Durant’s Crypto Dilemma
Suppose that you had invested at a young age in a revolutionary asset, seen its value grow many times over, and could not take a penny of it. That is allegedly the truth with NBA superstar Kevin Durant, who, as CNBC reports, is on the verge of joining the Houston Rockets and dealing with a frozen Coinbase account holding Bitcoin bought as far back as 2016.
The start of Durant in Bitcoin came when he was playing with the Golden State Warriors, as he became interested after a dinner with the U.S. Olympic team when teammates discussed digital assets. His agent, Rich Kleiman, verified that the account is still inaccessible even after a number of recovery attempts. Remarkably, all the initial Bitcoin was not sold since the first investment.
From its perspective, at the time when Durant made a purchase, Bitcoin was worth approximately 650 dollars. The investment has increased almost 180 times today at a price of approximately 117,000. Even a modest 10,000 investment of 2016 would be worth roughly 1.8 million now, an incredible lost luck, and walled in by a digital fence.
The Parallels: James Howells and the Lost Hard Drive.
The story of Durant can actually be compared to another notorious crypto saga: the story of James Howells, a UK-based IT employee who threw away a hard drive in 2013. According to him, that ambition contains approximately 8,000 Bitcoin, which is a fortune today valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Howells has requested Newport Council to allow him to dig the landfill for over a decade because he is sure that the drive is buried there. Every attempt has been dismissed, with the latest defeat being in a court decision. As the landfill is now planned to be closed down and reused as a solar plant, Howells is said to be considering the unthinkable, the outright acquisition of the whole site, so he can go on with his desperate hunt.
Digital Responsibility Lessons.
The locked account by Durant, as well as the lost hard drive by Howells, highlight the dangers of being an early crypto adopter. Cryptocurrency requires total individual accountability (as opposed to traditional finance, where recovery mechanisms are offered by the banks). An unremembered password or a lost device will wipe away access to millions, even billions, of dollars.
The case of Durant emphasizes the need to have a secure and easily handled account management system and the issues associated with older platforms such as Coinbase.
The saga by Howells presents the overwhelming effects of human mistakes in the event of a lack of safeguards.
My Take
They are not a few sensational anecdotes, but warnings to all investors of digital assets. As the story of Durant, it should not only be about timing the market when it comes to being rich in crypto, but also about securing access. In the meantime, the way Howells constantly pursues a buried fortune highlights the unforgivable nature of the decentralized system.
The takeaway? Cryptocurrency also requires stringent security, which can be backed up, maintained in hardware wallets, and controlled access should be handled with great care, as it provides opportunities unseen before. As long as recovery systems are not developed, the burden lies on the individual, and the costs are titanic.
