TL;DR: In 2013, WIRED magazine mined 13 Bitcoins—now worth over $800K—then destroyed the private keys to avoid ethical dilemmas. For journalism!
It All Started When
Back in 2013, WIRED magazine received a shiny new Butterfly Labs Bitcoin miner, a sleek, specialized piece of hardware designed to mint the crypto of the future. At the time, Bitcoin was still floating around $100, and the general public considered it digital Monopoly money for libertarian gamers.
WIRED’s editorial team, ever ahead of the tech curve, decided to document the mining process firsthand. They set up the miner, tracked performance, and within a short time, had amassed 13 Bitcoins. At 2013 prices, that was about $1,300—not exactly a windfall, but not chump change either.
Then came the moral dilemma. What does a respected journalism outlet do with a potentially valuable pile of unregulated, experimental currency sitting in a digital wallet?
Answer: they nuked it.
And Then
Concerned about conflicts of interest, WIRED’s editorial team made the boldest of ethical flexes:
They destroyed the private key to the Bitcoin wallet.
That’s right—they took the one piece of information required to access the funds and permanently deleted it, rendering the wallet and its contents inaccessible forever.
Why? Because WIRED believed that holding spendable Bitcoin could compromise their journalistic objectivity. Could they write a neutral piece about crypto if they had skin in the game? Would positive coverage create the perception they were pumping their own bags?
To avoid that slippery slope, they chose a move that even Satoshi might describe as “a bit much.”
Flash forward to today, with Bitcoin trading around $60,000–$70,000 per coin, and that now-lost wallet would be worth approximately $800,000–$900,000. That’s nearly a million dollars… ethically incinerated.
The crypto community reacted exactly as you’d expect.
“WIRED just pulled the most expensive Ctrl+Z in journalism history.” — @coincommentary
To their credit, WIRED has stood by the decision over the years, calling it “the most ethical crypto wallet ever created.” The only thing left of it now is a few old articles and a long-lost wallet address—digital driftwood on the blockchain.
Does This Deserve the HODLaward?
👍 Click to vote: Did WIRED earn eternal respect
🧨 Share with a friend who once burned a recovery phrase for a worthy cause
