Kevin Durant’s Bitcoin Rises as Account Remains Locked

New Houston Rockets star Kevin Durant spent years locked out of a Coinbase account holding Bitcoin he began buying during his Golden State Warriors stint—an access snafu that inadvertently turned him into a long-term holder as prices climbed.

His agent and business partner, Rich Kleiman, recounted the saga on Sept. 16 at CNBC’s Game Plan conference in Los Angeles, saying the pair “never sold anything” because they couldn’t retrieve the login, an error he called “purely user” related.

According to NBC News, Kleiman addressed the situation on Sept. 16 at CNBC’s Game Plan conference in Los Angeles. “We’ve yet to be able to track down his Coinbase account info, so we’ve never sold anything, and this bitcoin is just through the roof.

It’s just a process we haven’t been able to figure out, but Bitcoin keeps going up…so, I mean, it’s only benefited us.”

Durant’s crypto curiosity dates to 2016, when a dinner conversation pushed him and Kleiman to start buying Bitcoin, then trading in the hundreds of dollars. With Bitcoin recently hovering around six figures, those idle coins swelled in value while they worked with Coinbase on recovery.

“To protect individual investors of all races over the long term, the government needs to strictly regulate crypto in the public interest. (The current lack of regulation is helping to keep digital-currency speculation separate from the traditional financial system.

Congress passing industry-friendly crypto rules would in some ways be the worst of both worlds.) Black families also need better pathways to building wealth, ones supported by broad government investment.”

In the days after Kleiman’s remarks, outlets reported that Coinbase confirmed Durant had finally regained access to the account, underscoring both the platform’s strict security and the costly reality of forgotten credentials in crypto.

Durant’s experience also lands amid renewed debate about who wins and loses in crypto cycles. Analysts such as Cornell’s Eswar Prasad have long warned that volatile digital assets can enrich sophisticated investors while exposing retail buyers to outsized risks.

And reporting on Black investors shows many entered late in prior booms and suffered steep drawdowns when markets cracked, making Durant’s story the exception, not the rule.