Forgotten password stands between San Francisco man and $240M Bitcoin fortune
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(NEXSTAR) – There’s a password San Francisco programmer Stefan Thomas probably should have remembered, and it’s between him and $ 240 million.
Thomas is holding a small hard drive called IronKey that contains the keys to a digital wallet containing 7,002 Bitcoin, the New York Times reported Tuesday. That equates to exactly $ 242,546,164.27.
But Thomas can’t figure out the password – and he only has two more chances to get it right. The IronKey allows users only ten guesses.
Thomas said he lost the paper with the password on it years ago. He has already tried eight of his most frequently used passwords.
“I just lay in bed and thought about it,” Thomas told the Times. “Then I would go to the computer with a new strategy and it wouldn’t work and I would be desperate again.”
On Twitter, Thomas called the saga “a painful memory” and said he hoped “others can learn from my mistakes”.
“Test your backups regularly to make sure they are still working. An ounce of foresight could have prevented a decade of regret, ”he said.
A painful memory. I hope others can learn from my mistakes. Test your backups regularly to make sure they are still working. An ounce of foresight could have prevented a decade of regret.
That said, I’ll do what I always do, which is focus on building things, like @Interledger. https://t.co/pCgObeAf4Z
– Stefan Thomas (@justmoon) January 12, 2021
About 20 percent of existing Bitcoin appear to be in “lost or otherwise stranded wallets,” the Times reported. That’s around $ 140 billion.
A single bitcoin is worth more than $ 34,600 at the time of writing, although the value fell earlier this week.
On Monday, Bitcoin fell more than 10 percent from the previous day. The cryptocurrency has risen over 300 percent in the past 12 months.
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