The owner had 10 USD in the standard wallet but substantial holdings in

Survives

Case description

A case documented by KeychainX in August 2022 described a client who had forgotten the passphrase to a hidden wallet on a Trezor hardware device. The owner had 10 USD in the standard wallet but substantial holdings in a passphrase-protected hidden wallet. Recovery required building custom GPU-accelerated brute-force tooling running 8 x 1080Ti graphics cards at 240,000 password attempts per second—1,000x faster than existing open-source tools. The recovery ultimately succeeded using hints provided by the owner.

Custody context

Stress condition	Passphrase unavailable
Custody system	Hardware wallet (single key)
Outcome	Survives
Documentation	Unknown
Year observed	2022
Country	International

Structural dependencies observed

Technical specialist required

Outcome interpretation

Access remained possible under the reported conditions.

Source

Publicly Reported

Evidence type

News article

Evidence link

https://btcnewsanalysis.com/2022/08/16/how-a-trezor-wallet-passphrase-taking-a-lifetime-to-brute-force-was-cracked-by-keychainx/

Related cases involving passphrase unavailable

217 cases involve passphrase unavailable 274 cases involve hardware wallet (single key) View archive statistics →

This archive documents observed custody survivability failures. It does not attempt to document all Bitcoin losses or security incidents. Submit a case

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Framework references

Where Bitcoin Custody Intersects Legal and Fiduciary Authority

Where custody creates gaps in estate planning, fiduciary duty, and professional responsibility.

Professional Scope Boundary Matrix

What each professional or product covers, what they do not, and where gaps form between them.

The Independent Assessment Layer in Bitcoin Custody

How independent diagnostic layers emerge when multiple parties depend on shared infrastructure.