Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million. The New York Times reports:
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Bitcoin, which has been on an extraordinary and volatile eight-month run, has made a lot of its holders very rich in a short period of time, even as the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the world economy.But the cryptocurrency’s unusual nature has also meant that there are many people who are locked out of their Bitcoin fortunes as a result of lost or forgotten keys. They have been forced to watch, helpless, as the price has risen and fallen dramatically, unable to cash in on their digital wealth.
Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent — currently worth around $140 billion — appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis. Wallet Recovery Services, a business that helps find lost digital keys, said it has gotten 70 requests a day from people who want help recovering their riches, three times the number of a month ago.
Bitcoin owners who are locked out of their wallets speak of endless days and nights of frustration as they have tried to access their fortunes. Many have owned the coins since Bitcoin’s early days a decade ago, when no one had confidence that the tokens would be worth anything.
I loved reading this article because Mr. Into the FIRE is obsessed with crytocurrency and Bitcoin. He recommends investing in BTCE, and actually one of my sisters got me involved in Coinbase. If you can get a referral code for Coinbase, why not do it? (is my thinking). Because it’s just watching a few short videos and answering a few questions and you can get some cryptocurrency for free. 🙂 Thank you for sharing this article.
I lost my bitcoin to fake blockchain.com impostors on Facebook, they contacted me as blockchain official support and I fell stupidly for their mischievous act, this made them gain access into my blockchain wallet account, whereby 7.0938 BTC was stolen from my wallet in total. I was dumbfounded because this was all my savings I banked up on, waiting for bitcoin rate to improve. Then my cousin recommended me to an expert, I researched online and found the recovery expert , with the contact address- BLACKJOCKER10x AT PROTONMAIL DOT COM..
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Being a scam victim can depressing, you were given empty promises. They usually stop replying after achieving their aim with hurts even more, i have been there too as i was too ambitious and wanted financial security which made me invest a chunk of my life savings. I never thought i would be getting back a dime back and already lost hope until i contacted a PeePee which was just a leap of faith as i wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I was able to recover a significant part of my investment through this recovery expert. Do not brood alone, make a move too. Send a mail to ( Proxyphreak47 ((at)) gm IL)
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Last year December I was contacted by a broker who convinced me to invest into Cryptoallday. I made an initial investment of € 190,00 and they asked for € 14,500 more in order to access my withdrawal. I followed their instructions and made another deposit. For 2 months now I have been trying to contact Crypto-all-day but I got no response. I talked to my friends and colleagues about it and luckily for me a friend of mine just got out of a situation like that and introduced to a wealth recovery team that helped her during her investment problem, within 3 days of contacting them they were able to help me get 100% of my lost money back. They only got paid after the recovery and I had no problem with giving them 10% from the recovered funds after I got it back. You can reach out to them for more insight. Cryptomundia@yahoo[]comm….
Last year December I was contacted by a broker who convinced me to invest into Cryptoallday. I made an initial investment of € 190,00 and they asked for € 14,500 more in order to access my withdrawal. I followed their instructions and made another deposit. For 2 months now I have been trying to contact Crypto-all-day but I got no response. I talked to my friends and colleagues about it and luckily for me a friend of mine just got out of a situation like that and introduced to a wealth recovery team that helped her during her investment problem, within 3 days of contacting them they were able to help me get 100% of my lost money back. They only got paid after the recovery and I had no problem with giving them 10% from the recovered funds after I got it back. You can reach out to them for more insight. ((Cryptomundia(at)yahoo[com])
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 3.Romance scam
?? 4. Expertoption scam?? and any other kind of online investment? 
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You should also know that most of the recommendations you find online are not genuine.
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Please be aware that there are numerous bogus bitcoin mining/clouding operations out there; I was myself a victim, but I am now a qualified blockchain consultant and know better. The entire plan went off without a hitch, and I had no reason to mistrust it. Bitcoin is a terrific financial opportunity, but one thing I’ve learned through time is that mining bitcoin is not viable, so don’t be fooled. I put $450,000 into a website called 500 investment, watched the profits grow, then was informed I needed to register a new blockchain account to retrieve my money. The account was credited with a public wallet, and I was led to assume that this was my earnings. The bitcoin was designated as non-spendable, and it took me two years to be able to spend it. The bitcoin was marked as non-spendable, and it took me two years to gain access to it without the company’s knowledge. The non-spendable bitcoin is the current fraud, and many people are falling prey to it. After my gas fee for the triangulation went through, I found claimpayback.com after sending them a detailed mail together with transaction hashes and evidence on support@claimpayback.com on Reddit (a recovery specialist and Miner) who let me access a big portion of my investment as well as the proceeds from the scammers’ outsourced wallets.
Please be aware that there are numerous bogus bitcoin mining/clouding operations out there; I was myself a victim, but I am now a qualified blockchain consultant and know better. The entire plan went off without a hitch, and I had no reason to mistrust it. Bitcoin is a terrific financial opportunity, but one thing I’ve learned through time is that mining bitcoin is not viable, so don’t be fooled. I put $450,000 into a website called 500 investment, watched the profits grow, then was informed I needed to register a new blockchain account to retrieve my money. The account was credited with a public wallet, and I was led to assume that this was my earnings. The bitcoin was designated as non-spendable, and it took me two years to be able to spend it. The bitcoin was marked as non-spendable, and it took me two years to gain access to it without the company’s knowledge. The non-spendable bitcoin is the current fraud, and many people are falling prey to it. After my gas fee for the triangulation went through, I found claimpayback. com after sending them a detailed mail together with transaction hashes and evidence on support@claimpayback. com on Reddit (a recovery specialist and Miner) who let me access a big portion of my investment as well as the proceeds from the scammers’ outsourced wallets.
Many are usually reluctant in letting others know when they fall victim of scams. It’s that feeling of being considered greedy or being judged as silly that makes us suffer in silence. I was once there, however what i did differently was to speak out. I mean, i had already lost my savings to this online investment company, what else did i have to lose. I reached out to a friend of mine who mentioned he had read about a highly recommended company who offered deft recoup services. I googled them and sent them a mail through ( support @ reversalpro . com)The rest as they say is history, they recovered my money swiftly and expertly. I’m sharing this here because i know there are many like me who need help.
When one loses Crypto currency it can be a devastating experience, the fact that it is almost impossible to recover a Stolen or lost Crypto coin hurt more than anything. When a person get scammed of their money while investing in a crypto currency platform the only thing they can think of is how to report the company and get back their money.
Most victims of the scam contact their wallet account provider, their bank or the law enforcement, a few end up hiring a lawyer to sue the company but after all these stress they still cant get their money back.
Please everyone should be careful where they invest their money. Cryptocurrency has made many rich and at the same time made so many broke and desperate. Let me share my Crypto experience. Although I have been hearing about dogecoin since last year but I didn’t pay much attention because I was satisfied trading only my bitcoin until one of my friends showed me how much he already made investing in dogecoin. I was convinced and I decided to do more research and finally I invested several amount of money in a website I was referred to by my Friends. I signed up and I was sent a wallet address to make the payment. I purchased 3500000 dogecoin and I transferred 3000000 to their wallet address. Few days later their website was down and we discovered we have been scammed. Every effort to get back our dogecoin failed until few weeks ago when I was referred to Spycjonnes and I was able to get back all my dogecoin that was Stolen through their services. They won’t ask you to pay upfront for their services. If you want to recover your cryptocurrency that was stolen or lost I recommend you can search them on Google they are reliable and trustworthy. You can also contact them via Spycjonnes @ gmailcom . I wish you all the best .
We should really stop blaming victims by saying they were greedy, i wasn’t greedy and i am pretty smart but somehow i still fell victim and was only saved by reversalpro com. I was lucky but there are many other victims out there totally wiped out and helpless.
if your bitcoins have been stolen, you can try to recover them by following these steps:
1. Contact thehackerspro at support@thehackerspro.com and provide them with as much information as possible about the theft.
2. They may be able to help you track down the thief and retrieve your bitcoins.
3. If they are not able to help you, you can try to file a police report and see if they can help track down the thief that way.
4. You can also try to contact other bitcoin users who may have been affected by the theft and see if they are willing to help you track down the thief.
I was scammed of my NFTs and ETH on Alpha Kongs club on discord after a fake moderator send me a link via dm.
I was able to recover my NFTs and ETH after I reach out to the admin of the website hacksandrecovery⚫️net and I provided all the scam details to them. You can visit the website too if you are a victim of any scam
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i lost my bitcoin because i fell victim to a spam email encouraging me to invest in a bitcoin company that was going to yeild 100% profits in 2 months,so i invested $5000 ,when it was time to withdraw my funds ,they asked me to pay $2000o unlock my money which i did,i kept paying the fees they requested for until i could no longer take it,i got introduced to an hacker who’s so good in hacking and bitcoin recovery by my friend,i decided to take the risk and contacted them I was able to recover my funds and to my greatest surprise i had my funds handed to me within 4working days you can contact him via email SPYTECHTEAM49(@) gmail com
How this site helped me in recovery my stolen crypto currency coins and tokens from telegram scammers: People all across the world are hearing about the quick profits that early Bitcoin and other coin investors are making and want to get in on the action. But be aware that where there is big money, there are other companies who are abusing and exploiting the situation. In my case, a phoney telegram group admin contacted me and sent me a phishing link with my 12-character recovery phrase. These nefarious individuals obtained access to my cryptocurrency wallet and stole all of my coins and tokens, totaling more than $ 730,000. I was in great despair due to this situation, I was confused till I saw a few comments about SPYTECH , I sent them a mail . This recovery company is really God sent. After relating all of my predicaments, details of incidence and necessary requirements for my recovery program, it took them less than a week to track and recover all of my tokens and coins back. You can send them message via Gmail SPYTECHTEAM49 ((AT))GMAIL {}COM
I lost a huge chunk of my inheritance funds to some unscrupulous crypto investment platforms whom I got their reviews on Reddit I gave them a try after days of luring me to invest with them I finally invested and after few days I could not reached them through their website, emails and contact number I was depressed and in a sad situation this was a test of time for me as I do not know a way out to get back to my feet. Few weeks after I was going through the internet and I read reviews about a legitimate recovery firm at ( F U N D R E S T O R E R ((at))gmail[]c0m) who I wrote after checking their website at ( F U N D R E S T O R E R ▪️C O M) and reading testimonies of their past client whom they assisted to recover their losses. I reached out to them and they helped me restore my funds completely without hassle or several charges this was the best service I had in a while. Reach out to them now for an amazing assistance