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.
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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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on’t, please don’t, invest in this firm unless you can afford to have your money stolen from you with promises that it would be repaid when it matures, with interest, and then never returned. This is what occurred to me in this likely scheme: I received veiled warnings this year that this firm would be unable to repay me if my honest evaluation discouraged additional investment, but since they had no intention of repaying my life money, I might as well be honest now. In my case i stumbled on a post on quora about a Forensic company that helps people retrieve their bitcoin so i thought to give it a try and i had no regrets, you can send your questions to them on alienForensicc@ gmail com. There were no vague promises and i had zero regrets giving it a try. Don’t sweat it, you can still have your money retrieved from that fake investement site.
Please be wary of the many scam investment websites everywhere , i got scammed by a well articulated investment website . The whole plan they sell to you will sound so smooth and straightforward there will be no room for you to doubt it. I came to understand that cryptocurrency mining/ investment is a good one if you are in touch with the right investment team. I invested $12,000 which was in a series of payments in one of these websites. Crazy thing is that i monitored the profit and it was looking really transparent as I had a dashboard to monitor my investment but i got locked when i was about to withdraw and this gave room to more payments which they claim we’re taxes and were going to be added to what i will be receiving. I went searching online for a solution because they hit deep into my savings and i eventually met this team of experts that i got in touch via mail to help me handle recovery of my money. Support (@) recoverytemple . tech. I sent a mail to them and was able to get about 90% of what i lost in a little less than 3 days.
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])
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)y-hoo[com])