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A Porgrammer Has Two Guesses to Unlock Bitcoin Worth $240M

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BM.GE
14.01.21 14:30
1387
We've all been there - brain fog makes us forget our password and after eight frantic attempts, we have just two left.
 
That's the situation for programmer Stefan Thomas but the stakes are higher than most - the forgotten password will let him unlock a hard drive containing $240m (£175m) worth of Bitcoin.
 
His plight, reported in the New York Times, has gone viral.
 
Ex-Facebook security head Alex Stamos has offered to help - for a 10% cut.
 
Bitcoin has surged in value in recent months.
 
One bitcoin is currently worth $34,000.
 
But the cryptocurrency is volatile.
 
And experts are divided about whether it will continue to rise or crash.
 
Few dollars
 
Mr Thomas, who was born in Germany but lives in San Francisco, was given 7,002 bitcoins as payment for making a video explaining how cryptocurrency works more than a decade ago.
 
At the time, they were worth a few dollars each.
 
He stored them in an IronKey digital wallet on a hard drive.

And he wrote the password on a piece of paper he has lost.
 
Own bank

After 10 failed attempts, the password will encrypt itself, making the wallet impossible to access.
 
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the dilemma has put him off cryptocurrencies.
He told the New York Times: "The whole idea of being your own bank - let me put it this way, do you make your own shoes?"
 
"The reason we have banks is that we don't want to deal with all those things that banks do."