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How forgotten passwords prevent crypto millionaires from getting their money. An article by Nathaniel Popper (https://www.nytimes.com/by/nathaniel-popper) appeared in The New York Times about a programmer who lost his password to an encrypted storage with 7,002 BTC Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out of Their Bitcoin Fortunes (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html)


Stephen Thomas, a San Francisco based programmer, has only two attempts left to guess the password worth about $220 million. This combination will allow him to unlock the IronKey drive, which stores the private keys from a digital wallet with 7,002 BTC. He received this amount back in 2011, when he lived in Switzerland. One of the owners of the crypt simply gave him thousands of bitcoins as a reward for creating an animated video about the currency.

Stefan has already made eight attempts, he has tried eight of the passwords most often used by him unsuccessfully and Stefan is not alone in this trouble. Many people around the world have lost access to their bitcoins due to lost or forgotten passwords. According to analysts at cryptocurrency company Chainalysis, of the existing 18.5 million BTC, about 20% lie in lost or otherwise blocked wallets.  In total, this is about $140 billion.

Is this amount reported to anywhere or people are speculation only? I guess there are a lot of early bitcoiners have lost their BTC in such a proceed; either forget the encrypted password or have spoiled their drive, hardware etc. There was another article where I have read it was 1 million.

I really don't know if it's true , but since they pump in bitcoin we are now getting new of lots of lost password but the true and fake news.
      For me I think the first time you get a wallet ,you must actually loss it , before understanding what you lost .

I still don't get why would anyone hold their coins in a wallet that allows a finite attempts to log in.
Just keep your secret phrases and the fact you are playing around in the crypto field a secret.

Since there is now way to be sure of that information unless people reported those coins themselves then it is obvious it is an estimation more than anything, however think about it if the number is close to being true and we add the coins of satoshi and the coins that institutional investors have bought then we realize that the amount of bitcoins actually floating around exchanges is very small and it is bound to get smaller as time passes and bitcoin becomes more popular. Also it is such a shame that this person cannot access his coins, most likely he never thought those coins will be worth much and now he cannot get access to his rightful fortune.

So another thread about the same topic as a Bitcoin millionaire who forgot his password (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5308918.0) Did we really need to fork that one which btw is a lot more active?

I think is because people now feel regret when they see how much bitcoin price is and they put on their calculation to know what the worth is. This is unfortunate to people who have lost passwords to huge wallets. It can happen if we are not careful and that is why we need to always keep our password very secured.


No because wise people learn from the mistakes made by other people that have gone through the road. We are growing and learning and should not be making mistakes we have read about.

This article and news has been circulating for days. Kinda feels like this is spreading negativity around the crypto space. But the comments are damn hilarious. There were people saying they knew this will happen. There were others saying its a ponzie scheme controlled by the "kingpins". They make you lose "passwords" so that you can't access the coins anymore after you paid them to buy bitcoin. One guy even asked why can't they "call bitcoin helpline" for resetting their account. Lmao! Shows how much people are unaware about bitcoin and the technology behind it.
Speculation. Impossible to accurately find how many lost coins are there. Imagine how many wallets carry dust amount of coins.

Hollywood can make a movie with this guy.
thriller "attempts for beautiful life"

Yes, I'm sure many people have forgotten their passwords and have lost the chance to recover their bit coin. ( hopefully minor amounts )
So ,being that only a set amount of bit coin will ever be available , does the lost bitcoin count as bit coin in circulation?
If the last bitcoin is ever sold and a tally taken would it show how many are missing ?
I'm thinking that when a county issues bank notes ,and were to recall them, they could know how many were still out there .
Could there be any hope for those who lost their bit coin due to forgotten passwords? 

How about thriller " how one man went insane from depression" Lol.

Sounds like another headline for a news site, no matter if it's true or not, as long as there is another piece of news. I doubt that a person who owns such a large amount of bitcoins could in any way lose or forget their wallet password. In any case, such a number of coins will hardly affect Bitcoin in any way, because the loss is 7000, and there are 21 million of them in total.

Lots of people especially among early investors lost their keys or access to their computers and lost lots of Bitcoins, and not Bitcoins only, other coins as well. Mostly it eas because of the lack of such kind of experience and lots of people did not clearly understood the consequences. Lots of people just did not imagine that those coins will cost so much. And nowadays lots of people loose their keys to other wallets with other tokens or coins because they are too sure in their memory. It is better to keep somewhere in protected place the copy of written or printed keys, and not much to tell about it to others.

Anyone can lose large or small amounts of bitcoin. It all also depends on how to secure the private key or password for a wallet with thousands of bitcoin assets. 7000 bitcoins will not affect bitcoin entirely, but not only 7000 bitcoins that cannot be accessed, but the possibility will also increase when people who have a lot of bitcoins suddenly forget and lose their private reserves. Whether it is true or not, this news can be a lesson for us that every password or private key for digital assets is very important to always remember and back up in other places. Even though I don't have thousands of bitcoins, but my privacy remains well kept and makes backups elsewhere separate and away from online devices.

I believe most people that forgot their passwords with thousands of bitcoins, are those old time holders that never thought that bitcoin will be this big.
So at the time of having those bitcoins, they didn't care much of its value. And only this time that they realized that it is worth something.
Definitely, there are a lot of individuals that own large chunk of bitcoin are now regretting for what they should have done.
Now, for newcomers, this is a good lesson to learn. Whether your portfolio is small or big, make sure you keep your passwords safe and secure.

It will definitely have an impact because bitcoin is cap to 21 million total supply. So in the next 10 years, bitcoin will be so scarce that those remaining will increase in price. But I do agree that this is sensationalised by mainstream or crypto media, perhaps this is a good publicity for Stephen Thomas or the IronKey drive itself.

Yes that's pretty stupid. I can think of so many things that could go wrong here like a kid gets a hold of it and starts spamming some stupid things and uses all your attempts or it gets stolen by a thief who simply locks you out trying to break it when he'd need weeks to crack it anyway using sophisticated software if you just used a strong password.

When you can remember a strong password or know how to hide it you can use a normal hardware wallet. If you prefer to use a short, weak password like "mybitcoins" you can use that ironkey thingy, but you'll always risk that if it gets stolen the thief can lock you out.

Also, why would anyone store 200 million dollars without a way to recover the wallet? You can forget password but what about the seed?

You have to remember that this is way back, when bitcoin was still in its infancy and definitely those early bag holders security practice is nascent and probably this is one reason he uses a drive that has finite attempts.

If this happens in 2020, then obviously he could have bought a hardware wallet to put all his bitcoins and then write down the seed. So he is not that stupid, but probably lack the knowledge that time and chooses to hide everything in a usb drive.

Can any of us verify the person truly lost his password, and his bitcoin? I guess none of us can verify his loss announcement.

In addition, believe me, if you have been in crypto for long enough, please recall your memory, whenever the bitcoin takes-off so much, there were attempts to beat it down. The most common types of news are used for such attempts are: hacks, loss of bitcoin (from loss of private keys, passwords, sudden deaths, etc), sudden new law regulations.

This article is not new and it is a repeatedly warnings for cryptocurrency newbies.
Not your keys, not your coins
Use strong passwords.
Back up your keys, your passwords

Newbies - Read before using exchanges or investing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5178747.msg52263795#msg52263795)
https://notyourkeys.org/

It hurts to see someone endure something because with only a password, a phrase, a combination of numbers, alphanumeric, whatever it has, lies in front of you millions that could change your life for the better. I think people have forgotten it because they felt it wasn't that big of a deal, and right now, it's a big deal. I hope that people who have lost bitcoins find their way back to them, whether remembering a password or recovering the wallet via seed. I don't know how they have done it before then, but I hope he has kept the private key.

Probably hire a memory expert that could possibly help himself recover his thoughts from wayback.

Passwords committed purely to memory will eventually fade, if not sooner then later. Although this may considered to be the safest way to protect your password because there is nothing to be stolen, erased, destroyed, left out, misplaced, and so on, it is never practical, most especially if what is protected by such a password amounts to hundreds of millions.

Funds protected by a memorized password can only be robbed by way of violence, but only if the person who holds the password and the funds is identified. But the probability of getting betrayed by your very own memory is very high. Such is the risk which is not worth taking.

I saw this news on tiktok who person who are forgot his password and the companies offer to help but they have fee to pay but he refuse the offer and now he needs toremember the password to open his account and gets hundred millions dollars. If Im his situation maybe  i will accept the offer because if he did not open his account for attempt he lost all of the possible money but now he need to take a risk.

Same. If someone somehow got a hold of his wallet and tried to attempt to access it, the owner would have no idea that he have already lost his data, along the Bitcoin in it. Though I've heard that, correct me if I'm wrong but I've read somewhere (I don't really remember where) that these kind of lost Bitcoin will eventually return to being unmined, basically people will be able to mine them again, if they are somehow not touched in 50 years or 100 years.

We already have dozens of examples for the first part. Every now and then, I am hearing reports about cryptocurrency holders getting kidnapped by criminal gangs and then tortured to reveal their passwords. Even here in India, there was a well known incident last year:

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/man-killed-after-being-tortured-for-days-over-bitcoins/story-A18ipLTQCrlFphgBPYHxoI.html

And with the exchange rates increasing at such a rapid pace, I am worried that we may witness many such incidents in the near future. Only way to protect yourself is not to reveal about the coin holdings to anyone else.

This is the logical explanation for the fact that bitcoin value rises higher and higher every year.
After all, such irrecoverable losses definitely lead to a deficit and this despite the fact that traders and investors all over the world are interested in this asset and are ready to invest their money in it.
Who could have thought then, when bitcoin was worth three hundred dollars, that in time it would be worth a hundred times more?
I don't think even the most experienced experts thought that from the beginning.
And I think a lot of people invested in it for luck, simply because it was more affordable than investing in gold at the time or other leading assets.
Yeah, it's certainly an interesting story, I wonder if the same thing will happen with the cryptocurrencies that are emerging now, or this success can't be repeated.

Back in that year, I think people who have bitcoin at that date underestimate this coin and what this coin can do in the future, so they do not think much about securing their wallet, and even they do not write their password in a safe place.
But as time goes, people realize that they need to make a backup for the password, especially for the wallet password, so if something worst happens to that wallet devices, they can recover their wallet and access their wallet.
If many people have bitcoin and lost the password, they do not protect their wallet because they do not think that bitcoin will be popular.
It is a lesson to us, and while we can still have bitcoin, no matter how much bitcoin we have, we must have a backup for the wallet.

Of course this is unexpected, we are used to the fact that almost always there is a possibility to change or restore the password, because a person can forget something or face other adequate reasons for this... And as a rule our personal accounts, card data and other things are connected to a phone number or an e-mail address or you can turn to a support service of some company or service and solve almost any problem. And here you don't have any way out of the situation and I can't even imagine the frustration people feel when they realize how much they've lost and that they can't get anything back, prove it, etc. And it's certainly a complicated and ambiguous situation...

can't it be replaced? For example, like when we restored my password for email, or maybe a website? because in my opinion it's a very large number, and is there no way out of the wallet developer, for example contact support?

People often admire this independence and specialness of Bitcoin and yet no one really thinks about how it is secured and what risks it has. Of course for those traders who started to be interested in Bitcoin several years ago already know about it and I think they carefully keep their passwords and do everything carefully. But for those people who encountered it before and have owned Bitcoins for a long period of time without realizing their future value, it can really be a real tragedy. And it seems to me that now is the time to work on some system that would allow people to get back at least some of the money, or better yet, all of it.

Of course many people do think about the risk involves, the reason why that subject of being security conscious and protect your private key or password can not be over emphasize, it is so serious that most wallet of recent times you installed don't fail to display the message before the installation process, to me i see it as a careless act of someone who did not expect to see btc at this level,
This is an assets bought long time ago, some of the btc early investors probably suffers the same faith - btc was less valuable then so it was easy to ignore or neglect to secure password, a lesson for the younger investors i would say, don't underestimate things.

Many didn't see much difference in Bitcoin then, nor thought there will be a future for it and today, they are trying everything possible to recover their wallets.
I think the lesson to learn from all these is that, once you get associated with anything, technology etc requiring some sort of security to protect your account, make sure to store the password, private keys etc in a secure place, because you never can tell what will happen in the future, these people can pay anything now to access their wallets but unfortunately, the only way is either remembering the password to the drive or the private keys; I wouldn't go to blame them because I don't know what happened then, but however have gotten the lesson from them and I wish others will learn as well. I think with time, many of these news will be coming up because Bitcoin is very valuable now and with a bright future ahead will make these people to go extra miles to remember their security details.

I also read the article this tells us how important is your passwords and keys. 7002 Btc is a very very huge amount and this amount can change anyone's whole life. Now Stefan has left with only 2 attempts and its not easy to crack the password so he is regretting now. Its a huge blow for Stefan. We must understand the mental situation of Stefan he knows he has huge money but not able to access it and its not easy to face such mental tension. Let's hope he will recover his password with 2 left attempts. In the end, I would say we should always keep 2 copies of the password & key phrases with us so that if one lost we can access the account with another copy.

That's really a pain in the ass, many people are stuck with the same problem, in the early development of bitcoin people don't care about bitcoin and underestimate the value which was minuscule. The negligence to store the private keys or the password to access the wallet leads to the current problem after the value of bitcoin skyrocket.
We can imagine how frustrating people that have BTC7000 in hand but can't access it, that's worth $269 million, you can retire with such amount of bitcoin.

good idea for a second part)

This is worrisome. This is one of the reasons why I am a little apprehensive of the slogan Be your own bank. It is good to be your own bank. It is good to have yourself emancipated from the greedy banking system with the help of Bitcoin. But it may come with a very heavy price. It entails a very heavy responsibility.

Bank armored cars are robbed even if they are bulletproof, with GPS, and with armed security personnel inside. Bank branches themselves are robbed even if they have alarm systems, securities, and within reach by law enforcers. What happens if banks are the ordinary individuals themselves who are roaming on the streets with almost zero protection?

That sucks it, so like having all the nicest building in the world and then WW3 happened.

The product, Ironkey, allows for it’s customers to backup the password online (http://support.ironkey.com/article/AA-03522/0/Forgot-Password.html), but this may be a more recent feature which may not have been available at the time. Even so, crypto related people tend to avoid online password backups, so it’s just as likely that he didn’t even take the option into consideration.

The clear type backup was a paper he used to write the password on, and eventually lost. No available backup + joggy memory -> not your keys.

We would really be having doubts when it comes on storing passwords in online or cloud.So i cant blame him not able to do so because it isnt really that recommended at all and writing on a piece of paper is much more secure than on that one.

2 attempts left for $220 million? that would really be a sweating kind of situation where you do know that you will burn up those millions in 2 tries left.
This is really a lesson learned for him for his entire life as if on missing out that opportunity in your lifetime.

Saving up keys no matter what should really be on your priority.

Well, if you want to help Stefan, you can drop him a line, he is was on the forum:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2211
(found by Mole0815)

He actually didn't use online storage or the cloud for storing passwords. He wrote it on paper and he lost it. That is why every person should really have a private folder on their personal computer and store every important information in there, you should store the passwords of every wallet that you are using, not only that, you can store also your account and the password on that folder. That will help you easily remember that password. Just make sure that the only one who is using that computer is you.

In the initial stages many lost their passwords and private keys and many of the coins are lost and this is not the first time i am hearing these sob stories, first heard about these sob stories when the price of bitcoin rallied in 2013 and there were many who even knew their wallet address but they can only stair at their coins as they is no way they could recover their passwords.

@mole0815 pointed out that Stephan has a profile here on Bitcointalk: Stefan Tomas (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2211).

Going over his posts, he is a long standing Bitcointalk member, who was pretty involved in the early years (See for example referenced here https://bithope.org/campaign/support-the-bitcointalk-forum), and crossed posts with some of the most noticeable profiles here at the time.
 
In this article on the NY times, they mention how he was paid something like 7002 BTCs back in 2011 for creating a video on bitcoin:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo

I was doubtful as to whether the German programmer, and the profile here on Bitcointalk, were indeed the same person (and not just a name/surname coincidence), but it seems that they are indeed the same:
 Bounty for Bitcoin Animated Movie [won]  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=697.0).
The video is the same one referenced in the NYTimes article, and the thread has relevant posts made by Stephan about the video (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=697.msg833066#msg833066 for example).

It looks like what the world sees as "a German programmer", is also part of the Bitcointalk’s history …