KEY POINTS

  • Around 69,670 bitcoins has been transferred from a wallet that has been inactive since 2015
  • It is not clear who has taken control of the wallet
  • The cryptography and length of Bitcoin passwords make them extremely difficult to crack

Bitcoins worth $1 billion has been moved out of a wallet that has been inactive since 2015.

Around 69,670 bitcoins were there in the wallet, which was passed around among hackers for two years.

Twitter user Alon Gal said it was unclear if the person who cracked the password was the original owner of the wallet or someone else was able to crack it.

Since the blockchain network is public, any person can see what's inside any Bitcoin wallet, which is just an address in the network. But only the person who has the private key to this address (or wallet) will be able to access it and do transactions with the bitcoins inside it.

With 69,670 coins, the "dormant" is one the largest ones in the world, ArsTechnica reported. Some blockchain forensic experts said the Bitcoins in this wallet possibly originated from Silk Road, a darknet marketplace that the FBI shut down in 2013.

It is extremely difficult to crack the password of a crypto wallet, considering the cryptography involved in Bitcoins and the extremely long passwords, which would take millions of years to solve. Jeremi Gosney, CEO of Terahash told Vice Magazine, "I think it's a hell of a longshot. It'd have to be a fairly weak password to be cold cracked. Or someone getting really, really lucky. I certainly would not waste any resources on it."

Bitcoin was created in 2008
Bitcoin was created in 2008 AFP / JACK GUEZ
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