Claude helps recover 5 Bitcoins, post goes viral! But cybersecurity experts: this story has two major blind spots

Netizens used the AI model Claude to retrieve a wallet sealed for 11 years, regaining five bitcoins. Although AI did not crack the password, it helped with digital forensics—filtering key evidence from massive files—to complete the rescue.

Losing the mnemonic phrase and watching millions of dollars go up in smoke is a pain many veteran users in the crypto space know all too well. However, a recently viral post on the social platform X staged a reversal worthy of a movie. A netizen claimed that with the help of the AI model Claude, they successfully recovered Bitcoin that had been sealed for nearly 9 years, worth $400,000.

Posting under the alias “Cprkrn,” the user exclaimed, “Oh my God—Claude actually did it!” In the post, they not only tagged the developer Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei, but also attached an old post from August 2023—proving that long before then, they had been trying to crack a wallet that had been “deeply locked” since 2015.

On-chain data also confirmed that the Bitcoin address beginning with “14VJyS” had indeed been completely inactive for 9 years, only coming back to light recently, and successfully transferring out 5 bitcoins.

The string of posts quickly attracted more than 6 million views, sparking lively discussion among netizens: Can large language models truly help with tasks like handling encrypted files and recovering forgotten passwords?

• Related news: Lost for 11 years! He used Claude to repair the Bitcoin wallet private key, bringing $400k worth of BTC back to light

However, upon a careful look at the screenshots they shared, there is actually no evidence showing that Claude directly “hacked” Bitcoin’s impenetrable cryptographic defenses. Instead, the AI played more like a powerful digital assistant, helping users go through the tedious process of encrypting-file handling and password recovery.

According to the post, Cprkrn had repeatedly tried to unlock the wallet using btcrecover and Hashcat (two professional software tools often used by cybersecurity professionals for brute-force cracking or testing encryption passwords), but to no avail. In the end, they fed the massive number of files from an old university computer into Claude for analysis. Unexpectedly, the AI successfully matched a wallet file associated with the mnemonic phrase on their old laptop.

“This wallet was locked for over 11 years because I was high back then, my mind was unclear, and I changed the password,” they joked. After the AI found the key file, the mnemonic phrase smoothly unlocked the wallet. “And the way it was unlocked—turns out it was an obvious flaw. It’s just too funny.”

Even though the person involved praised the AI’s performance, cybersecurity experts specializing in wallet recovery pointed out the blind spot: In the entire unlocking process, how much credit can truly be attributed to Claude? After all, the user already had the wallet files, the mnemonic phrase, and the historical data needed to reconstruct the password. One cybersecurity expert said:

What Claude is really doing is likely sifting through massive amounts of historical data, finding clues related to older wallet credentials or password formats. Rather than ‘cracking the password,’ it’s more like ‘digital forensics and data classification.’

This incident drew significant market attention partly because Anthropic only launched the “Claude Mythos” model last month, featuring an emphasis on high-end security. The new model also claims it can precisely identify software vulnerabilities and automatically complete advanced cybersecurity protection tasks—fueling the public’s imagination about Claude’s ability to handle complex analysis.

However, this wave of “AI hype” was met with heavy skepticism on the community forum Reddit, where many rational users criticized the viral post for exaggerating AI’s real contribution in the recovery process. One user commented:

Claude didn’t do anything groundbreaking. It just helped him “search” through the files. This sensational, vague wording only makes gullible people think AI somehow pulled off some great feat again.

Another user pointed out: “Now you see why the general public loves AI so much, right? This isn’t some technological revolution—it’s just perfectly catering to humanity’s innate laziness.”

In any case, the post did manage to attract global attention and once again put the intersection of AI and cryptocurrency in the spotlight. Still, the truth may be far less sci-fi than the headline suggests.

• This article is reproduced with permission from: 《BlockCast》
• Original title: 《Claude helps recover 5 bitcoins! “AI unlocks a sealed wallet” post goes viral, but the truth is…》
• Original author: Block Sister MEL