TL;DR Breakdown:
- A computer programmer admitted losing access to his Bitcoin portfolio.
- He stored 7,002 BTC in a hard drive, which is worth over $200 million at today’s price.
Imagine rightfully owning over a hundred million dollars but unfortunately inaccessible because of the same security measure you took to safeguard it? Indeed, such scenarios can be frustrating. A computer programmer, Stefan Thomas, recently narrated a similar story to the New York Times, saying he lost access to his Bitcoin portfolio, which contained more than $200 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC), following the current price of the cryptocurrency.
Man locked out of his million-dollar Bitcoin portfolio
According to Thomas, he was opportune to receive payment in the cryptocurrency – about 7,002 BTC – over the recent years for his programming services. During that time, the price of Bitcoin wasn’t anywhere near its current price, around $33,900 on Coinmarketcap. Hence, he received a lot of cryptocurrencies. Unlike in other stories, where people who received BTC earlier regretted closing off their Bitcoin portfolio too soon, Thomas did otherwise. He planned on holding the cryptocurrencies for the long term.
To secure the Bitcoins, he reportedly moved the entire coins to an IronKey hard drive. Over the years, the cryptocurrency has seen an exponential kind of increase in value, and following the current price, Thomas’s Bitcoin portfolio should be worth around $237 million. Unfortunately, the computer programmer can’t access these funds since he lost the password to the hard drive housing the cryptocurrencies. The password was also written down on a paper, which has also gone missing.
Missing a lifetime payment in BTC
IronKey hard drives allow users to try entering a correct password ten times to encrypt the data stored on them. However, Thomas said he has already run out eight of it, remaining two. While commenting on this, he precisely: “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.”
If only these coins were accessible, Thomas would probably be able to retire early. Noteworthily, this comes as a reminder that although hard wallets grant cryptocurrency users full control of their holdings, it might also be a problem if the passphrase isn’t properly secured offline.
