Claude AI Helps Recover 5 BTC From 11-Year-Old Wallet

A Bitcoin holder using the handle cprkrn reported recovering 5 BTC after processing files from an old college computer through Anthropic’s Claude AI. The wallet had been inactive for more than 11 years.

The user uploaded a full dump of files to Claude. The model located an encrypted wallet file and examined btcrecover, an open-source recovery tool. It worked through the tool’s password logic and produced inputs that decrypted the private keys.

Screenshots shared by the user show Claude tracing that btcrecover concatenates a sharedKey value with the user password during decryption. After adjusting the inputs, the private keys decrypted on the first corrected run. The keys were converted to Wallet Import Format and used to access the funds.

The recovery depended on a mnemonic the user had rediscovered weeks earlier. The original password was set during college and later changed. The user reported paying roughly $250 per attempt to commercial recovery services before turning to the AI.

At a market price near $79,622 per bitcoin, five coins are worth about $400,000. The address had not moved funds for over a decade. On-chain analytics firm Glassnode estimates roughly one-third of bitcoin supply has not moved in years.

The post drew rapid attention online. Castle Island Ventures partner Nic Carter described the result as “insane.” The user posted on the social platform: “Last-ditch effort dumped my whole college computer into Claude. It found an OLD wallet file that the mnemonic successfully decrypted.”

Whether Claude’s method will succeed in other recoveries depends on how much archival material owners still have. Many long-dormant addresses lack files or notes that could help reconstruct passwords or keys.