The supporters of bitcoins and some cryptocurrencies in general, they laugh a lot, heartily. Others, however, may cry over spilled milk. Among the hottest news today is the one that tells us how the American warhead wired have destroyed in 2013 a private key of a wallet containing 13.3 Bitcoins.
At the time it looked like a game, the potential loss was $1500, all in all an acceptable albeit expensive experience, but today those 13 bitcoins would be worth around $760,000although the figure may have changed slightly at the time of writing due to cryptocurrency volatility.
It was not the act of a madman, but a demonstrative, journalistic gesture, made to highlight what many were thinking at the time: Bitcoin was a joke, a game, it had no value. Often speaking with friends and colleagues, we repeat that “if we had mined Bitcoin in 2010, we would be rich today”. Yes, but we didn’t and since then a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, and Bitcoin’s value has skyrocketed along with its constant spread.
Wired, and more specifically the author of the article Robert McMillan, today in the Wall Street Journal, defined Bitcoin “an abstraction“, and decided to destroy the private key of the wallet leaving the 13.3 Bitcoins”locked in a digital vault for eternityor at least until someone passes the SHA-256 encryption that protects it,” McMillan wrote, later posting the public key (1BYsmmrrfTQ1qm7KcrSLxnX7SaKQREPYFP – just to know).
With hindsight we don’t know if McMillan repented, but in Wired the subject returned in 2018 with an article in which it was explained that in any case the newspaper, ethically he shouldn’t have held bitcoinotherwise, she would have had to state this in every article and would have appeared to readers “unbiased” when speaking on the subject.
“Some staff members argued that Bitcoin should have been donated or set aside for future charitable purposes. Others have suggested destroy them constantly. What has been established is that the money shouldn’t have stayed there, as it could affect how the magazine deals with cryptocurrencies,” it reads. we just destroyed the keyknowing full well that in the end it could have been worth six or seven figures,” said Wired editor Michael Calore. Unfortunately, no one recorded the private key and hard drive the Bitcoins were mined from. was also destroyed.
“It is not surprising to find posts from the past with this opinion on Bitcoin. The real people who deserve criticism are the ones who still hold those opinions today,” one user said on Reddit commenting on the Wired article.
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