That's crazy, but I bet it's a LOT more common than we think. It happens not just with Crypotos, but think about all the vinyl records, comic books, trading cards and even Beanie Babies that people have thrown away over the years that might have been worth thousands, tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand or more. To someone new to crypto currency, or not well versed in technology, like myself most of the time, they couldn't grasp what was going to happen to BTC, ETH, STEEM, or any of the other cryptos out there.

It's a missed opportunity, to be sure, but in my lifetime I missed Yahoo, Google and Amazon stock. I missed a house I could have flipped with my buddy and turned 100k profit in a year. I missed a year of blogging here because of stubbornness. It might be callus, but I don't feel a lot of remorse for your friends plight. We've all been there. Some of us learn, some of us wont ever learn.

I do hope he finds it though, it would be a life-changing sum of money if he manages to stumble upon the keys.