I mined a bunch of bitcoins in 2010. I was also experimenting with cryptography at the time and put the wallet in one of those files that can be decrypted into

I mined a bunch of bitcoins in 2010. I was also experimenting with cryptography at the time and put the wallet in one of those files that can be decrypted into to different drives using different passwords for the key. I subsequently put that file on a flash drive, and the key on a totally different flash drive. I lost the flash drive containing the key in about 2011, and I have what I think is an image of the first flash drive, but it's impossible to tell since I was in the habit of encrypting everything at the time. Anyways, the first time bitcoin got up to $100 I did the math and I had basically lost access to several hundred thousand dollars. At first I was a little distraught, but I honestly never believed bitcoin would be worth anything. I just mined them because I coincidentally had the right GPUs to mine them and because I had access to "free" electricity from my school. In effect, what happened was basically the 21st century version of "my mom threw out my Honus Wagner rookie card." If you knew that card would be valuable, you probably wouldn't have left it at your mom's house, or you probably would have sold it way before the market peaked. I know I would have sold my bitcoins wayyyy before the present day if I hadn't lost them. I'm still mildly annoyed with myself though. Edit: I also just remembered that the flash drive image is on an disk-spanning filesystem that broke when I upgraded Proxmox.