Another day, another dip

The crypto market has taken another hit, wiping out close to $1 billion in leveraged positions. Prices keep sliding, traders keep losing, and liquidations are going up.

But Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin? He is not talking about trading losses. His concern is something different – something quieter, often overlooked, yet just as damaging.

Crypto disappears in more ways than one. Not just through hacks, scams, or when one sells their spot to range-trade on leverage, but through simple, painful mistakes. A lost password, a broken hard drive, or a paper wallet that went up in flames.

Buterin points out that these losses often go unnoticed because there is no one to blame, no attacker to chase down. Victims tend to stay silent, ashamed, accepting that the responsibility lies entirely with them.

That is exactly the problem

The industry, Buterin argues, focuses so much on preventing theft that it neglects the other side of security – protecting users from themselves. A truly secure ecosystem should factor in loss, not just theft. That’s why he keeps advocating for social recovery solutions. It is a way to regain access, even when everything seems lost.

> Reminder: there’s also plenty of people who have lost huge amounts of crypto to loss rather than theft.
>
> Software bug, forgotten password, lost device, paper wallet burned down in LA fire, upgraded device without backing up data… lots of ways for that to happen.
>
> Because…
> — vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 28, 2025

The conversation caught fire. MetaMask’s official X account backed up Buterin’s stance, reaffirming that security needs to be the foundation of everything built in this space.

A Ripple developer known as Bias Goose acknowledged that while losing funds is sometimes inevitable, the current reliance on cold wallets and fireproof storage should not have to be the norm – but for now, it is.

Loss in crypto is not always about bad actors. Sometimes, it is about a misplaced backup, an unfortunate accident, or a system that was not designed to help people recover from the simplest mistakes.