A California man says he has lost the password to access $220 million in bitcoin and has two more chances before he loses access for good.
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Stefan Thomas sat down with the New York Times and explained his dire situation where he lost the passcode to his IronKey encrypted hard drive. So far, the programmer has tried to enter eight different passwords without any success and IronKey only allows ten attempts before it is locked forever. Thomas received his bitcoin as a gift back in 2011 after making an animated video about cryptocurrency.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,. Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
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A painful memory. I hope others can learn from my mistakes. Test your backups regularly to make sure they are still working. An ounce of foresight could have prevented a decade of regret.
That said, I’ll do what I always do which is focus on building things, e.g. @Interledger. https://t.co/pCgObeAf4Z
— Stefan Thomas (@justmoon) January 12, 2021
The story went viral on Twitter and as reported by the Independent, several users expressed empathy Thomas’s situation.
Stefan Thomas – the unluckiest (or luckiest) man on earth pic.twitter.com/H7GNzkeLRL
— @Ben (@benedictgershom) January 12, 2021
This is a wild, ‘buried pirate treasure’ type story! Also worth noting: the programmer, Stefan Thomas, was chief technology officer of Ripple, founded Coil, and owns enough not-lost bitcoin to make him very wealthy. He’ll be OK. https://t.co/wAHQFOfOZX
— Marley Jay (@MarleyJayBiz) January 12, 2021
make this into a movie where he has to retrace his steps from 10 years ago and reconnects with some long lost love that he thinks is the basis for the password but is not — he loses the money but gains something more
— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) January 12, 2021
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