There are not many good ways to lose $ 220 million, but this New York Times The article highlights a particularly notorious case – losing millions of dollars in bitcoins because you forgot your digital wallet password.
Stefan Thomas’ 7,002 bitcoins (worth approximately $ 220 million) are locked on an IronKey hard drive, according to NYTit’s Nathaniel Popper. The problem is that he cannot remember the password, and he is just two failed password attempts closer to losing them forever due to IronKey’s strict security protocols. there is the possibility of paying someone to break the drive, but Thomas would need the time and money to make that happen.
It’s a dark and comical scenario, and Popper’s story strikes all the cryptocurrency classics to help explain it. There is mention of the volatile nature of bitcoin’s value and the mysterious creator of the currency, but what the article makes incredibly clear is how common bitcoin loss is.
Two other people are highlighted in the story of Thomas’s misfortune, but it is a surprisingly common tale. Of the 18.5 million bitcoins currently in existence, about 20% (about $ 140 billion) are lost in inaccessible portfolios, writes Popper.
Other high-value wallets have been blocked in the past, with content ranging from $ 30,000 to $ 300,000, but Thomas’s story is a reminder of how persistent this problem is between bitcoin users and how expensive it has become. The secure and decentralized nature of bitcoin is great – until it clashes with simple human oblivion.
You can read the whole story here and appreciate how much bitcoin schadenfreude continues to generate.