A German programmer, based in San Francisco, has already used up to eight of his 10 password attempts to unlock the hard drive containing the private keys of his Bitcoin wallet, which contains 7,002 Bitcoin (BTC). At press time, those holdings would be worth $ 268 million, that is, if only they were accessible.
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As described in a New York Times profile on January 12, Stefan Thomas was using a hard drive called the IronKey, but lost the paper that he wrote the device password on "years ago." If Thomas does not remember, 10 unsuccessful attempts will result in the drive encrypting its contents forever. So far, he has made eight unsuccessful attempts.
“I would lie on the bed and think about it. Then he went to the computer with a new strategy, and it didn't work, and he was desperate again. "
Nearly 20% of all existing bitcoins (18.5 million BTC) are believed to have been lost forever, in so-called "stranded" wallets, according to data from Chainalysis. Thomas is not alone in his self-declared despair: Los Angeles businessman Brad Yasar told the Times that over the years "I'd say I've spent hundreds of hours" trying to get into inaccessible wallets.
Yasar has stored his hard drives "in vacuum sealed bags" so that he no longer "reminds him every day that what I have now is a fraction of what he might have lost."
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No story is uncommon: Wallet Recovery Services, a company that specializes in recovering lost digital keys, receives 70 requests daily from clients seeking help. That number is three times higher than before the bull market.
Apparently, Thomas' experience has taken him away from the concept of a technology that imposes on individual users the responsibility of taking their finances into their own hands, with all the freedom and risks that this implies. Having originally received the 7,0002 BTC as a gift in exchange for producing a video to educate people about the coin, he is now skeptical about leaving users with that degree of control:
“This whole idea of being your own bank, let me put it this way: do you make your own shoes? The reason we have banks is so we don't have to deal with all the things that banks do. "
Aside from his extraordinary losses, Thomas nonetheless held on to enough Bitcoin over the years to make a fortune; he is reportedly so wealthy that he hardly knows what to do with it, to paraphrase the report. Later, he too joined Ripple and acquired XRP, although the company's recent legal difficulties may now cast a shadow over the future prospects for the project.
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The report notes that there are similar risks when users entrust their keys to third-party custodians, citing Mt. Gox and other industry crimes, but includes information from those who believe that digital currency offsets, at the end of the day, they're worth it.
A Barbadian businessman, despite having lost 800 BTC in the past, claimed that "the risk of being my own bank comes with the reward of being able to freely access my money and be a citizen of the world." His opinion, from a corner of the world where financial inclusion remains a concern, provides an insight into why many people may continue to think the same way.
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