For almost 10 years, American basketball star Kevin Durant could not access his Bitcoin wealth. However, this meant he could not sell hastily.
Who is it about? Kevin Durant is an American basketball player and 14-time NBA All-Star. Together with his long-time agent and business partner Rich Kleiman, Durant began investing significantly in Bitcoin in 2016 after the cryptocurrency was discussed at a dinner with his then teammates.
At a CNBC event, Kleiman explained that they had heard the word “Bitcoin” at least 25 times that evening. The next day they started investing. However, the agent did not disclose how many Bitcoins Durant bought.
Due to a “user error on our part,” Kleiman said, the basketball player had not been able to access his crypto wealth for years: Apparently, Durant had lost the password to his account on Coinbase, a platform for trading and storing cryptocurrency. Our colleagues at JV Tech reported on the case.
If you lose access to your cryptocurrency account, you usually cannot access your wealth anymore. However, other personal information can be frighteningly easy to find:
Basketball star regains account after almost 10 years
How did that turn out? Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, announced on September 19 in a post on X that the issue with Durant’s account had been resolved and that the basketball star could access it again.
Previously, Kleiman had joked that it was “actually crazy” that they could not restore access – especially since Kleiman and Durant are investors in Coinbase and the NBA star had already promoted the crypto exchange.
The whole situation unfolded amidst growing frustration from some Coinbase users, who reportedly faced similar difficulties accessing their accounts or getting help from customer service.
Comments on social media are also rather skeptical: A 9-year customer service case is not really something to brag about. In another post on X, Armstrong stated that the focus is on improving customer service.
Why is this good now? Because Durant could not access his account all these years, he never sold his Bitcoins – and the cryptocurrency has notably increased in value since 2016. Back then, the price was still below 650 US dollars, about 554 euros.
Among crypto investors, the expression “HODL” is well-known, originally a typo of the English word “hold”. However, it later became an acronym for “Hold On for Dear Life”.
This term refers to a trading strategy where users hold their cryptocurrencies despite price fluctuations instead of engaging in short-term trading (source: BTC Echo). In this sense, Durant has done everything right.
For another early Bitcoin investor, things did not go as well. After a hard drive containing his Bitcoins was accidentally disposed of, he spent 12 years trying to retrieve his fortune from the landfill: A man lost a crypto fortune of 750 million euros on a landfill – What happened to him?
