Anthropic's Claude helped recover password to a Bitcoin wallet locked for more than 11 years

An AI assistant may have just solved one of crypto’s oldest nightmares — recovering access to a long-lost Bitcoin wallet. Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude reportedly helped an X user recover the password to a cryptocurrency wallet containing 5 Bitcoin after the owner had been locked out for 11 years. Claude was apparently used to assist in reconstructing possible password combinations that eventually helped unlock the wallet.

A pseudonymous X user who goes by the username “cprkrn” described in a post how he finally regained access to an old cryptocurrency wallet after being locked out for more than 11 years.

“HOLY FUCKING SHIT OMG CLAUDE JUST CRACKED THIS SHIT,” the user wrote in an X post tagging Anthropic and its CEO Dario Amodei.

Wallet had reportedly been locked since 2015

Cprkrn had previously posted in August 2023 saying the wallet was “locked” and that he could not access it. According to blockchain data, the wallet address starting with “14VJyS” had shown no movement of funds since 2015. After years of inactivity, the wallet suddenly became active again on May 13, suggesting the owner had finally regained access and moved the Bitcoin.

In the post, cprkrn said he had tried an enormous number of passwords over the years. A few weeks earlier, he found an old mnemonic phrase — also known as a recovery phrase or seed phrase — which he believed had once been connected to the wallet. However, at some point in the past, he had changed the wallet password, so the recovery phrase alone was not enough to unlock it.

“I tried like 7 trillion passwords lmfao. Found this old pneumonic a few weeks ago that ended up being the old password before I changed it,” he wrote in the post.

Cprkrn said he thought the crypto was permanently lost, but as a final attempt, he uploaded data from his old college computer into Claude.

“Thought I was screwed. Last ditch effort dumped my whole college computer into Claude,” he wrote.

According to the post, Claude searched through the old files and discovered an older wallet file that could still be unlocked using the mnemonic phrase recovered earlier. That combination finally gave him access to the wallet.

In another post, he also explained an important technical detail about how Bitcoin wallets work. He said that the actual Bitcoin private keys — the secret cryptographic codes that control access to the Bitcoin — remained the same over the years. What changed was only the encryption or password protecting those keys.

When he decrypted an old wallet backup using an older password he had recovered, the wallet revealed the exact same private keys that still controlled the Bitcoin in the current wallet. That is why he was finally able to access the funds.

“It found an OLD wallet file that the pneumonic successfully decrypted,” cprkrn added.

He also said he had spent around $250 on each Bitcoin when he originally bought them, but the holdings are now worth significantly more.

“Locked out 11+ years because I got stoned and changed the password. Spent $250 on each lol. HOLY FUCK,” cprkrn wrote.

Viral story sparks debate around AI and security

The online discussion around the recovered Bitcoin wallet became hugely popular, attracting more than 10 million views. As people followed the story, many began debating whether AI systems such as large language models — the technology behind chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT — could genuinely help recover access to old digital accounts, encrypted files, or forgotten passwords.

“How true could this be. If this is true then this is the end of Bitcoin. How can this be cracked so easily,” one X user wrote.

“This is the real demo. No benchmark. No leaderboard. Just a guy getting $K back that was locked for 11 years. Claude did code archaeology that no human had the patience for. That's product-market fit you can't fake,” another user wrote.

“Congrats bro, this is fckng insane. But this also says a lot about the future of security. Claude didn’t just brute force something, it reasoned through the actual decryption flow and uncovered the sharedKey + password implementation detail like a real security researcher. Big takeaway: AI is rapidly becoming capable of deep reverse engineering and crypto analysis, which means ‘hidden implementation details’ are becoming a much weaker security assumption moving forward,” another user wrote, highlighting the security implications.

Skepticism emerges around Claude’s role

Although many people online were excited by the story, others on X questioned whether Claude actually played as big a role in recovering the Bitcoin wallet as the viral posts suggested. Some users believed the internet discussion may have exaggerated the AI’s contribution to make the story sound more dramatic.

“Bro, if this is real, you're a genius! Although I'm afraid it's all fake,” one user wrote.

“Anyone who gets fooled into believing this can be wooed into voting Donald Trump for a third term,” another user wrote.