Billion-Dollar Whale Wallets Locked Out

The latest data from Arkham Intelligence reveals that several major owners in the cryptocurrency world have lost access to digital assets valued at approximately $1.24 billion. In total, these cryptocurrency whales possess up to $3.5 billion, including TRON founder Justin Sun who holds $1.1 billion and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who is also on the list. However, not all are able to access their funds smoothly.

Specifically, Rain Lõhmus, founder of LHV Bank, and Stefan Thomas, former CTO of Ripple, are facing difficulties accessing their cryptocurrency wallets, which together are valued at $1.24 billion. In the realm of cryptocurrency, this means they are unable to recover those funds.

Our team created a dashboard of 10 of the richest individuals with crypto holdings tagged on Arkham.

The top 5:

Justin Sun ($1.1B)
Rain Lohmus ($793M – inaccessible)
Vitalik Buterin ($782M)
Stefan Thomas ($452M – inaccessible)
James Fickel ($446M) pic.twitter.com/efOTys9PMo

— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) April 15, 2024

Lõhmus, who is believed to have lost his private key, is losing access to about $793 million. He had accumulated 250,000 ETH from an initial coin offering in 2014 and is currently seeking assistance from experts to recover his assets, even offering to share a portion with those who help him retrieve it.

As for Thomas, after receiving 7,002 BTC in 2011 as part of a payment for a project creating educational content on cryptocurrency, he lost access to these funds due to forgetting the password to his IronKey hard drive, where the private key was stored. Although there was a proposal from a security company to break into this hard drive, Thomas declined and instead opted to work with a cybersecurity company and an independent researcher, yet the issue remains unresolved.

These incidents not only cause significant financial losses but also raise concerns about the security and safety of storing digital assets.