Investor Cannot Remember Which Of His 47 Wallets Contains His Life Savings

A cryptocurrency investor who distributed his holdings across forty-seven separate wallets as a security measure has been unable to determine which wallet contains the majority of his life savings for the past three weeks. Duncan Shard, 44, created the multi-wallet system in 2021 after reading a forum post about the dangers of keeping all digital assets in a single location. He describes the strategy as "military-grade operational security" that has "worked perfectly in every respect except the one that matters." "The idea was that if any single wallet was compromised, the attacker would only get a small fraction of my holdings," Shard explained. "The flaw in this plan is that I am also unable to access more than a small fraction of my holdings." Shard's wallet infrastructure spans six hardware devices, twelve software wallets, four exchange accounts, and twenty-five paper wallets stored in various locations including a safety deposit box, his mother's attic, a hollowed-out copy of "The Art of War," and what he believes is either his office desk drawer or his storage unit but he cannot recall which. He maintained a master spreadsheet linking each wallet address to its contents and location, which was stored on a laptop that died in October. The laptop's hard drive is encrypted. The encryption key was stored in a password manager. The password manager's master password was written on a piece of paper that Shard is "80 percent sure" is inside the hollowed-out copy of "The Art of War," but upon checking, he found only the seed phrase for a wallet containing 0.003 ETH. "I have essentially built a puzzle that I cannot solve," Shard admitted. "I am both the architect and the victim of my own security infrastructure." Shard's wife has suggested he "just use a bank." He has described this suggestion as "missing the point entirely" while conceding that he can, at present, access approximately $340 of his estimated $190,000 in holdings.