AI Tool Helps Recover Lost Bitcoin Wallet After 11-Year Search

A team of developers used an AI tool called Claude to recover a lost Bitcoin wallet after 11 years of failed attempts. The recovery was not due to a breakthrough in cryptography, but rather the identification of a critical bug in the open-source recovery tool btcrecover.

The bug, which had gone undetected for years, was found in how btcrecover combined shared keys and passwords. This error led to 3.5 trillion password combinations being tried without success before the correct combination was finally identified.

The recovery relied on access to local files on a specific computer, not brute-force attacks or seed phrase cracking. Experts emphasize that this is a significant distinction, as it highlights the importance of proper key management and secure backups.