A German programmer received some thousand Bitcoins in 2011 and is now sitting on cryptocurrency worth 222 million euros. But he has a problem: he forgot his password and is running out of attempts.
This is the situation: The German programmer Stefan Thomas now lives in San Francisco. In 2011, he received 7002 Bitcoins as a gift from an early Bitcoin fan. Thomas had created an explanatory video “This is a Bitcoin” on YouTube – the 7002 Bitcoins were the thanks for that. Back then, a Bitcoin was barely worth a US dollar.
Thomas put the Bitcoins on an Ironkey, an encrypted USB stick, wrote the password for the device on a piece of paper, but lost the paper already in 2012.
The Ironkey is designed so that you have 10 attempts to enter the correct password. By now, Thomas has already used 8 attempts. If he gets it wrong two more times, the Bitcoins are lost forever.
It gets crueler as 7002 Bitcoins would be worth 222,661,269 euros today.
This is what the man says: In an interview with n-tv, he says:
„When I originally found out that I no longer had access, I was pretty depressed for a couple of weeks. And then I had to remind myself that I earned the Bitcoins. You can of course sit there feeling depressed your whole life, but you can also look ahead and keep working and create new value.”
Stefan Thomas
Thomas explains that theoretically he has the possibility to access the Bitcoins by directly attacking the hardware. People who work in labs have already approached him several times about it. That is the option he still has. But essentially, he has made peace with the fact of having lost the Bitcoins.
As the New York Times knows, Thomas apparently does not need the millions all that urgently. After 2012, he managed to obtain some other Bitcoins whose passwords he could remember. In addition, he invested early in another cryptocurrency that has also increased in value.
Stefan Thomas claims to have more than enough wealth, so he can probably do without the 222 million euros in Bitcoins.
Twitter immediately knows the solution
This is how it is discussed. It is interesting that many people immediately have an idea of how the man could solve his problem:
- A user on Twitter recommends a shamanic journey. Because the mind can remember everything. There is also a recommendation for which crystal can help with memory
- A user recommends Thomas should just hire the best hacker in the world and promise him half of the loot
- One says: “If I had to remember a password worth that much, I would tattoo it on my butt”
In September 2020, we reported on MeinMMO about an incident where hackers stole the accounts of Call-of-Duty players. As a ransom, they demanded Bitcoins at that time – naturally.
Hackers hijack accounts in CoD MW and Warzone – Demand ransom in Bitcoins
