SAN FRANCISCO — A California man used Anthropic's Claude AI to recover access to a Bitcoin wallet containing roughly five BTC — currently worth more than $400,000 — that had been locked for over 11 years after he forgot the password he changed while intoxicated, in a story that quickly went viral on social media and highlighted the growing role of artificial intelligence in personal finance and digital asset recovery.

The man, known on X as @cprkrn, posted a screenshot Wednesday showing his long-forgotten wallet address and the successful recovery, sparking widespread celebration and discussion across the crypto community. The wallet, 14VJySbsKraEJbtwk9ivnr1fXs6QuofuE6, had been dormant since around 2015 after he altered the password following a night of heavy cannabis use, leaving him unable to access the funds despite repeated attempts over the years.

In a detailed thread that has now been viewed more than 13 million times, @cprkrn explained how he tried approximately 3.5 trillion password combinations manually and through various tools without success. He eventually found an old mnemonic seed phrase in a college notebook but still could not locate the corresponding wallet file. In a last-ditch effort, he uploaded the entire contents of his old college computer to Claude, Anthropic's flagship AI model.

Claude identified an ancient wallet file buried in the backup data and successfully used the mnemonic to decrypt it, revealing the long-lost Bitcoin. The user immediately transferred the funds to a new, secure wallet after confirming access. "HOLY FUCKING SHIT OMG CLAUDE JUST CRACKED THIS SHIT," he wrote in the initial post. "THANK YOU @AnthropicAI THANK YOU @DarioAmodei NAMING MY KID AFTER YOU."

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