An unpublished cryptocurrency miner for two years obtained almost 9,000 BCH, which were considered lost due to mistakes made by users after the introduction of SegWit. In addition, it does not intend to return the unduly obtained funds to their owners.

An unknown miner took over the wrongly sent BCH

The whole thing is a result of the similarity of the format of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash addresses. The latter has had a problem since its creation as a result of the so-called hard fork in 2017, because many users of the platform sent their funds to SegWit addresses. The ones in Bitcoin Cash are not supported at all. These erroneous transactions were detected only in 2018 and 2019, and it is estimated that their total value could even exceed BCH 18 thousand.

Changpeng Zhao denies the lack of a Binance license in Malta

Half of the lost funds were not recovered.

Some of these coins were later recovered. About half of the total amount was saved and returned to the original owners. But the other half has not returned to them until today. According to data presented by Coinmetrics, the anonymous miner managed to extract enough blocks to take over about 9,000 BCH from erroneous transactions aimed at SegWit addresses. Converted into dollars, this means that at someone else’s expense, it has grown by over 3 million at the current rate.

Already at the beginning, when these losses of individual users came to light, there were miners who worked to recover these funds. For some time on BTC.com it was possible to report every loss, even the smallest one. Later a minimum threshold of 100 BCH and a fee of 10 BCH were introduced. BTC.top was also involved in the recovery of “lost” BCH. But around 9,000 were not recovered, and it may turn out that this is not yet over. For still not all lost coins that should be returned are known, so nobody knows exactly how big the problem is.

Bitcoin as a pension option for the Millenniums

Nowadays, to be able to access them, you either have to be a miner yourself, or you have to contact someone who is a miner and carry out a scripting operation which will then be distributed. This is due to the fact that ordinary users of the platform do not have permission to perform certain scripting operations.

The 51% attack has saved some of the funds

It is known that BTC.com and BTC.top have managed to prevent an anonymous miner from trying to take over even more of the lost coins. This was due to the so-called 51% attack on blockchain Bitcoin Cash. This controversial action prevented the promotion of his transactions, leading to the “orphanage” of the prepared blockchain, which would probably give him access to further BCHs that were lost by their original owners as a result of being wrongly sent to SegWit.

Interesting facts related to crypto exchanges in 2020

Currently, the situation with erroneously sent coins is much better, as in 2018 Bitcoin Cash changed the address format, which is no longer as confusing as the previous one. This, in turn, has led to a significant decrease in the number of mistakes and, consequently, the loss of funds.

Travon Temple
Witold Adruszczak CEO of the Bitcoin-Squad.com project for 3 years associated with the crypto industry. This year we have decided on an international project. Our goal is to build Bitcoin awareness in the world. Education and support for people with no experience in the new industry which are cryptocurrencies. If you need more support please write in the comment. For all I always try to answer questions under the articles.