Coinbase Helps Durant Unlock Decade-old Crypto Wallet

Kevin Durant, two-time NBA champion and recognized investor, has just regained access to a Bitcoin wallet that had been inactive for nearly ten years. Created in 2016, at a time when BTC was trading around 600 dollars, this forgotten wallet illustrates the decisive role of time in the valuation of cryptos. Its reactivation reveals a spectacular gain : a 195-fold increase of the initial investment.

Kevin Durant regains access to his Bitcoin wallet after 10 years of inactivity

While Fidelity predicts that over 40 % of Bitcoins will soon become inaccessible, Rich Kleiman, longtime partner and friend of Kevin Durant, during a speech at the CNBC Game Plan Conference in Los Angeles, revealed the origins of their first foray into the crypto world.

He explains that it all started in 2016, during a birthday party organized by the famous venture capitalist Ben Horowitz. “That night, everyone was talking about bitcoin. We decided to open an account the next day on Coinbase“, Kleiman stated.

What they thought was a simple try turned into one of the most lucrative bets of their off-court career.

Durant then bought his first bitcoins at a price around $600 each. However, after this purchase, he lost access to his Coinbase account for nearly ten years, unable to retrieve his credentials. It was only in September 2025 that, with Coinbase support, he managed to regain access to his wallet. This recovery was publicly confirmed by Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase : “everything is fixed, the account was successfully recovered!”.

We got this fixed. Account recovery complete! https://t.co/TWYFpQkXsb

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) September 19, 2025

Here are the key facts to remember :

• The entry date into the bitcoin market : 2016, after an influential evening in Californian tech circles ;
• The estimated BTC purchase price at the time : around $600 ;
• The duration of Coinbase account inactivity : nearly 10 years ;
• The estimated return : +195x on the initial value, with BTC today close to $117,000.

This involuntary oversight, seemingly trivial, had a paradoxical consequence. Durant’s bitcoins, left intact despite market fluctuations, escaped any temptation to sell during moments of panic or euphoria. According to Kleiman, this might have been an unexpected advantage : “Being locked out maybe stopped us from selling too early”, he joked on stage.

A much deeper relationship with Coinbase and the crypto ecosystem

Beyond this spectacular episode, Kevin Durant’s story with cryptos goes beyond this anecdote.

In 2017, just one year after his first exposure to bitcoin, Durant and Rich Kleiman invested through their Thirty Five Ventures fund into Coinbase, becoming early institutional investors in the platform.

In 2021, Durant further strengthened this relationship by becoming an official brand ambassador, participating in several promotional campaigns for the platform. This involvement, much more strategic, demonstrates a desire to anchor in the digital economy long-term, far beyond the simple status of customer.

Such positioning is not isolated in the American sports landscape. Tristan Thompson has just launched a Web3 platform for his fans, while Spencer Dinwiddie had explored tokenization of his NBA contract as early as 2020.

Durant, for his part, seems to embody a generation of athlete-entrepreneurs who use their notoriety to invest in emerging technologies. Thus, this return of a wallet fallen into oblivion, although spectacular, crowns a discreet but coherent commitment, built over several years of active participation in the crypto universe.

Durant’s example reminds us of the importance of securely preserving credentials and the central role exchanges can play in managing these dormant assets. In the future, this episode could encourage platforms to reinforce their recovery solutions, while reminding new investors of the importance of good preservation practices, especially as the quantum threat grows more pressing every day.