[vhfpmr (OP)]

The story about the guy who accidentally threw his laptop away with millions in bitcoin on it is still running. Is it really true that you can't recover your money without a working hard drive, and if so how could anyone be so stupid as to design or invest in such a system?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0r0dvgpy0o

[evan_au]

Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 hash algorithm to map ("Hash") from the user's private key to the public identifier on the blockchain.
- If you lose the private key, you have to guess a 256-bit number, which will take about 10⁷⁷ hashes, far beyond the capability of today's computers.
- But if you could do that, you could steal anyone's Bitcoins.
- Wikipedia gives a few examples of people losing their private key.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Addresses_and_transactions

The world workforce of Bitcoin miners is currently increasing the rate of hashes, at an exponential rate. Back in 2017, they were doing 10¹⁹ hashes per second. Now it looks like 10²¹, see graph here:
https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/hash-rate

[vhfpmr (OP)]

So are you saying that it's a key that could have been written on a piece of paper that's been lost, and not a hard drive as the media stories say?

[Petrochemicals]

Yes, 20 percent of all bitcoin have been lost from a finite supply, which is why bitcoin is infeasable, along with unregulated currency, you end up with a supply problem one way or the other.