How do you track bitcoin ownership?

[disneysteve]

I have no intention of investing in bitcoin or anything similar but I'm curious about something.

A friend of mine posted the other day that he booted up an old computer and discovered a bitcoin wallet that he had forgotten about. He had 1/2 bitcoin in there. Obviously, that was a nice thing to find as it was worth very little at the time he acquired it but is now considerably more valuable.

So how do you track your holdings? I realize there's no bank or brokerage involved so does that mean there is no sort of statement or online place to log in and see what you've got? Or did he just manage to forget about it?

[Like2Plan]

I don't know the answer to your question, but you may find this link interestng:
Help Me [Recover] My Bitcoin!

Apparently, the fellow in the link above had some bitcoin and forgot the private key and as a result can not access his bitcoin. I hope your friend still has his private key.

[BigShow]

Now Bitcoin is very good. I would be happy if I found a Bitcoin wallet that I had forgotten about. I read about some guy who forgot the password to his wallet, and he has only 2 tries to get in, or millions of dollars would be erased. I would go mad if something like that happened to me. I am not sure that you can track it... People are doing a lot of bitcoin laundry, and it makes it impossible to really know the ownership of bitcoin. There are special tools to make all of your transactions anonymous, and anyone who is really serious about it is using those tools.

[James4]

You need to have your "seed". That's a bunch of words in a row that functions as a key to access our wallet.

Whoever has the seed is the owner of that portion of bitcoin.