Forgetting passwords can be quite a pain in the neck; sometimes it freezes us out of our bank accounts, at times it blocks us out of our social media accounts but never has it stressed us out like it has San Francisco-based programmer Stefan Thomas. If you think your passwords are important, then you can’t even begin to fathom the importance of remembering a password for Bitcoin investors like Thomas, whose entire future of becoming a bitcoin bigshot depends on remembering a security key. Stefan Thomas is stuck in a password dilemma that stands between himself and $220 million worth of Bitcoin that he is now unable to retrieve thanks to failed password attempts. Thomas was given around 7,000 of the coins by an early investor, making a video explaining the currency. Each of those coins is currently trading for over $30,000. Thomas has witnessed the rise of cryptocurrency and wanted to access his digital wallet. Sadly, he ended up with nothing but after eight incorrect guesses, and a gut-wrenching realization that he had forgotten his password and after 2 more incorrect guesses will lose all that wealth…forever! According to the New York Times, 18.5 million Bitcoin, which could currently be worth about $140 billion, is currently being held in lost or stranded wallets.
Thomas told the Times, “’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. I don’t want to be reminded every day that what I have now is a fraction of what I could have that I lost.” The dejected man has put the hard drive away in the hopes of finding another solution.
[Via: NY Times]
