The multiple benefits that technology has brought are undeniable, but it has often come accompanied by great volatility, which has also characterized . A man from the United States has experienced first-hand how close one can come from being a millionaire to being left with nothing, although in this case not because of the fluctuation of its value.
The United States Court of Appeals denied Michael Prime’s request for the return of casi 3,443 bitcoins, whose current value is around 345 million dollars (almost 300 million euros). The man, who was arrested in 2019, later claimed the cryptocurrencies that, according to him, were stored on a hard drive he owned. However, as reported by the media the US Government destroyed it, so the money disappeared.
At the time of his imprisonment, Prime declared two boats, two vehicles and “a small amount of bitcoins” as “assets” (between $200 and $1,500). After this, the Government destroyed some personal belongings, including an orange external hard drive. After retrieving his belongings after being released from prison, Prime never “reported to the government that one of the hard drives contained high-value bitcoins,” the appeals court ruled.
But years after his imprisonment he tells a different story: his orange external hard drive actually contained 3,443 bitcoins, the best-known and most valuable cryptocurrency on the market, worth $345 million at the current exchange rate. Prime claimed this sum of money from the US Government.
However, the Court of Appeals did not accept his request, since it concluded that his statements between his admission and his release from prison were contradictory. But above all, the court noted that “it was too late”since the hard drive no longer existed.
“We have no difficulty in concluding that the government would not have destroyed the hard drive if it had thought it contained millions of dollars in bitcoins,” the court continued, adding that “doubted” the existence of these cryptocurrencies. Prime was jailed for forgery and impersonation.
In 2019, the price of bitcoin was around $10,000, compared to approximately $100,000 earlier this month.
