Bitcoin Owner Claims Claude AI Cracked Lost Wallet Password, Netting $400K in BTC

An X thread claiming Anthropic’s Claude AI helped retrieve a long-lost Bitcoin wallet worthy astir $400,000 went viral connected Wednesday, drafting millions of views.

The posts came from a pseudonymous X idiosyncratic “Cprkrn” who said Claude helped unlock a Bitcoin wallet containing 5 BTC that had purportedly been inaccessible for astir 9 years.

“Holy fucking crap OMG Claude conscionable cracked this shit,” Cprkrn wrote, tagging Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei.

Cprkrn besides shared a station from August 2023, suggesting that the wallet had been “locked” since 2015. Blockchain data so shows that the Bitcoin wallet opening successful “14VJyS” had not moved immoderate funds since 2015—until today.

The thread generated much than 6 cardinal views arsenic users speculated astir whether ample connection models could assistance with betterment tasks involving encrypted files and forgotten passwords.

While the screenshots shared connected X did not amusement grounds that Claude bypassed oregon broke Bitcoin’s underlying cryptography, the images appeared to amusement the AI assisting with investigation of encrypted wallet files and password-recovery workflows.

According to the posts, Cprkrn attempted to retrieve the wallet utilizing tools including btcrecover and Hashcat, bundle commonly utilized to trial password combinations against encrypted data, but with nary success.

Cprkrn said helium yet uploaded files from an aged assemblage machine into Claude, which helium claimed helped place a record associated with a mnemonic operation recovered successful a notebook.

“It recovered an OLD wallet record that the pneumonic successfully decrypted,” they wrote. “Locked retired 11+ years due to the fact that I got stoned and changed the password.”

“Ended up being the astir evident opening ever lol,” Cprkrn added.

However, wallet betterment experts statement however overmuch of the process could reasonably beryllium attributed to Claude itself versus the wallet file, mnemonic phrase, and humanities information needed to reconstruct the password that the idiosyncratic already possessed.

“Claude’s apt relation was sorting done ample amounts of humanities information and identifying clues tied to older wallet credentials oregon password formats,” 1 adept told Decrypt. “This isn't truthful overmuch a password cracking happening arsenic it is simply a forensics sorting.”

The claims travel arsenic involvement successful Claude’s quality to grip analyzable investigation has intensified pursuing the motorboat of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos exemplary past month, which the institution says tin place bundle vulnerabilities and autonomously implicit precocious information tasks.

The claims besides drew skepticism connected Reddit, wherever immoderate users argued the viral posts overstated Claude’s relation successful the betterment process.

“Claude didn't bash thing different than hunt his files,” 1 idiosyncratic posted. “The header is vague capable to marque the much gullible among america to deliberation Claude did thing groundbreaking.”

“And present you recognize the mean extremity user's emotion of AI,” different said. “It isn't revolutionary; it conscionable reinforces their pre-existing laziness.”

Cprkrn did not respond to a petition for remark by Decrypt.