Man has two guesses to unlock bitcoin worth $240m

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.

Man has two guesses to unlock bitcoin worth $240m

Holy Bejesus. Can you imagine having 240 million dollars stuck on an encryption key with only two tries left to open it!


I would be sick.

On a side note, WHY didnt I buy a couple back in the day! DAMMIT. I coulda been rich!

a reply to: lakenheath24

I read this the other day. In hindsight, I would engage an expert hacker, they get in, they get half, eddie.

a reply to: lakenheath24

Then there's a guy in Wales managed to throw out a pen-drive with £200M of BitCoin on it. He knows they use a grid reference and codes for the landfill and he believes he can work out where it's buried and has offered the local council £50M if they help him find it.

This is the kind of thing I would do with my ADHD brain...

originally posted by: lakenheath24
On a side note, WHY didnt I buy a couple back in the day! DAMMIT. I coulda been rich!

Because if I put money into every new thing with a funny name that came along, it’d take that $240 mil hit to break even.

For unlocking it they should do a game show, with clock music and the crowd screaming, just in case this wasn’t stressful enough!

a reply to: lakenheath24

If I was in his situation, I would go to a hypnotist and try to recover the password through hypnosis.

a reply to: lakenheath24

I read the other day that he is not alone...

$140 billion is floating around on lost password accounts...lol

Peace

luckily, my cash, silver and gold don't require electricity, internet access and passwords.

a reply to: lakenheath24

Even in 2010, there were numerous methods available that he could have kept the pass phrases other than on a piece of paper...in a coded email note, in a flash drive with other personal documents kept in a safety deposit box, on an external hard drive, even in an app on an old and unused phone.

Now he may not have though much about the price of BTC in 2010, but by the beginning of 2013, it was around $13.50...or almost $100,000. By October 2013, it hit $100, or around $700,000. It was also more broadly known about by then.

It didn't say when he lost the paper, but this is clearly on him.

a reply to: Sublimecraft

Is the next episode in this fable the one where Mr Thomas offers to sell the drive for $12M?

Pretty good return of 20:1 for a few hours work.

I'll settle for the movie rights tho.

a reply to: lakenheath24

It will sot you $38,000 for 1 bitcoin today.

I think it will soon come crashing down because no person will be buying at that rate.

Sounds like something my dumbass would do.... put a few grand in an account and forget the password.

Seems like their would be a better way to access the coins but I guess the security is needed. I am still not convinced about crypto regardless of the insane valuations.

a reply to: lakenheath24

Well, at least his money is safe.

That's what I tell people who lose their safety deposit box keys when they ask about how much it costs to drill their box. I let them know that at least their stuff is safe, hehe, it always gets a laugh right before I drop the $250 drill cost on them.

originally posted by: Edumakated
Sounds like something my dumbass would do.... put a few grand in an account and forget the password.

Seems like their would be a better way to access the coins but I guess the security is needed. I am still not convinced about crypto regardless of the insane valuations.

I didn't do anything like that, but Binance is starting to give you a message on sign-in that US customers can't use their platform. I had to quickly get a Binance.US account and transfer the holdings. Would have sucked if I would have lost them. I only had VeChain there, but it's still around $5k.

a reply to: lakenheath24

This guy is about to have the IRS knocking at his door and he can’t even access the money...lol

originally posted by: Bunch
a reply to: lakenheath24

This guy is about to have the IRS knocking at his door and he can’t even access the money...lol

Actually..if the IRS wants the taxes they can hack it open for him. win win lose win.

I read that, can you imagine! I wouldnt be asking permission I tell ya that!


a reply to: djz3ro