Stefan Thomas has forgotten his Bitcoin password that will unlock a fortune worth $220 million (Rs 1,800 crore). He has just two attempts left to guess the password.
San Francisco: Ever forgotten your password and after eight desperate attempts left with just two? Stefan Thomas, a German programmer based in San Francisco, cannot remember the password to unlock his Bitcoin fortune worth $220 million (Rs 1,800 crore).
Thomas was given 7,002 bitcoins as payment for making a video explaining how cryptocurrency works over a decade ago. At that time, bitcoins were worth a few dollars. However, their value has surged in the recent months and one Bitcoin is currently worth $34,000.
Thomas had stored the bitcoins in an IronKey digital wallet on a hard drive and written the password on a piece of paper he lost. After 10 failed attempts, the password will encrypt itself and the wallet will be impossible to access. Thomas has just two attempts left.
It has been nine years since he first realised that he was locked out of his account. "There were sort of a couple weeks where I was just desperate, I don't have any other word to describe it. You sort of question your own self-worth. What kind of person loses something that important?" he told ABC7 News.
However, he said, "time heals all wounds," adding that he has "made peace" with his loss.
"It was actually a really big milestone in my life where, like, I sort of realized how I was going to define my self-worth going forward. It wasn't going to be about how much money I have in my bank account," he said.
Thomas would not be the first potential Bitcoin millionaire to be locked out of his account. According to cryptocurrency-data company Chainanalysis, about $140 billion worth of Bitcoin is lost or left in wallets that cannot be accessed. [Reply]
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
I was in tech early. I tried to convince my wife to buy up domains. At the time it cost $75.00 to park a domain name. The .com wasn't a for sure thing at the time. Most thought it was going to be .biz
I could have had furniture.com which sold for a couple of million later. All the major cities. San Fran, LA etc. Travel.com. Hotel.com it was all there.
We didn't have much money at the time, in fact were below the poverty line and the wife shot down my "bad idea" to waste money on a gamble. I give her shit about it every chance I get.
A group of friends and I thought about doing that in the early 90's. Just never materialized. [Reply]
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
I was in tech early. I tried to convince my wife to buy up domains. At the time it cost $75.00 to park a domain name. The .com wasn't a for sure thing at the time. Most thought it was going to be .biz
I could have had furniture.com which sold for a couple of million later. All the major cities. San Fran, LA etc. Travel.com. Hotel.com it was all there.
We didn't have much money at the time, in fact were below the poverty line and the wife shot down my "bad idea" to waste money on a gamble. I give her shit about it every chance I get.
I missed out on that golden opportunity as well BRC.
Originally Posted by SupDock:
Do you think he could auction off the device and remaining password tries?
That's what I would go for if I really felt like I was out of hope to solve it on my own.
I'd be afraid some dumbass would say he could solve it and fail and then I would be left with nothing
I have no idea what an ironkey digital wallet costs but I know what a hard drive costs. For 200 million, I'm buying another one and setting a hard password and they'd have to crack that one before they touch my 200 million dollar drive. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ChiliConCarnage:
I have no idea what an ironkey digital wallet costs but I know what a hard drive costs. For 200 million, I'm buying another one and setting a hard password and they'd have to crack that one before they touch my 200 million dollar drive.
On that note, I'd be surprised if the people who designed the digital wallet don't have some backdoor way to get in there. Give them a million dollars and I bet they'd do it. [Reply]
Originally Posted by htismaqe:
A group of friends and I thought about doing that in the early 90's. Just never materialized.
Originally Posted by neech:
I missed out on that golden opportunity as well BRC.
The golden goose got away.
We could all see it coming. But, it wasnt a for sure thing. So soon VC's and the rich were buying it all up.
Everyone also saw that the first place to allow people to upload videos for free would be the big dog on the internet. It was going to cost a lot of money though for servers, maintenance and bandwidth. So the VC's ended up backing youtube
First search company to give you results without allowing companies to pay to get to the top was going to end up with all the business.
For those that come along after, you'd do a search for good deals on tires. whoever paid the most money to Yahoo etc. got to be at the top of the results. Then Google decided to label advertisements and give you the real results. Immediately they were the big dog. [Reply]
