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One programmer based in San Francisco is technically a millionaire, thanks to Bitcoin. However, he has yet to reap the rewards of his earnings because he lost the password to a hard drive that contains the keys to his Bitcoin wallet.
Stefan Thomas, who hails from Germany, spoke of how he became consumed with trying to unlock the hard drive called an IronKey, as per a report from the New York Times last Jan. 12.
The hard drive has the keys to the wallet which contains 7,002 Bitcoin, worth over $250 million as of writing. He received the amount in 2011 as payment for making an animated video titled “What is Bitcoin?”
The IronKey allows users to have 10 guesses before it encrypts its contents forever. Thomas unfortunately lost the paper which has the password and has tried his eight most used passwords to no avail.
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“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” he recalled. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Though Bitcoin appealed to him because it could not be controlled by a company or country, it seems he now has a better appreciation for traditional banking.
