LHV Bank Founder Has Lost Private Key to ETH Stash Worth $470 Million

Rain Lõhmus, founder of Estonia-based LHV Bank, has lost the private key to his crypto stash consisting of 250,000 ETH, worth approximately $470 million.

The stash was acquired during the Ethereum Initial Coin Offering (ICO), Conor Grogan, a director at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, revealed in a recent post on X (formerly Twitter).

He noted that the wallet had remained untouched since the genesis of the Ethereum blockchain.

“One mystery solved: This address (which now holds $450M of crypto) belongs to Rain Lohmus, founder of LHV Bank,” Grogan wrote.

“Unfortunately he lost his keys and can’t access these 100s of millions. If you can help him recover them somehow, he’s willing to split them with you.”

One mystery solved: This address (which now holds $450M of crypto) belongs to Rain Lohmus, founder of LHV Bank

Unfortunately he lost his keys and can't access these 100s of millions. If you can help him recover them somehow, he's willing to split them with you https://t.co/wYLAU9gKzb pic.twitter.com/0A1nIjFSyn

— Conor (@jconorgrogan) November 6, 2023

Lõhmus Confirms Owning 250,000 ETH

In a late October interview with ERR, Lõhmus confirmed that it was “no secret” he owned a wallet containing 250,000 ETH.

However, he disclosed that he had lost the password to the wallet and had not made significant efforts to recover it.

Expressing his willingness to collaborate with anyone who could assist in recovering the lost keys, Lõhmus stated, “I can’t solve this alone; if someone thinks they can, I’ll take all offers.”

The LHV Bank founder acknowledged that losing passwords was a recurrent issue for him, emphasizing that the inability to access funds was a vulnerability of blockchain systems.

It is worth noting that Lõhmus’ initial investment in Ether amounted to a mere $75,000, as ETH was priced at around 30 cents during the ICO.

During Ether’s peak price on November 10, 2021, when the price of the second-largest cryptocurrency reached nearly $4,900, Lõhmus’ stash would have been worth a staggering $1.22 billion.

Despite the recent market downturn, Lõhmus’ wallet has still experienced an impressive 628,757% gain.

Additionally, Grogan’s previous Twitter post in February revealed that the wallet had received airdrops amounting to $6.5 million.

Ledger Launches Recover Service to Users

Last month, Ledger announced the launch of its cloud-based private key recovery solution called Ledger Recover despite initial criticism from the cryptocurrency community.

Coincover, a blockchain protection platform, provides the seed phrase recovery solution as a paid subscription service.

It allows users to back up their Secret Recovery Phrase (SRP), which is a unique set of 24 words that grant access to their crypto assets.

Ledger Recover will be offered at a subscription price of $9.99 per month or approximately $120 per year.

The recovery service comes as there have been many people who lost their Bitcoin tokens.

According to estimates from Glassnode, about 10% of the currency Bitcoin supply or 1,857,721 Bitcoins might never be found. Other reports estimate it might be as high as 25%.

That is billions worth of value which will remain inaccessible forever essentially reducing the circulating supply of the cryptocurrency.