Dogecoin Founder Reacts to Would-Be Bitcoin Millionaire Giving up on His Lost 8,000 BTC Wallet

Billy Markus is widely known on social media as Shibetoshi Nakamoto, and he is one of the two founders of Dogecoin.

In a recent X post, Markus published an image with a headline about a hefty amount of Bitcoin lost by an individual 12 years ago. These days, this crypto stash would have made this person a multimillionaire with an almost $800,000,000 fortune in crypto.

DOGE creator comments on big Bitcoin wallet loss

The image posted by Shibetoshi Nakamoto shows a big garbage dump and an image of a person sitting at his desktop computer. The news title in the image states that after 12 years, the person who lost $742 million worth of Bitcoin held on a hard drive “finally stops searching.”

One of the commentators asked the Grok AI chatbot for clarification of this information. Grok responded that the person in the image was James Howells, who lost a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins back in 2013. However, the AI pointed out that, while the loss indeed took place, media reports about Howells stopping searching for his lost fortune are rather mixed.

Today, 8,000 Bitcoins would be valued at $713,240,560.

Markus commented on this news, tweeting: “I know the feeling.” This suggests that perhaps the creator of Dogecoin regrets not stacking BTC in its early days, when he had a chance. Last year, Markus revealed his current Bitcoin holdings, and they constitute only around 0.003 BTC, which is the equivalent to around $267,48 in fiat.

Tim Draper reveals his Bitcoin history

Famous tech investor Tim Draper, one of the first to invest in Skype, Tesla and SpaceX, has shared on X when he first bought Bitcoin and why he did it. Per the tweet, Draper first acquired Bitcoin at $4 per coin — more than 10 years ago. However, he did it not because he understood blockchain or because he “saw the future.”

The reason for buying Bitcoin was that somebody had explained to Draper “how digital currency could change the world for people who didn’t have traditional banking access.” He bought $250,000 worth of BTC after investing the same amount into CoinLab. Draper then lost his first BTC during the infamous Mt. Gox hack, but he bought more.