There's something uniquely agonising about having your cryptocurrency stolen. All transactions are recorded on a digital ledger, known as a blockchain, so even if someone takes your money and puts it in their own crypto wallet, it is still visible online.
"You can see your money there on the public blockchain, but there's nothing you can do to get it back," says Helen, who lost around $315,000 (£250,000) to thieves.
She likens it to watching a burglar pile up your prized possessions on the other side of an impassable chasm.
For seven years Helen and her husband Richard (not his real name), both UK residents, had been buying and stacking up crypto coins called Cardano.
They liked the idea of investing in a digital asset that had the potential to rise dramatically in value, unlike funds saved in more conventional ways. They knew it was riskier, but they were careful to keep their digital keys safe.
But somehow hackers got into their cloud storage account, where they kept information about their crypto wallets and how to access them.
In February 2024, after a small test transfer, the criminals sent all the couple's coins to their own digital wallets in a swift and silent attack.
The couple then watched for months as their money was moved from one wallet to another, powerless to do anything. (The inherent contradiction with crypto currency is that all transactions are publicly trackable but users can be publicly untraceable if they choose.)
Helen and Richard are not wealthy. She is a personal assistant, he is a composer, and they had high hopes for their Cardano investments.
"We'd been buying these coins for so long... We used every scrap of money we could find to buy more," says Richard. "Aside from my parents' deaths, this theft is the worst thing to happen to me."
Ever since, Helen has been on a mission to recover their money. She obtained detailed reports from various police forces and the Cardano developers. Now, even though she has the wallet address of the criminals, there is nothing anyone can do to unmask them.
Their plan is to save up enough to engage private investigators to try to trace the hackers.
"It leaves you with a feeling of helplessness," she says, "but I am going to keep trying."
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