The ninth time it’s a charm? For Stefan Thomas, this is the demand of $ 220 million.
The San Francisco programmer, according to the New York Times, owns 7,002 bitcoin BTCUSD,
in a digital wallet he does not have access because he lost the password. He tried it eight times in vain. Now he has only two chances left, otherwise his fortune will disappear.
The hard drive where its bitcoin is kept, known as IronKey, allows users 10 attempts to crack the code before encrypting the content forever. It is understandable that it was a stressful time for Thomas, who lost the paper with the password years ago.
“I’ll 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 would not work, and I would be desperate again.”
Thomas is not the only one who has a password away from bitcoin wealth. According to Chainalysis, it appears that about 20% of the existing bitcoin of 18.5 million, worth 140 billion dollars, is lost in digital wallets.
Like many bitcoin enthusiasts, Thomas was established in part from the cryptocurrency because it was not controlled by a country or a traditional bank. Now he thinks. This whole idea of being your own couch – let me put it this way: ‘Do you make your own shoes? he said. “The reason we have banks is that we do not want to deal with all the things that banks do.”
But do not feel too bad for Thomas. He has kept enough bitcoin to ‘give more wealth than he knows what to do with’, the Times reported. He also paid in on Ripple XRPUSD,
a cryptocurrency startup he joined in 2012.
At the last survey on Tuesday, bitcoin traded more than $ 34,000 and is about 320% higher over the past year, while the S&P 500 SPX,
achieved 17%.