AI tool recovers lost Bitcoin wallet after 11 years of failed attempts

A crypto user known as @cprkrn just recovered 5 BTC, worth approximately $400K, after more than a decade of being locked out. The tool that finally cracked the case wasn’t some sophisticated hacking rig. It was Anthropic’s Claude AI, doing what amounts to very fast detective work on old computer files. The recovery happened around May 13-14, 2026, and the story spread quickly across X, Tom’s Hardware, and the Bitcoin Foundation. What actually happened Claude didn’t break Bitcoin’s cryptography. The AI analyzed files stored on @cprkrn’s old computer and located an encrypted wallet backup dating back to December 2019. It identified a critical bug in btcrecover, the open-source recovery tool that @cprkrn had been using for years. The software had already churned through 3.5 trillion password combinations without success. The bug was specifically in how it was combining shared keys and passwords. Once the bug was identified and fixed, the correct password combination finally worked. After 11 years of trying, the wallet opened. The “eight minutes” claim and what experts say Claims circulated that Claude Code identified the wallet vulnerability in eight minutes. Primary reports from the ...