Left out
With recent spikes in the price of Bitcoin, an unfortunate phenomenon is occurring: people who have amassed huge fortunes in the cryptocurrency are realizing that they have long since lost the passwords to their encrypted digital wallets.
Take Stefan Thomas, a programmer in San Francisco, who told us The New York Times that he’s tucked away 7,002 Bitcoin – currently worth about $ 236 million, nearly a quarter of a billion dollars – but has no idea how to access it and can only guess two passwords before being locked out forever.
Even beyond the long-term outlook for crypto, the main message of these horror stories is that taking digital finances into your own hands is a huge risk if you can’t manage your passwords.
Crypto startups
The problem of buying or mining cryptocurrency and then forgetting how to access it is so widespread that a whole industry is emerging for cybersecurity experts who can help the potentially wealthy actually access their fortunes after they have their passwords. Have forgotten.
“Even sophisticated investors have been completely unable to perform any kind of private key management,” said Diogo Monica, co-founder of the crypto security startup Anchorage. NOW.
Great exit
For Thomas and others in his situation, having millions of dollars just out of reach has soured the whole idea of decentralized currencies like Bitcoin, according to the NOW.
“This whole idea of being your own bank – let me put it this way: ‘Do you make your own shoes?'” NOW. “The reason we have banks is we don’t want to deal with all the things that banks do.”
READ MORE: Lost passwords lock millionaires out of their Bitcoin fortunes [The New York Times]
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