Not only are banks good at protecting your money, in the United States, you can choose bank accounts that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or the National Credit Union Administration so if something happens to the bank, your money is still safe. This is exactly as scary as it sounds, which is one of the main reasons people put their money in banks. Of course, there’s a catch… Now, you’re also in charge of guarding the treasury.

If you’ve set up a digital wallet, bought some crypto, and collected a few NFTs and you’re starting to trade across a range of marketplaces and exchanges, you are starting to experience the exceptional financial freedom the world of DeFi has to offer. It would be a pity if you couldn’t access your fortune, hence the need to secure your wallets and all related details such as passwords and private keys.The moment comes when you realize there’s real money in your crypto wallet and you start wondering about hackers and ransomware and all kinds of bad stuff. Make Sure you Secure Your Fortuneĭo you have cryptocurrency that you don’t value and about which you tend to forget? You, too, could be sitting on a fortune in the future if your cryptocurrencies appreciate in value. This number has been increasing steadily over the recent past, and it is expected to keep growing.

Wallet Recovery Services, one such company, receives more than 70 daily requests, similar to Stephen’s case. Several companies have emerged, offering affected people solutions to recover their passwords. Many more investors are sitting on anywhere between thousands and millions for similar reasons. One couple in Washington, D.C., Yuri and Art Williams, is sitting on $5.8-million worth of Ethereum because they don’t have a JSOL file.

The New York Times reports that about $140-billion worth of bitcoin is inaccessible as a result. About 20% of bitcoin holders can’t access their wallets because they lost their passwords and other technical mistakes. Stephen isn’t the only one sitting on an inaccessible fortune because of a lost password and other technical mistakes.

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