Bitcoin owner claims Claude AI lost his wallet password and made $400,000 in BTC.

An X thread claiming that Anthropic’s Claude AI helped recover a long-lost Bitcoin wallet worth about $400,000 went viral on Wednesday, racking up millions of views.

The post was posted by the anonymous

“Holy shit OMG Claude just fixed this,” Cprkrn wrote, tagging Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei.

Cprkrn also shared a post from August 2023, implying that the wallet had been “locked” since 2015. In fact, blockchain data shows that Bitcoin wallets starting with “14VJyS” have not moved any funds since 2015 until today.

The thread garnered more than 6 million views as users speculated whether large-scale language models could help with recovery tasks involving encrypted files and forgotten passwords.

While the screenshots shared by

According to the post, Cprkrn attempted to recover the wallet using tools including btcrecover and Hashcat, software commonly used to test password combinations for encrypted data, but was not successful.

Cprkrn eventually uploaded files from an old university computer to Claude, which he claimed helped identify files associated with mnemonic phrases found on the laptop.

“We discovered an old wallet file that Numonic successfully decrypted,” they wrote. “I was locked out for more than 11 years because I panicked and changed the password.”

Cprkrn added, “It was definitely the most obvious opening lol.”

But wallet recovery experts debate how many processes can reasonably be attributed to Claude itself, compared to the wallet files, mnemonic phrases and historical data needed to reconstruct passwords a user already owns.

“Claude’s role was to sort through large amounts of historical data and identify clues related to outdated wallet credentials or password formats,” said one expert. Decrypt. “This is forensic triage, not password cracking.”

The claims come as interest in Claude’s ability to handle complex analysis has intensified since the launch of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos model last month. Anthropic said the model can identify software vulnerabilities and complete advanced security tasks autonomously.

The claim also sparked skepticism on Reddit, where some users claimed the viral post exaggerated Claude’s role in the recovery process.

“Claude did nothing but search for files,” one user posted. “The vagueness of the title makes it easier for people to be fooled into thinking Claude did something groundbreaking.”

Another said, “Now you understand the average end user’s love for AI.” “It’s not revolutionary. It just reinforces existing laziness.”

Cprkrn did not respond to a request for comment. Decrypt.