One reason NBA star Kevin Durant is holding onto his bitcoin: He can't get into his Coinbase account
By Weston Blasi'It's in the cloud,' Durant joked - and he's not the only one with a lost bitcoin walletKevin Durant says he has been locked out of his crypto wallet for years.NBA megastar and Coinbase investor Kevin Durant has been sitting on his bitcoin investment for a decade. Too bad he can't actually access it.While speaking at CNBC's "GamePlan25" panel this week, Durant and his business manager Rich Kleiman told the story of how they first got into bitcoin (BTCUSD) around the time when Durant signed with the Golden State Warriors nearly a decade ago.Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and a big Warriors fan, hosted a birthday dinner for Durant at the time. The whole Warriors team came, and the digital currency was apparently a hot topic. "And at the end of that night I was like 'Kevin, I just heard the word bitcoin 25 times this evening,' and the next day we started investing in bitcoin," Kleiman said, while sitting with Durant on the panel.Problem is, their investment is currently untouchable. "We've yet to be able to track down his Coinbase account information, so we've never sold anything, and his bitcoin is through the roof," Kleiman said. "We can't get the password. It's just insane.""It's in the cloud," Durant joked about his Coinbase (COIN) password. Kleiman said they'll get it eventually."There's just a process that we haven't been able to figure out," he added. "But bitcoin keeps going up, so what's the problem? It's only benefited us" to hold onto it.Indeed, not being able to make any crypto transactions has only helped their holdings grow in value. The two said they first bought bitcoin around 2015, but did not give further details on their investment amount. But consider this: The price of bitcoin was just $320.43 on Jan. 1, 2015. And it's gone up over 36,000% since that time, and now sits just above $117,000 as of Thursday.So how can somebody lose their bitcoin - let alone a famous athlete who's a Coinbase investor? While the nature of Durant's bitcoin investment through his Coinbase account is not known (like if his holdings were stored on the exchange or in a Coinbase wallet), this is more common than you might think. There have been several other high-profile cases of people being locked out of accessing their crypto because they lost their wallet and don't recall their passwords.One now-famous lost crypto wallet belongs to James Howells, a U.K. resident who claims he accidentally threw away a hard drive containing around $800 million worth of bitcoin in 2013 when he was cleaning his house. Howells said at the beginning of this year in a post on X that he's even considering buying the landfill that his hard drive is buried within, in hopes of digging it up again.While the exact figures are not known, David Siemer, chief executive of Wave Digital Assets, a digital-asset management firm based in California, told MarketWatch he estimates that roughly 25% of all bitcoins that have ever been mined have been lost. It's mainly due to the losses of physical hard drives, computers and physical storage drives in the early days of bitcoin. "There are a couple of huge [lost] wallets out there," he said.And his thoughts on Durant's locked bitcoin? "His business manager is a bit lazy," he said. "They probably just haven't tried very hard. If they were truly worried about it, you could probably solve this in a week.""I think they are having a bit of fun with it," he added.Siemer admitted it is a time-consuming and annoying process to retrieve your lost password on crypto exchanges. "It will take you hours and weeks to get it back," he said. "It's a centralized company, this happens. [But] as long as they go through all these logical steps of verification, they will get the account back."See: 'I am highly alarmed by the proposed changes to retirement accounts': I don't want bitcoin or private equity in my 401(k). What can I do?"While we don't comment about specifics of customer accounts, we can confirm we are in touch with this customer," Coinbase told MarketWatch when asked about Durant. "If a customer has lost their password they can reset it using our self-services tools within the app, and our support team is available 24/7 to guide users through this process."Durant's manager Kleiman wrote to MarketWatch over email that, "We've already been working directly with the Coinbase team on Kevin's account recovery, which is why it was easy for me to make a joke about it on stage. It was a user error on our end and the process has been clear from the jump. Our partnership spans nearly a decade and Coinbase has been a valuable resource in growing our business."Durant, who was acquired by the Houston Rockets this offseason, has been touted as a savvy investor. Among his investments are Coinbase, Postmates and the women's soccer team Gotham FC.Read on: NFL star Odell Beckham Jr. cheers bitcoin's all-time high after taking his 2021 salary in the crypto. Here's what it's worth now.-Weston BlasiThis content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.