In the words of Satoshi:

Unfortunately I had few wallets those were exposed on the web and I do not use them any more. There are some wallets that I deleted too long time ago too. I was not a bitcoiner at that time to be honest.

Anyway, I am 100% confident nothing is coming on my way :-P

We should probably make our own graveyard of old empty addresses and old priv keys, put it on some encrypted USB drive with a password in case of situations like this.
It's a lottery that may actually pay off.

Nice initiative since it's an honesty sign by pool owners.
I remember the same surprise/excitement with old bitcoin/ltc/doge address with balance on May 2014 since received some CLAMCOIN.
Unfortunately the price after some years has literally plummet and I haven't sold it before
Since this initiative made by CLAMS I decide to save/store each address in a dedicated hardware ...

just found this on some old wallet 

I always keep all information in printed form, and therefore any statements about my activities are kept in folders. If there were any wallets , then they still remain in my access, Even if I have not been using them for many years. no matter how much time has passed, any old wallet is practically a part of our work and very often pleasant surprises appear on such wallets, such as Livepeer Token (LPT), which was handed out for free a few years ago 2.26 tokens for each wallet and I received them for several of my wallets. And now the price of the token is almost $ 25.

Firstly thanks for your kind idea. But This is a matter of sorrow that in 2017 i lost my one wallet keys and after losing it i saw that a project distribute token. I lost 500$+. I was so sad for after this. Then i learn a lesson and keep my wallet key in safest place. Also i write down it in my diary.

Not sure if I should get frustrated for not having access to the first few wallets that I had back then or for not choosing Kano ^{[back in the day when I used to mine BTCitcoin]} as my preferred mining pool.
^{- Probably both [SMH]}

I was just about to wonder if people do delete there private keys and just when I was about to see reasons why, the explanation from OP just made the reasons useless.

This is what isn't been thought of by most users and besides, of what damage or what would it cost you to keep your wallet address and keys or seed phrase safe? Practically nothing. They don't occupy any space and besides, if properly filed, it could go in as the rest keys and be easily identified. So, it doesn't do any good to delete them.

Again, not just exchanges but, its also possible that, the signature campaigns one might have worked with in the past can also do this form of dust donations in the event of either an anniversary or a lot of profit and having your key or seed phrase with you could mean you making a few bucks. Though, I'm not an advocate of getting free stuff.

Sorry about your loss. These things happen from time to time. We just have to be more careful and apply caution before making any critical decision.


For the records, I've seen a couple of people that would readily delete their wallets when they're done with what ever they were doing with it especially those privacy-obsessed ones. While it doesn't answer the question directly, it goes to show people just want a clean slate every time. Another point to note is that it's often done by mistake. One time, I moved from a windows OS to a Linux distro forgetting to properly do backups.

I also don't see any point deleting wallets especially since it can still come in handy in the long run.