Is the ninth time a charm? For Stefan Thomas, this is the $ 220 million question.
The San Francisco programmer, according to the New York Times, owns 7,002 BTCUSD bitcoins,
in a digital wallet that you can’t access because, well, you lost your password. He has tried to guess eight times to no avail. Now, you only have two more chances or your fortune will disappear.
The hard drive where your bitcoin is stored, known as IronKey, allows users 10 attempts to break the code before encrypting its contents forever. Understandably, it has been a stressful time for Thomas, who years ago lost the piece of paper with the password.
“I would stay in bed and think about it,” he told the Times in an interview. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I’d be desperate again.”
Thomas isn’t the only one who has a password away from the wealth of bitcoins. According to Chainalysis, about 20% of the existing 18.5 million bitcoins, valued at $ 140 billion, appear to be lost in digital wallets.
Like many bitcoin enthusiasts, Thomas was attracted to cryptocurrency in part because it was not controlled by a country or a traditional bank. Now, he’s having some thoughts. “This whole idea of being your own bank; let me put it this way, ‘Do you make your own shoes?’ He said, “The reason we have banks is that we don’t want to deal with all those things that banks do.”
But don’t feel too bad for Thomas. He has kept enough bitcoins to “give him more wealth than he knows what to do with,” the Times reported. He has also charged Ripple XRPUSD,
a cryptocurrency start-up he joined in 2012.
On Tuesday, in the last check, Bitcoin was trading above $ 34,000 and is now up around 320% over the past year, while the S&P 500 SPX,
has gained 17%.