Way back those years bitcoin isn't valued much by that time so it's okay for him not to recover that as no one expecting that bitcoin will be on this stage. And it's like the most popular problem before of those miners that has mined a lot of bitcoin, they want to store it for real but unluckily as they look for some security to their bitcoins, they are wiping out their storage upon backing it up and unfortunately, they aren't able to make one back up for it.
I think this guy should not take bitcoin seriously or we can say that bitcoin has a problem at that time. Maybe bitcoin having a technical problem so that the account of guy affected by that issue. We should not be conclude or judge about that issue instead we accept the things that even in the online transactions is not perfect.