A computer programmer who years ago wrote down the password to a cryptocurrency wallet on a piece of paper, has since lost the said paper, and with it access to around $220 million in Bitcoin.
Can you imagine having over $200 million and no way to ever access it? That’s exactly the story of San Francisco-based programmer Stefan Thomas, who has been trying to remember the password of his IronKey, a special hard-drive that contains the private keys to a digital wallet with 7,002 Bitcoin. He received the digital currency 10 years ago, while living in Switzerland, from an early Bitcoin adopter, as payment for an animated video he made, titled “What is Bitcoin?”. He lost the password to his IronKey that same year, but since a Bitcoin was only worth around $5 back then, it didn’t bother him that much. Things have changed a bit since then, though…
