LHV Bank founder loses $45 million Ethereum ICO address private key: seeking kind-hearted individual to recover wallet

Coinbase's product lead Conor tweeted this morning, revealing that he participated in the Ethereum ICO 14 years ago but has not sold the 250,000 Ether obtained since. The whale address is presumed to be owned by Rain Lohmus, the founder of the Estonian bank LHV. However, Conor has lost the private key and is actively seeking assistance from professionals, stating his willingness to share the tokens in the wallet.

Participated in Ethereum ICO but Lost Private Key

Conor speculated that an address 0x2B6e... that has never conducted any transactions and is currently worth around $450 million belongs to Rain Lohmus, the founder of LHV Bank.

One mystery solved: This address (which now holds $450M of crypto) belongs to Rain Lohmus, founder of LHV Bank

Unfortunately he lost his keys and can't access these 100s of millions. If you can help him recover them somehow, he's willing to split them with you https://t.co/wYLAU9gKzb pic.twitter.com/0A1nIjFSyn

— Conor (@jconorgrogan) November 6, 2023

However, Conor also stated that Lohmus may no longer be able to access the up to 250,000 ether in the wallet:

Unfortunately, he has lost the private key and cannot access this multi-billion-dollar asset. If you can help him recover these assets in any way, he would be happy to share the funds with you.

Currently, addresses search tools like Etherscan have prominently flagged this address.

Rain Lohmus: Recover Wallet, Share Reward

A similar account comes from Rain Lohmus in an interview with Estonian Public Broadcasting ERR on the 31st, where Lohmus allegedly stated that he bought some cryptocurrency in the early days of Bitcoin, an investment that was almost equal to the total value of his LHV stock portfolio at the time.

However, he also admitted to losing control of the private key to the wallet:

I have a wallet with about 250,000 ether, this is not a secret, and I can't retrieve the private key. If someone believes they can help me recover the wallet, I will consider all their proposals.

He also expressed concerns about this phenomenon, pointing out that even in the perfect decentralization of cryptocurrency, there are many unnoticed risks:

Losing passwords is common for me. In daily life, government agencies or police can help me reset or find passwords, but this is not the case in the world of cryptocurrency, which lacks this convenience and may lead to serious crises as a result.

It is worth noting that Lohmus does not seem to show any anxiety or regret about the $75,000 he invested, or even the current $450 million wallet. Throughout the interview, he spoke calmly about everything.

Lost Ether Exceeds $1.73 Billion

Conor has updated his statistics on this information, stating that the total ether permanently lost has now reached at least 909,800 coins, worth over $1.73 billion, accounting for over 0.75% of the current circulating supply.