The Bitcoin critic claimed that he did not forget his password and blamed it on his wallet. On social networks, bitcoiners stressed the importance of safeguarding funds at the highest level.
American economic analyst Peter Schiff, one of the best-known Bitcoin haters, revealed last January 19th that, when attempting to move his donations in BTC from one wallet to a more secure one, he lost access to his wallet. The CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, a financial advisory company, stated on his Twitter account that he is not the one that forgot his password, but the wallet.
According to Schiff, his wallet was somehow corrupted and the key that he used to monitor his bitcoins was no longer valid, which led him to make his case known. In the comment, the executive included a screenshot of the error message, which reads “error decrypting wallet, please check that your password is correct “.
Schiff’s disappointment drove him to attack Bitcoin again and to proclaim, once more, that owning BTC is a bad financial decision.
Schiff’s decision to move his BTC funds from one wallet to another with higher levels of security is related to the multiple donations in bitcoins that he received last July, which had amounted by then to over USD 2,000. Schiff admitted that he tried to make this change because of someone’s suggestion, not to allow the community that gave them to him to monitor their value.
Another detail that Schiff disclosed is that the wallet was configured by Erik Voorhees, CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift, who allegedly told him that nothing could be done to recover the BTCs.
Doubts in the Community
As the news spread, American entrepreneur and investor Anthony Pompliano intervened to learn about the case and try to help Schiff. The bitcoiner questioned Schiff’s reasons for not having access to his funds and said that programs are only made to obey commands assigned by humans, not to forget anything.
Fellow bitcoiner and investor Caitlin Long considers that Schiff’s case shows how little he knows about Bitcoin and how unprepared he was to handle funds in this way. In a Twitter comment, Long also questioned the executive’s attitude towards Bitcoin.
The creator of the Ethereum network and leader of its development, Vitalik Buterin, also expressed his opinion about what had happened, but in a more conciliatory tone, and said that he was disappointed at the comments on Schiff’s case. The programmer believes that this experience should serve to improve wallet technology to facilitate security.
Voorhees Dissociates Himself
The CEO of ShapeShift dissociated himself from what happened and reported that Schiff sent him an e-mail about the situation one day before. He said that he did not want to embarrass him on social networks, but Schiff himself made his case public and said that Voorhees had configured his wallet.
Voorhees explained that, as a security measure, cryptocurrency wallets generate a series of random words or seed known as the private key, which must be safeguarded. In other words, if the software on a mobile device is stolen, lost or damaged, it allows restoring the wallet to another device and accessing the funds again, but Schiff might have forgotten to record it.
By Alexander Salazar
