Ninth time is a charm? For Stefan Thomas, that’s the $ 220 million question.
The San Francisco programmer owns 7,002 bitcoin BTCUSD, according to the New York Times,
in a digital wallet that he cannot access because he has forgotten the password. He tried to guess it eight times to no avail. Now he only has two chances, otherwise his fortune will run out.
The hard drive on which his bitcoin is kept, known as IronKey, offers users 10 tries to crack the code before its content is forever encrypted. Understandably, it was a stressful time for Thomas, who lost the piece of paper with the password years ago.
“I would just lie in bed and think about it,” he told the Times in an interview. “Then I would go to the computer with a new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Thomas isn’t alone in being password-removed from the wealth of bitcoin. According to Chainalysis, about 20% of the existing 18.5 million bitcoin, worth $ 140 billion, appears to be lost in digital wallets.
Like many bitcoin enthusiasts, Thomas was drawn to the cryptocurrency in part because it was not controlled by a country or a traditional bank. Now he has some reservations. “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 we don’t want to deal with all the things that banks do.”
But don’t feel too bad for Thomas. He has enough bitcoin in his hands to “give him more wealth than he knows what to do with it,” reported the Times. He has also cashed in on Ripple XRPUSD,
a cryptocurrency start-up he joined in 2012.
On last check Tuesday, bitcoin was trading above USD 34,000 and is now up about 320% from the last year, while the S&P 500 SPX,
has won 17%.