Conor Grogan, director of the great American cryptoexchange Coinbase, recently recovered 17,000 ethereum classic (ETC) from an investor who lost all his savings in a hack. The recovered crypto is equivalent to an amount of $322,000. In a long series Twitter messages Grogan explains the story:
I found $322k for a stranger who previously lost their life savings in a hack pic.twitter.com/K1gUqEkAPh
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) July 5, 2023
Lost crypto due to ethereum hard fork
The Coinbase director came across a special wallet with a capital of forgotten Ethereum Classic. The reason behind the forgotten altcoins is one, according to Grogan hard fork which took place in 2016. At the time, the Ethereum split blockchain into regular Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).
When the fork took place, investors were paid their original Ethereum in both ETH and ETC. As an example: suppose an investor had 1,000 ETH at the time, then after the fork the investor had both 1,000 ETH and 1,000 ETC. This was received in the form of an airdrop.
However, that process passed some by. Many only knew about the existence of their ethereum and had no idea that they also own the same amount of ethereum classic. At the time that was not a large amount of money, but in the meantime the value of both coins has risen sharply.
Still reunited after a dead end
Grogan already has twenty wallets found each with over $250,000 in untouched ETC. To reunite the owners with their unacknowledged assets, he set out to investigate. Because of the dated addresses with ancient ETC, it was difficult for him to dig, but he succeeded for a few. At first it seemed as if the trail at the wallet came to a dead end, until he came across a special coin, EOSDAC.
If you had this coin, you received Ethereum in airdrops. However, the recipients had to register their ETH address first. By comparing airdrops regarding Ethereum and the EOSDAC coins Grogan stumbled upon the rightful owner. The owner was robbed of his Ethereum in 2019 and was in a legal battle with Bitfinex for a long time. The fact that he still had $323,000 worth of Ethereum Classic in a wallet was a surprise to the man. very welcome discovery.
