Claude AI unlocks an 11-year-old Bitcoin wallet, 5 BTC currently worth $400k

According to BeInCrypto’s report on May 14, X (formerly Twitter) user cprkrn posted on Wednesday claiming that, with Anthropic’s Claude AI, they successfully recovered a Bitcoin wallet that had been locked for over 11 years, releasing 5 BTC, worth approximately $400k in current value based on that day’s price of $79,622.

Technical workflow: Confirmation steps for Claude to locate the wallet and fix the btcrecover logic

The screenshot of Claude’s full technical operations posted by cprkrn on X shows the following:

Locate the crypto wallet file: Claude identifies an encrypted wallet file from the uploaded university computer data dump

Call btcrecover: Claude calls the widely used open-source wallet recovery tool btcrecover to attempt decryption

Detect a logic error: Claude detects that during the decryption process btcrecover incorrectly concatenated the sharedKey value with the user password

Fix and re-run: After Claude corrects the concatenation logic, the private key successfully decrypts on the first re-run

Verify the address: Claude converts the private key into the wallet import format and verifies the corresponding address

Previously, cprkrn had repeatedly tried commercial recovery services, with a cost of about $250 per attempt each time.

Community reaction: Surpassing 1 million views within hours

cprkrn’s post on X accumulated more than 1 million views within a few hours. Nic Carter, a partner at crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures, publicly commented that the result was “unbelievable.” Crypto reporter Laura Shin and Jesse Pollak, founder of the Ethereum Layer 2 platform Base, also publicly posted in response. In the post, cprkrn suggested that other holders who have lost wallets should upload all files from their old desktop and laptop computers to the AI model before giving up.

FAQ

What are the two key conditions for this Bitcoin recovery?

This success required two conditions at the same time: first, cprkrn had, weeks earlier, re-found the mnemonic phrase used when setting up the wallet during university; second, Claude AI detected and fixed a btcrecover logic issue in which, for a specific wallet format, the sharedKey and the user password were incorrectly concatenated. Both conditions are indispensable.

What is btcrecover, and why could Claude AI play a role here?

btcrecover is a widely used open-source Bitcoin wallet password recovery tool that supports multiple Bitcoin wallet formats. In this case, Claude not only called this tool but also identified and corrected a password concatenation logic error by btcrecover in a specific scenario, enabling the private key to decrypt successfully on the first run after the fix.

What conditions would other Bitcoin wallet holders need to replicate this method?

Based on cprkrn’s description, whether this method can work depends on whether the holder still has the original computer files used to set up the wallet, and whether they still have any password hints or mnemonic phrases. In his post on X, cprkrn confirmed that the key to his success was keeping the complete university computer data dump and the mnemonic phrase he later found again.