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Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer?

139 points by lostethpresale 9y ago

On the 8th of June 2014 I purchased 1970 Ethereum from the Ethereum Foundation Presale and received an email to my Gmail account containing my wallet. As CS student overwhelmed by his thesis I managed to completely ignore the backup instructions and instead left my wallet in my Gmail account. At least the thesis was good :) You can probably tell where this story is going. I promptly forgot about this whole event and in 2015 while cleaning out my email account I deleted most of my recently received emails and incidently taking out the wallet with it. Again I'd like to state that the loss of the wallet is completely my fault. Recently, the price of Ethereum has skyrocketed to over 200 USD per coin, meaning the wallet is now worth ~400k USD. This means that I can now offer a nice bounty on its retrieval! I'm publicly posting here in the hope that someone from the Gmail team can check and see if they have a copy of the email saved in Google's backups. Should its contents be retrieveable, I'd like to offer 20% of the wallet's contents (~80k USD) as a finder's fee, alternatively if you choose to forfit this, I'll donate 50% (~200k USD) to a charity of your choice. I realise that this is a last ditch attempt and that wallet is most likely lost forever. This brings us to the morale of the story - "make sure you have backups and they work!" The 2nd morale is - "no matter how badly you mess up, at least you aren't the guy that deleted an email worth 400k!" If you work on Gmail and you can help or know someone that will lead to its retrevial please contact me [at] lostethpresale@doge.st Best wishes! If you want, you can encrypt your mail to me with my public key: (text too long for HN) https://pastebin.com/raw/zgZpSKJd

lostethpresale 9y ago
If somebody could edit the spacing that would be great as well.
pat_space 9y ago
Good luck, I will be following this story closely.
nsxwolf 9y ago
You are in awfully good spirits for someone who may have lost $400k. In 1999 I passed on an opportunity to buy a working Apple I for $10k.
- lostethpresale 9y ago
  Although this fail is a bit expensive, I'm optimistic that more opportunities will come.
  - charlesdm 9y ago
    They sure will. Don't worry. One of mine: a few years ago I almost ported over (it was 99% done) an interesting piece of technology to mobile. Something fairly technical and low level. In the end I thought it wasn't possible to get it working, so called it a day. Five months later some other guy ported the exact same thing, and made a million euros. It was something that basically marketed itself; something you upload to the App Store and it would've sold. So that money would've been mine. And then I revisited my old code, and noticed I _could_ have gotten it working. It happens. Ah well. I still made plenty from other apps.
  - max_ 9y ago
    Yup, I bought a ETH & $6 late last year during the spam attacks and panick sold at $15-$12 Early this year. Now the pice is $200+ per ETH Now I am looking foward to RChain https://www.rchain.coop https://www.rchain.coop
    - DennisP 9y ago
      Interesting, I thought RChain was dead after they split from Synereo and I didn't see any news on the rchain subreddit. Will definitely keep an eye on this.
      - Aldvar 9y ago
        Would probably skip RChain if I were you, founder is a flake. Synereo in the meantime are on the cusp of releasing an actual working product soon, which would make AMPs a much more viable investment. Just my two cents.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
zitterbewegung 9y ago
Have you tried gmail support already? If you haven't then I would say you should try that first. Going on Social media usually is best after you have exhausted this option. Also, offering compensation to Google employees is probably frowned upon by Google.
- apetresc 9y ago
  Does Gmail have "support"? I tried Googling it and every road just seems to lead to a generic knowledge base page.
  - pawadu 9y ago
    gmail support = AI security related support = same AI, just slower response escalate to manager = talk to a different AI write a salty article, get it published on NY Times = talk to a human
atonse 9y ago
My wife always says that growing up, all her dad and brother used to talk about at the dinner table was "I should've invested in that stock when it was cheaper!" or "I should've sold when it was higher!" I feel that way about Bitcoin/others. It's always regret all the way. It's like buying a stock. I had a chance to mine lots of bitcoins in 2011... never got around to doing it. It's now the same as "I should've bought Apple stock the day before the rumored iPhone debuted, like I told friends to do"
- redeemedfadi 9y ago
  You always remember the successful investments you didn't make, but not the unsuccessful ones. Think of all the money you didn't lose making bad investments.
  - atonse 9y ago
    Agreed! I have a couple of those as well, but you're right, you tend to forget them.
  - ShannonAlther 9y ago
    If you're a little faster than average on the draw and have money to burn, the profits from the successful investments outweigh the money lost on the unsuccessful ones. E.g. if you have $50k, and spend it on five companies, only one of those companies has to be Apple for you to make way more than you started with...
    - OJFord 9y ago
      Apple isn't a '1 in 5' company, though.
- hevisko 9y ago
  My grand dad quoted a "mentor" about stocks: It's a sorry game! - You're sorry you buy - You are sorry you did NOT buy - You're sorry you sold - You are sorry you did NOT sell it!
malchow 9y ago
You may wish to state that you can (or can't) prove that the Gmail account is yours, and that you opened the Gmail account personally. I believe Gmail provides a discrete set of one-time keys upon account generation.
- apetresc 9y ago
  I don't think you read the post. He has access to his account, he's looking for an e-mail he deleted 2 years ago.
  - droithomme 9y ago
    > He has access to his account Well, he has access to an account in which he believes an email with valuable information was once deleted by the owner of the account. Whether this is one person or two is not determined.
    - lostethpresale 9y ago
      I'm sure my login history + 2 factor + geographical location + personal information inside would be enough to establish me as the owner.
      - droithomme 9y ago
        Hopefully there is more of a solid track record than your brand new account here that you created exactly 5 minutes before posting this thread. The advice in this thread is good. It's certainly true many Google employees read this forum and so this is a convenient place to find them for private work without creating a electronic record trail on Google's own servers. However, doing an end run around Google in order to find an employee there willing to violate their employment agreement and possibly commit crimes because of an offer of large financial compensation is not an appropriate use of this discussion forum.
- lostethpresale 9y ago
  I own (and still own) my gmail account.
goodroot 9y ago
That's hilarious! I did something similar. No idea where that massive chunk of ETH went to. C'est la vie!
- bhouston 9y ago
  Should not ETH have a record of your purchase email and amount? It likely is recoverable in some fashion.
  - Grangar 9y ago
    The way I understand it is that the purchase email contained the keys to the wallet. It'd be extremely irresponsible if they kept that.
maxsavin 9y ago
You might want to ask a lawyer to subpoena them. Time is ticking - I believe backups are held for only a bit of time.
- siegel 9y ago
  This is probably the only real hope. Problem is you cannot subpoena Google without first filing a lawsuit. So, you'd need to come up with a legal basis to file a lawsuit in which this document would be relevant. And then you'd have to serve a subpoena on Google. You could potential have a lawyer serve a document preservation request on Google before a lawsuit is filed. But I'm not optimistic they'd listen to it.
bobsgame 9y ago
Do you have any old phones that you synced with POP3? Windows Mobile? Outlook or Windows Mail? Ever connect it to Thunderbird? (Be careful with anything IMAP, check offline) Can you contact the sender of the email and see if they can get a copy from their sent archive? Ever download a Google Takeout archive? Try Google Takeout anyway? Try POP3 sync, then reset POP3 status and resync?
charlesdm 9y ago
Even if you can find someone to do it, no Google engineer will be allowed to retrieve this email and then take the bounty. But good luck, I do hope you can get it recovered!
rrggrr 9y ago
You are young. I promise you that life will present you with challenges and rewards in the future that will make this seem like nothing. Put it behind you, close the door, lock the door, and move on.
- Dzugaru 9y ago
  That's quite a bold promise.
  - rrggrr 9y ago
    Marriage, divorce, your first child, death of a family member, professional success, getting fired, etc., etc. Life is quite a ride.
- k33n 9y ago
  Hilarious par for the course HN response. Zero empathy for OP. "Oh you only lost 400K. Since it didn't happen to me, it's not a problem."
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    He didn't "lose" 400k. He lost whatever was in the presale and he learned a really valuable lesson. He'll never forget it. When the worst thing to complain about is an altcoin investment gone bad, you are doing pretty well in life. It's not about empathy, it's about perspective, and the OP is gonna need the latter to get past it.
  - andars 9y ago
    He probably got the 1970 ETH during the presale for ~500 USD.
  - rrggrr 9y ago
    Anything completely outside your control ought not to be viewed as a problem. A circumstance, reality, boundary condition... yes. But not a problem.
swipecity 9y ago
Good luck, and keep us posted :)
skdotdan 9y ago
What about contacting Ethereum Foundation? They must have that mail.
- jurandom 9y ago
  I'm looking in that email. Quote: "it is not possible for the Ethereum team to reconstruct a lost wallet."
- jurandom 9y ago
  Full email: Ethereum Ether Sale Backup Wallet You are about to make an ether purchase. Please keep the attached wallet file safe. It will serve as a cryptographic receipt of your purchase, along with your password. The password you created and entered on the sale site is the key to your ether so please do not forget it. And please note: there are no mechanisms in place that will enable the Ethereum team to help you recover a lost password. Once it is lost, your purchased ether will be permanently inaccessible. Please ensure that a main copy and one or more backup copies of this wallet file are stored separately and securely. If you lose access to all copies of your wallet, you will not be able to access your purchased ether and it is not possible for the Ethereum team to reconstruct a lost wallet. Once you have saved the wallet file from this email to your computer and securely stored multiple copies of it in different locations, you should expunge this email (and any copies of it) from your email system to further ensure that no unauthorized person gains access to your wallet and attempts to crack the password that locks it. Once the official client is launched with the blockchain going operational (projected to be Winter 2014-2015) you will be able to import the private key stored in the wallet file and start using your ether on the network. And please note that Ether purchased in this sale is not usable on our proof of concept series clients. They use test-ether.
- singularity2001 9y ago
  Maybe they don't have the key but prove that they sent you a key. then maybe your lawyer will be able to force a hardfork. In which case you'd get killed by the community; which is worth it.
  - tradersam 9y ago
redcalx 9y ago
I assume you already tried this, but here is google's data download page: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout If it aint in there then I assume it's gone and only the NSA and/or GCHQ will have a copy.
- k33n 9y ago
  Cue a black budget program of retrieving all the lost cryptocurrency and selling it off.
- lucozade 9y ago
  There's a chap I know in the Ferrari owners club who works at GCHQ. I'll ask him if he knows anything about unclaimed wallets. Oh wait...
- max_ 9y ago
  someone at the NSA is $400k richer!
joshstrange 9y ago
I doubt you are going to have much luck, probably best to forget the whole thing and move on. I mined 100BTC back in 2009/10 and then never backed up the wallet or bothered with the private keys because it wasn't even worth a dollar, today it's worth $221,711. I always comfort myself that I would have sold out when it hit $8/BTC or even less. No use crying over spilled milk.
- Declanomous 9y ago
  The same exact thing happened to me. I definitely would have cashed out when bitcoin peaked at $14, assuming I didn't lose them all in the Mt. Gox boondoggle or something. I always say it's like the person who left their baseball cards at their mothers house, and then learned 30 years later that one was worth $100k or something. They talk about the money they could have had if their mother hadn't thrown our their cards. The thing is that if you had valued them at all, then you wouldn't have left them in the basement at your mother's house. Edit: Actually, as a more recent point, I also received a bunch of Beanie Babies when I was a kid. I had a set of 1st gen dinosaurs that ended up being incredibly valuable. Of course they were toys, and I had chewed on them, because I chewed on everything when I was very young. The set is still really valuable, with sold listings in the hundreds of dollars on eBay to this day. It's kind of ridiculous to think "What if I hadn't chewed on them." You'll never enjoy anything if you don't use it because it might be valuable. That's a great way to become a neurotic hoarder.
- iamatworknow 9y ago
  Back around the summer of 2010 I decided to play around a little bit with Bitcoin mining while I was looking for a job after college. For a couple of weeks I let the computer mine and accumulated what amounted to pocket change, then gave up and forgot about it. I've spent many hours over the past year or so digging through old burned backup CDs, DVDs, and hard drives trying to find the wallet, with no luck so far. Maybe someday.
  - meowface 9y ago
    If it makes you feel better, unless you had a good GPU, what you earned might not have been worth more than a few thousand dollars (at current BTC prices). Though the difficulty was certainly much less in 2010, so who knows.
chinathrow 9y ago
Did you ever use any other mail client to connect to Gmail? If so, there might be a way, i.e. from an uncompressed mbox file or similar.
- bengotow 9y ago
  This is definitely your best bet. Were you using an iPhone or an iPod Touch in that time window? Maybe iTunes still has a backup of the device in its backups folder? If you were using Mail.app, also check your Mac's Mail Downloads folder. It's totally possible the attachment was downloaded and not deleted when the email was. On my machine, that folder is full of ancient files for some reason. Also if you power on any old devices to look for the email, put them in airplane mode ASAP!
y0y 9y ago
This was so painful to read. I mean.. just.. ouch! I really hope you find a way to get it back. Some lessons in life are really valuable even when they sting. This one is just kind of cruel, ha.
- ryanSrich 9y ago
  Don't go roamimg through old bitcoin threads on Reddit then. You'll find grave yards of people that panick sold during the Mt Gox meltdown. There was this one guy who dropped his entire life savings on bitcoin when it was $850 and then sold at $350. I think the math turned out to be in the multiple millions had he held the same amount today.
ChicagoBoy11 9y ago
This is designed for emails missing in case of account breach, but it is worth a shot: https://support.google.com/mail/contact/missingemails https://support.google.com/mail/contact/missingemails
- cyptus 9y ago
  you should give this a try
hackinthebochs 9y ago
Contacting ethereum foundation is your best bet.
kierenj 9y ago
So since there are many eyes here, I'd like to hijack a little. I have some old wallet files from a year ago - armory_xxx_encrypt.wallet, bitcoinwallet.dat, dogecoinwallet.dat and a key backup PFX. I haven't looked at cryptocurrencies since, and so don't even know what tool I'd use to check the value of these wallets. Can anyone advise?
- hdhzy 9y ago
  Yes, send these files to me via email and I'll send you a personalized value report, free of charge. (just kidding of course) Probably it'd be best to install old versions of armory etc and export raw keys, then import it to new wallet. Or if you just want to check then export only public keys (addresses). You can check the amount on blockexplorer.
cyptus 9y ago
give http://ccm.net/forum/affich-676377-how-to-get-trash-deleted-emails-from-gmail#4 http://ccm.net/forum/affich-676377-how-to-get-trash-deleted-... a try
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
throwaway642739 9y ago
Throwaway because I work at Google (but not on Gmail) and don't want to associate any of my HN posts with anything even remotely related (as a matter of personal policy). That said, you're out of luck. Google has pretty strict data policies, and if a user deletes some their data (e.g. an email), it's my understanding that we're required to purge it from our all our systems (with maybe a couple months or so of leeway since we've got a lot of users and a lot of data). After a couple years of being deleted? Yeah, that email is gone. Forever.
scottshamus 9y ago
I talked with some people who work in Data Retention at Google and they said this wasn't possible...
srge 9y ago
What an interesting time to live in, when one can stock and even loose 400k in one email / text file! Good luck anyways, hope you find them back.
singularity2001 9y ago
At least you should try to get your account number from the Ethereum Team. Then monitor your account once a year or so. in the unlikely event that someone (ex GHCS / google admin, ai, hacker, ...) ever sends money from your account there are ways to get them.
triniman 9y ago
This literally depresses me.
lostmsu 9y ago
Might be a stupid question, but if you have any hardware from between that moment and the moment when you removed the email, which run Outlook or any other program, that makes local copies of files, you can try to disable its connectivity and get wallet from it.
kimcheekumquat 9y ago
Do you remember your password? From the Ethereum presale message: You are about to make an ether purchase. Please keep the attached wallet file safe. It will serve as a cryptographic receipt of your purchase, along with your password. The password you created and entered on the sale site is the key to your ether so please do not forget it. And please note: there are no mechanisms in place that will enable the Ethereum team to help you recover a lost password. Once it is lost, your purchased ether will be permanently inaccessible.
tluyben2 9y ago
I did Ethereum development for a Dutch city over a year ago and because of that (and the low price) I had a lot of Ethereum. When the project was done, I removed the VM I was working in. Shit happens.
cybernano 9y ago
Contact the ethereum foundation through their website, give them your email address and get them to resend your utc wallet to you?
cybernano 9y ago
Contact Ethereum Foundation on their website email, tell them your email address it was sent to and get them to resend you your UTC.json file
- aws_ls 9y ago
  Great suggestion. Also the OP may cross post this on https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/
JJarrard 9y ago
lost 1 bitcoin when Cryptsy went under, I thought I was unlucky..
leandot 9y ago
Can't you contact the Ethereum Foundation, shouldn't they have the email in the outgoing emails?
kpxxx3 9y ago
The past is the past, but what you want might to reflect on is your current judgement and how it is being driven by emotion and not thinking. Say your email/wallet can be recovered. If you don't know the contents, then really there is absolutely no reason why anybody that attempts to find it should not simply keep their mouth shut, mix the coin and trade it. In fact, the safest options for the other party are to: do nothing, anonymously trade the coin (which you would never know)... well down that list is talking to you for a wide variety of reasons. You have absolutely no leverage (unless this is of course a complete ruse for some other experiment), why do you think you do? You might want to think about that. It will help you in your future financial endeavors.

lostethpresale 9y ago

If somebody could edit the spacing that would be great as well.

pat_space 9y ago

Good luck, I will be following this story closely.

nsxwolf 9y ago

You are in awfully good spirits for someone who may have lost $400k. In 1999 I passed on an opportunity to buy a working Apple I for $10k.

lostethpresale 9y ago
Although this fail is a bit expensive, I'm optimistic that more opportunities will come.
- charlesdm 9y ago
  They sure will. Don't worry. One of mine: a few years ago I almost ported over (it was 99% done) an interesting piece of technology to mobile. Something fairly technical and low level. In the end I thought it wasn't possible to get it working, so called it a day. Five months later some other guy ported the exact same thing, and made a million euros. It was something that basically marketed itself; something you upload to the App Store and it would've sold. So that money would've been mine. And then I revisited my old code, and noticed I _could_ have gotten it working. It happens. Ah well. I still made plenty from other apps.
- max_ 9y ago
  Yup, I bought a ETH & $6 late last year during the spam attacks and panick sold at $15-$12 Early this year. Now the pice is $200+ per ETH Now I am looking foward to RChain https://www.rchain.coop https://www.rchain.coop
  - DennisP 9y ago
    Interesting, I thought RChain was dead after they split from Synereo and I didn't see any news on the rchain subreddit. Will definitely keep an eye on this.
    - Aldvar 9y ago
      Would probably skip RChain if I were you, founder is a flake. Synereo in the meantime are on the cusp of releasing an actual working product soon, which would make AMPs a much more viable investment. Just my two cents.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

zitterbewegung 9y ago

Have you tried gmail support already? If you haven't then I would say you should try that first. Going on Social media usually is best after you have exhausted this option. Also, offering compensation to Google employees is probably frowned upon by Google.

apetresc 9y ago
Does Gmail have "support"? I tried Googling it and every road just seems to lead to a generic knowledge base page.
- pawadu 9y ago
  gmail support = AI security related support = same AI, just slower response escalate to manager = talk to a different AI write a salty article, get it published on NY Times = talk to a human

atonse 9y ago

My wife always says that growing up, all her dad and brother used to talk about at the dinner table was "I should've invested in that stock when it was cheaper!" or "I should've sold when it was higher!" I feel that way about Bitcoin/others. It's always regret all the way. It's like buying a stock. I had a chance to mine lots of bitcoins in 2011... never got around to doing it. It's now the same as "I should've bought Apple stock the day before the rumored iPhone debuted, like I told friends to do"

redeemedfadi 9y ago
You always remember the successful investments you didn't make, but not the unsuccessful ones. Think of all the money you didn't lose making bad investments.
- atonse 9y ago
  Agreed! I have a couple of those as well, but you're right, you tend to forget them.
- ShannonAlther 9y ago
  If you're a little faster than average on the draw and have money to burn, the profits from the successful investments outweigh the money lost on the unsuccessful ones. E.g. if you have $50k, and spend it on five companies, only one of those companies has to be Apple for you to make way more than you started with...
  - OJFord 9y ago
    Apple isn't a '1 in 5' company, though.
hevisko 9y ago
My grand dad quoted a "mentor" about stocks: It's a sorry game! - You're sorry you buy - You are sorry you did NOT buy - You're sorry you sold - You are sorry you did NOT sell it!

malchow 9y ago

You may wish to state that you can (or can't) prove that the Gmail account is yours, and that you opened the Gmail account personally. I believe Gmail provides a discrete set of one-time keys upon account generation.

apetresc 9y ago
I don't think you read the post. He has access to his account, he's looking for an e-mail he deleted 2 years ago.
- droithomme 9y ago
  > He has access to his account Well, he has access to an account in which he believes an email with valuable information was once deleted by the owner of the account. Whether this is one person or two is not determined.
  - lostethpresale 9y ago
    I'm sure my login history + 2 factor + geographical location + personal information inside would be enough to establish me as the owner.
    - droithomme 9y ago
      Hopefully there is more of a solid track record than your brand new account here that you created exactly 5 minutes before posting this thread. The advice in this thread is good. It's certainly true many Google employees read this forum and so this is a convenient place to find them for private work without creating a electronic record trail on Google's own servers. However, doing an end run around Google in order to find an employee there willing to violate their employment agreement and possibly commit crimes because of an offer of large financial compensation is not an appropriate use of this discussion forum.
lostethpresale 9y ago
I own (and still own) my gmail account.

goodroot 9y ago

That's hilarious! I did something similar. No idea where that massive chunk of ETH went to. C'est la vie!

bhouston 9y ago
Should not ETH have a record of your purchase email and amount? It likely is recoverable in some fashion.
- Grangar 9y ago
  The way I understand it is that the purchase email contained the keys to the wallet. It'd be extremely irresponsible if they kept that.

maxsavin 9y ago

You might want to ask a lawyer to subpoena them. Time is ticking - I believe backups are held for only a bit of time.

siegel 9y ago
This is probably the only real hope. Problem is you cannot subpoena Google without first filing a lawsuit. So, you'd need to come up with a legal basis to file a lawsuit in which this document would be relevant. And then you'd have to serve a subpoena on Google. You could potential have a lawyer serve a document preservation request on Google before a lawsuit is filed. But I'm not optimistic they'd listen to it.

bobsgame 9y ago

Do you have any old phones that you synced with POP3? Windows Mobile? Outlook or Windows Mail? Ever connect it to Thunderbird? (Be careful with anything IMAP, check offline) Can you contact the sender of the email and see if they can get a copy from their sent archive? Ever download a Google Takeout archive? Try Google Takeout anyway? Try POP3 sync, then reset POP3 status and resync?

charlesdm 9y ago

Even if you can find someone to do it, no Google engineer will be allowed to retrieve this email and then take the bounty. But good luck, I do hope you can get it recovered!

rrggrr 9y ago

You are young. I promise you that life will present you with challenges and rewards in the future that will make this seem like nothing. Put it behind you, close the door, lock the door, and move on.

Dzugaru 9y ago
That's quite a bold promise.
- rrggrr 9y ago
  Marriage, divorce, your first child, death of a family member, professional success, getting fired, etc., etc. Life is quite a ride.
k33n 9y ago
Hilarious par for the course HN response. Zero empathy for OP. "Oh you only lost 400K. Since it didn't happen to me, it's not a problem."
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  He didn't "lose" 400k. He lost whatever was in the presale and he learned a really valuable lesson. He'll never forget it. When the worst thing to complain about is an altcoin investment gone bad, you are doing pretty well in life. It's not about empathy, it's about perspective, and the OP is gonna need the latter to get past it.
- andars 9y ago
  He probably got the 1970 ETH during the presale for ~500 USD.
- rrggrr 9y ago
  Anything completely outside your control ought not to be viewed as a problem. A circumstance, reality, boundary condition... yes. But not a problem.

swipecity 9y ago

Good luck, and keep us posted :)

skdotdan 9y ago

What about contacting Ethereum Foundation? They must have that mail.

jurandom 9y ago
I'm looking in that email. Quote: "it is not possible for the Ethereum team to reconstruct a lost wallet."
jurandom 9y ago
Full email: Ethereum Ether Sale Backup Wallet You are about to make an ether purchase. Please keep the attached wallet file safe. It will serve as a cryptographic receipt of your purchase, along with your password. The password you created and entered on the sale site is the key to your ether so please do not forget it. And please note: there are no mechanisms in place that will enable the Ethereum team to help you recover a lost password. Once it is lost, your purchased ether will be permanently inaccessible. Please ensure that a main copy and one or more backup copies of this wallet file are stored separately and securely. If you lose access to all copies of your wallet, you will not be able to access your purchased ether and it is not possible for the Ethereum team to reconstruct a lost wallet. Once you have saved the wallet file from this email to your computer and securely stored multiple copies of it in different locations, you should expunge this email (and any copies of it) from your email system to further ensure that no unauthorized person gains access to your wallet and attempts to crack the password that locks it. Once the official client is launched with the blockchain going operational (projected to be Winter 2014-2015) you will be able to import the private key stored in the wallet file and start using your ether on the network. And please note that Ether purchased in this sale is not usable on our proof of concept series clients. They use test-ether.
singularity2001 9y ago
Maybe they don't have the key but prove that they sent you a key. then maybe your lawyer will be able to force a hardfork. In which case you'd get killed by the community; which is worth it.
- tradersam 9y ago

redcalx 9y ago

I assume you already tried this, but here is google's data download page: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout If it aint in there then I assume it's gone and only the NSA and/or GCHQ will have a copy.

k33n 9y ago
Cue a black budget program of retrieving all the lost cryptocurrency and selling it off.
lucozade 9y ago
There's a chap I know in the Ferrari owners club who works at GCHQ. I'll ask him if he knows anything about unclaimed wallets. Oh wait...
max_ 9y ago
someone at the NSA is $400k richer!

joshstrange 9y ago

I doubt you are going to have much luck, probably best to forget the whole thing and move on. I mined 100BTC back in 2009/10 and then never backed up the wallet or bothered with the private keys because it wasn't even worth a dollar, today it's worth $221,711. I always comfort myself that I would have sold out when it hit $8/BTC or even less. No use crying over spilled milk.

Declanomous 9y ago
The same exact thing happened to me. I definitely would have cashed out when bitcoin peaked at $14, assuming I didn't lose them all in the Mt. Gox boondoggle or something. I always say it's like the person who left their baseball cards at their mothers house, and then learned 30 years later that one was worth $100k or something. They talk about the money they could have had if their mother hadn't thrown our their cards. The thing is that if you had valued them at all, then you wouldn't have left them in the basement at your mother's house. Edit: Actually, as a more recent point, I also received a bunch of Beanie Babies when I was a kid. I had a set of 1st gen dinosaurs that ended up being incredibly valuable. Of course they were toys, and I had chewed on them, because I chewed on everything when I was very young. The set is still really valuable, with sold listings in the hundreds of dollars on eBay to this day. It's kind of ridiculous to think "What if I hadn't chewed on them." You'll never enjoy anything if you don't use it because it might be valuable. That's a great way to become a neurotic hoarder.
iamatworknow 9y ago
Back around the summer of 2010 I decided to play around a little bit with Bitcoin mining while I was looking for a job after college. For a couple of weeks I let the computer mine and accumulated what amounted to pocket change, then gave up and forgot about it. I've spent many hours over the past year or so digging through old burned backup CDs, DVDs, and hard drives trying to find the wallet, with no luck so far. Maybe someday.
- meowface 9y ago
  If it makes you feel better, unless you had a good GPU, what you earned might not have been worth more than a few thousand dollars (at current BTC prices). Though the difficulty was certainly much less in 2010, so who knows.

chinathrow 9y ago

Did you ever use any other mail client to connect to Gmail? If so, there might be a way, i.e. from an uncompressed mbox file or similar.

bengotow 9y ago
This is definitely your best bet. Were you using an iPhone or an iPod Touch in that time window? Maybe iTunes still has a backup of the device in its backups folder? If you were using Mail.app, also check your Mac's Mail Downloads folder. It's totally possible the attachment was downloaded and not deleted when the email was. On my machine, that folder is full of ancient files for some reason. Also if you power on any old devices to look for the email, put them in airplane mode ASAP!

y0y 9y ago

This was so painful to read. I mean.. just.. ouch! I really hope you find a way to get it back. Some lessons in life are really valuable even when they sting. This one is just kind of cruel, ha.

ryanSrich 9y ago
Don't go roamimg through old bitcoin threads on Reddit then. You'll find grave yards of people that panick sold during the Mt Gox meltdown. There was this one guy who dropped his entire life savings on bitcoin when it was $850 and then sold at $350. I think the math turned out to be in the multiple millions had he held the same amount today.

ChicagoBoy11 9y ago

This is designed for emails missing in case of account breach, but it is worth a shot: https://support.google.com/mail/contact/missingemails https://support.google.com/mail/contact/missingemails

cyptus 9y ago
you should give this a try

hackinthebochs 9y ago

Contacting ethereum foundation is your best bet.

kierenj 9y ago

So since there are many eyes here, I'd like to hijack a little. I have some old wallet files from a year ago - armory_xxx_encrypt.wallet, bitcoinwallet.dat, dogecoinwallet.dat and a key backup PFX. I haven't looked at cryptocurrencies since, and so don't even know what tool I'd use to check the value of these wallets. Can anyone advise?

hdhzy 9y ago
Yes, send these files to me via email and I'll send you a personalized value report, free of charge. (just kidding of course) Probably it'd be best to install old versions of armory etc and export raw keys, then import it to new wallet. Or if you just want to check then export only public keys (addresses). You can check the amount on blockexplorer.

cyptus 9y ago

give http://ccm.net/forum/affich-676377-how-to-get-trash-deleted-emails-from-gmail#4 http://ccm.net/forum/affich-676377-how-to-get-trash-deleted-... a try

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

throwaway642739 9y ago

Throwaway because I work at Google (but not on Gmail) and don't want to associate any of my HN posts with anything even remotely related (as a matter of personal policy). That said, you're out of luck. Google has pretty strict data policies, and if a user deletes some their data (e.g. an email), it's my understanding that we're required to purge it from our all our systems (with maybe a couple months or so of leeway since we've got a lot of users and a lot of data). After a couple years of being deleted? Yeah, that email is gone. Forever.

scottshamus 9y ago

I talked with some people who work in Data Retention at Google and they said this wasn't possible...

srge 9y ago

What an interesting time to live in, when one can stock and even loose 400k in one email / text file! Good luck anyways, hope you find them back.

singularity2001 9y ago

At least you should try to get your account number from the Ethereum Team. Then monitor your account once a year or so. in the unlikely event that someone (ex GHCS / google admin, ai, hacker, ...) ever sends money from your account there are ways to get them.

triniman 9y ago

This literally depresses me.

lostmsu 9y ago

Might be a stupid question, but if you have any hardware from between that moment and the moment when you removed the email, which run Outlook or any other program, that makes local copies of files, you can try to disable its connectivity and get wallet from it.

kimcheekumquat 9y ago

Do you remember your password? From the Ethereum presale message: You are about to make an ether purchase. Please keep the attached wallet file safe. It will serve as a cryptographic receipt of your purchase, along with your password. The password you created and entered on the sale site is the key to your ether so please do not forget it. And please note: there are no mechanisms in place that will enable the Ethereum team to help you recover a lost password. Once it is lost, your purchased ether will be permanently inaccessible.

tluyben2 9y ago

I did Ethereum development for a Dutch city over a year ago and because of that (and the low price) I had a lot of Ethereum. When the project was done, I removed the VM I was working in. Shit happens.

cybernano 9y ago

Contact the ethereum foundation through their website, give them your email address and get them to resend your utc wallet to you?

cybernano 9y ago

Contact Ethereum Foundation on their website email, tell them your email address it was sent to and get them to resend you your UTC.json file

aws_ls 9y ago
Great suggestion. Also the OP may cross post this on https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/

JJarrard 9y ago

lost 1 bitcoin when Cryptsy went under, I thought I was unlucky..

leandot 9y ago

Can't you contact the Ethereum Foundation, shouldn't they have the email in the outgoing emails?

kpxxx3 9y ago

The past is the past, but what you want might to reflect on is your current judgement and how it is being driven by emotion and not thinking. Say your email/wallet can be recovered. If you don't know the contents, then really there is absolutely no reason why anybody that attempts to find it should not simply keep their mouth shut, mix the coin and trade it. In fact, the safest options for the other party are to: do nothing, anonymously trade the coin (which you would never know)... well down that list is talking to you for a wide variety of reasons. You have absolutely no leverage (unless this is of course a complete ruse for some other experiment), why do you think you do? You might want to think about that. It will help you in your future financial endeavors.