The secure hard drive, on which 7,002 bitcoins were stored, was an IronKey device. Thomas only had two attempts left to guess correctly to unlock his Bitcoin wallet. After 10 failed attempts, the password will encrypt itself and the Stephan Thomas Bitcoin wallet will be impossible to access. Thomas has just two attempts left. The programmer was given 7,002 bitcoins as payment for making a video explaining how cryptocurrency works over a decade ago. At that time, bitcoins were worth a few dollars. However, their value has surged in the recent few month and one Bitcoin is currently worth $34,000. Thomas has already entered the wrong password eight times, and if he guesses wrong two more times his hard drive, which contains his private keys to the bitcoin, will be encrypted – and he will never see the money. He has already tried his eight most frequently used passwords to access his IronKey hard drive, but all turned out to be wrong. The device auto-encrypts all contents after the 10 wrong guesses. However, he would not be the first potential Bitcoin millionaire to be locked out of his account. Also read: Cryptocurrency India: All You Need To Know According to cryptocurrency-data company Chainanalysis, about $140 billion worth of Bitcoin is lost or left in wallets that cannot be accessed. There are many people who made investment in Bitcoins years ago when they were not so expensive, wrote down their password somewhere, and thought it wouldn’t be a thing. In The New York Times article, they had an estimate, according to which $140 billion US dollars are locked up in these wallets. And there are probably hundreds of thousands of people who are in a similar situation. Stay tuned to this space for Stephan Thomas Bitcoin wallet update. Sign in for our newsletter to get cryptocurrency news in India delivered to your mailbox.
