely password combinations and recover access.
  • Blockchain.com wallet: A digital asset wallet service provided by Blockchain.com for storing and accessing cryptocurrencies.
  • cryptographic protections: The underlying security methods used in Bitcoin and wallet software to protect funds and authorize access.