Everything is fine in this story, especially the last paragraph:

Mark, I can say, was lucky. He might have been without his bitcoins because of his own carelessness, but he managed to get them back. The fact is that in 2016, he invested several thousand U.S. dollars in bitcoins, after which with the rise of the exchange rate began to make a profit. Mark spoke to experts and he was advised to keep his cryptocurrency on a hardware wallet, which was subsequently bought for $100.

To better protect his coins, he came up with a PIN code and a 24-word password that is needed to restore access to the funds if needed. Mark recorded all the data on a sheet of paper. But this sheet turned out to be thrown into the garbage by overly active cleaners.

At first, the owner of the hardware wallet did not consider this a problem, but then realized that he could not remember the pin. First he tried to recall it himself, then contacted the support service of the company that produces the wallets. He even turned to hypnotists, believing that they would help restore the code.

Eventually everything ended well. Mark was helped by a 15-year-old hacker. He understood the design of hardware wallets and found a way to restore access.