In August 2013 Dr. Hart told me that the lump in my neck lymph node was cancerous and that it was secondary cancer which originated from my lower tongue. He suggested a new surgery procedure by Dr. Taylor. The unexpected calm, with which this news was taken, surprised me. Perhaps all those years of reading and contemplating the meditations of Stephen Levine had paid off.
But what does my cancer diagnosis have to do with my Bitcoin holdings? That same calm.
Until recently my wallet has not been out of storage since 2015. That was, with blood on the streets from the plung from $1500, a good time to buy. What brought my wallet out again, recently, is the state of affairs after the August fork. My view on that is worthy of its own post. Let's just say my feeling is that Bitcoin Cash is the Bitcoin which is carrying on the guidelines given in Satoshi's White Paper. My plan was to change the ratio of my BCH to BTC holdings in favor of of BCH.
My first order of business was to send the BTC to a new, post fork, wallet after advice from a miner friend. The new wallet was loaded and a receiving address generated. Then the old wallet was loaded to perform the send. After entering my pass phrase, when prompted during the send process, it replied that the password was incorrect. Tried a couple more times until it was obvious it was not a typo. It was not like a tiny password either. It was a sentence from a line in a high school musical. It had upwards to 30 characters in it. It was not something that one would spell wrong twice, including the verification. A knot formed in the depths of my belly.
This was no small frustration. There was a hefty six figure value in the tokens of the wallet. Yet, strangely.... surprisingly, there was calm. The original knot of panic quickly passed as acceptance set in. That same feeling of acceptance that overcame me in Dr. Hart's office.
This is not to mean that all efforts were given up. Yet it was more like an obligation than a panic. The first thought was that perhaps the old keyboard, used at the time, had a faulty key. So each instance of the password was entered with one different letter being totally removed. Like all the 'A's in one, all the 'B's in another an d so on. No luck.
Cracking software was given a try; using bitcoind's command line interface. Still no luck.
It was resignation time. There was some introspection of why it had been allowed to lay fallow. Of what cryptocurrency means to me. Some might see it as justification, yet there was a true sense of letting go.
A sense of shame set in, nervous how friends and family may take it. At least some research showed that some good company had been found in the same position. There was always that faint hope that using the power of miner's chips one might be able to blindly hack the password as it definitely did not have any numbers in it. So it was decided to keep things under lids for the time being.
One day my thoughts took me to wonder if there could still be a backup of the wallet prior to when it was given a password in 2015. The computer used at the time was now inoperable, yet the hard drive could be explored and it may give up an old copy. First all the backups (my belief is that you don't have a backup unless you have three backups) were explored in great detail. They all contained the passworded wallet.
Then thinking if there was any other device that may hold a copy of the pre-passworded wallet a memory came to me. It was going to the local Mail Box/UPS store that acts as my printer. It was for forms needed for tax deductions on my rentals. It came back to me how a tinge of paranoia struck me as the employee put in the memory stick with the forms and then after looking at the screen glanced at me in an odd way. It occurred to me at the time that he may have noticed my wallet.dat file.
Yes it was paranoia but it was true that the non-passworded wallet was on that memory stick. Jumping at the thought my place was tossed like a drug raid, until finally in the back of the desk drawer under a print out from Capital Health was the stick!
Moving quickly to the computer it was confirmed... Huston,mission accomplished! We have found the wallet! Repeat, we have found the wallet!
It is not with complacency that this hurdle is passed. Already some of the BCH has been spread around enough to no longer feel like a hoarder with a hallway lined with stacks of newspapers. If my BTC transfer ever gets to the exchange (let that go for another post) then the plan is to cash in a bit for projects on my house and help family members out a bit with some fiat love. For example putting a liner down a second chimney in the house and put it through the roof again; so as to have wood heat when the electric goes out. That seems to be happening more and more these days. Also having a few maples taken down in the back yard which have shaded our south facing over the years, so that we can put in our victory garden again.
Yet, truly, the greatest lesson learned is knowing that even without my Bitcoins there is still a calm to be found in my life. Sometimes you have to HODL even if you have no choice.
What a beautiful lesson to learn. I am trying at this stage in my life to be more accepting of fate and to try to understand that everything happens for a reason, even if the reason is just a lesson I need to learn. Excellent post buddy!
Glad you enjoyed it, Papa. To except the things we cannot change seems a good skill to keep anxiety at bay. 😎
Good save!
You are not born to lose!
It was only after being fully resigned, though.
not choes...
Yes, sometimes choice is taken from us.
Wow, what an incredible story, I'm so glad you got access back to your wallet. May I ask how things are going with your physical health now?
Things have gone well with my health; thanks for asking. This coming August will be 5 years since diagnosis. Five years is when the medical profession deems one a 'Survivor'. 😎
So good to hear!!
Awww.. thanks Lyndsay! ✌💛