again a Bitcoin millionaire who forgot his password

[Chrystora123]

German-born programmer Stefan Thomas told the Times he forgot the password to IronKey, an secure flash drive has access to 7,002 Bitcoin - $220 million worth. IronKey gives users 10 guesses for their passwords before seizing its contents.
"I would just lay in bed and think about it," Thomas told the New York Times Nathaniel Popper. "Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn't work, and I would be desperate again."

quite surprised by this news because his Bitcoin trapped in his hardware wallet is very much.  Don't underestimate your private key and password, if you haven't prepared the best place (easy to remember and reach) to store your private key and password then do it right now..

https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/programmer-locked-out-220-million-in-bitcoin-forgotten-password-2021-1-1029961378

[1714836272]

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[100bitcoin]

Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more.  Think of it as a donation to everyone.

[kryme]

At $200 million value, you'd think IronKey would want to step in and try to reverse engineer or hack their own product to help this dude... It's likely an older drive with many vulnerabilities ready to be discovered.

[virtualdn]

Just print the BTC private key somewhere and voila your bitcoins are stored for life! No need for any special device. Some people make things more complicated than they are.

[Poker Player]

Just print the BTC private key somewhere and voila your bitcoins are stored for life! No need for any special device. Some people make things more complicated than they are.

Well, this is not so easy either. There could be a fire where you keep it. I have my keys in two different places but I have a very small amount. If I had 7,000 Bitcoins I would have several hardware wallets and the keys in several places, including bank safes.

Besides, having so much Bitcoin in my case would mean that I would also have millions in real state and in the stock market, to give just two examples, so if I lost the keys to a hardware wallet that had, say, 1,700 Bitcoins, I would still have another 5,200 plus a lot of money, more houses, stocks, etc.

[virtualdn]

Just print the BTC private key somewhere and voila your bitcoins are stored for life! No need for any special device. Some people make things more complicated than they are.

Well, this is not so easy either. There could be a fire where you keep it. I have my keys in two different places but I have a very small amount. If I had 7,000 Bitcoins I would have several hardware wallets and the keys in several places, including bank safes.

Besides, having so much Bitcoin in my case would mean that I would also have millions in real state and in the stock market, to give just two examples, so if I lost the keys to a hardware wallet that had, say, 1,700 Bitcoins, I would still have another 5,200 plus a lot of money, more houses, stocks, etc.

Maybe but in his case a paper would have been a better solution. Of course saving in more places is obvious thing to do.

[tabas]

Having no backups, having no written private keys nor passwords. That's crazy to forget that entire amount of money. Two hundred million in worth.
Damn, I know how badly he feels with this.

[carlfebz2]

At $200 million value, you'd think IronKey would want to step in and try to reverse engineer or hack their own product to help this dude... It's likely an older drive with many vulnerabilities ready to be discovered.

Not possible unless if they do know some exploits into their own product and havent told the masses then its possible but as mentioned when you dont able to enter the correct password for 10 times
those funds would be seized? By the company itself? which means they do have access. SIMPLE!

Thing here that i cant just believe on who the hell that someone has 7k bitcoin would carelessly forgot his own password.If you do have this kind of coins then this would be the
main thing to be always on your mind.

If you are that a forgetful person then you should obliged yourself on listing out those keys or pass in lots of form neither it is written on paper, store it on an usb with file text or
other things as long you can make some input.

[kryme]

At $200 million value, you'd think IronKey would want to step in and try to reverse engineer or hack their own product to help this dude... It's likely an older drive with many vulnerabilities ready to be discovered.

Not possible unless if they do know some exploits into their own product and havent told the masses then its possible but as mentioned when you dont able to enter the correct password for 10 times
those funds would be seized? By the company itself? which means they do have access. SIMPLE!

Do you think they couldn't get the same exact model USB drive and start tinkering until they find a hack? I mean a dude found a way to hack and completely take over an iPhone just by sending a wireless signal to it. Maybe solder the memory chip to a new board that doesn't contain the erase functions? Who knows, but for $220 million it's worth attempting to find a zero day for that model USB drive.

[HashFace]

Saw this guy's story on CNN.  Says he had 10 password tries remember, and he's already used 8.  If he guesses wrong 2 more times, the drive will destroy the data and his key will be lost forever... man.  That must suck.  

But it does bring up a point that there is not really a 100% safe and secure way to store your coins.  Putting your 12 words in a safe probably works 99% of the time, but there could be a fire, theft, etc ... heck, the wife might just throw it away one day ... who knows...

Hardware wallets actually seem less secure to me.  In addition to having it stolen or destroyed, or just the software getting corrupted ... forgetting your password adds an additional layer of things that can go wrong.  I guess some hardware wallets allow you to print your key, in case it's lost or stolen, but that defeats the purpose of the hardware wallet, because you now are no more secure than if you had just printed your key in the first place.

[Alucard1]

I wonder how he earned that amount of money without even knowing how to secure his account, if you are hodling a huge amount of money make sure that any information in your wallet should be kept properly, if you are not good at remembering things then you have to store it into something more secured just like writing it down on a piece of paper and keeping it in a secret place.

[losakoa]

German-born programmer Stefan Thomas told the Times he forgot the password to IronKey, an secure flash drive has access to 7,002 Bitcoin - $220 million worth. IronKey gives users 10 guesses for their passwords before seizing its contents.
"I would just lay in bed and think about it," Thomas told the New York Times Nathaniel Popper. "Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn't work, and I would be desperate again."

quite surprised by this news because his Bitcoin trapped in his hardware wallet is very much.  Don't underestimate your private key and password, if you haven't prepared the best place (easy to remember and reach) to store your private key and password then do it right now..

https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/programmer-locked-out-220-million-in-bitcoin-forgotten-password-2021-1-1029961378

That has to be one hell of an existential crisis. 

[Bitcoin_Arena]

I came to accross the same story in the Guardian a few hours ago.

In a tweet, this guy claims he would try to make it happen for 10% of the Bitcoins in the wallet  - https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1348999178702057476

If something is so valuable that one went ahead and tried to safely secure it, Why would one have to forget the password? 

[JollyGood]

Guardian Headline: Programmer has two guesses left to access £175m bitcoin wallet

Guardian Article: Stefan Thomas has just two chances left to get his hands on his $240m (£175m) fortune.

Thomas is a San Francisco-based computer programmer, and a decade ago he was given 7,002 bitcoins as a reward for making a video explaining how the cryptocurrency works.

At the time he was paid, they were worth $2-$6 each. He stashed them away in his “digital wallet” and forgot about them.

Now each bitcoin is worth $34,000, and the contents of his wallet are valued at $240m. But Thomas has forgotten the password that will unlock his fortune.

German-born 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’ll never see the money.

-----------------------------------
Full details here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jan/12/in-bits-the-programmer-locked-out-of-his-130m-bitcoin-account

[dothebeats]

This is why you do not rely on your brain alone in order to store passwords. You always have to do backups especially in sensitive cases like this. There isn't any guarantee anymore that the dude will get his money back. The company that created IronKey would likely want to step off of this matter and refuse any attempts to unlock the flash drive itself, as it will severely impact their image on how secure their drives would be. I mean, if the company themselves can easily unlock the device, there is a possibility that they installed backdoors of some sort, causing some doubts on the security of the device itself. Idk, this is just the Thomas' fault after all and he should remember that password, else it's lost forever.

[stomachgrowls]

I came to accross the same story in the Guardian a few hours ago.

In a tweet, this guy claims he would try to make it happen for 10% of the Bitcoins in the wallet  - https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1348999178702057476

If something is so valuable that one went ahead and tried to safely secure it, Why would one have to forget the password? 

Just like what said above its really talking about being careless.We cant afford to forget a password which do contain millions even though those coins you had earned way back was just $2-$6 each on the time you had work out on something and getting paid then i would say that these kind of mistakes can really possibly happen.

You wouldnt expect that price rose up that high and you would just only find those keys or remember to tinker everything when you do saw that those amounts will really be a
life changing one.

You dont have password/keys? = no coins.  and 2 attempts left is like having a heart pounding scenario.

[AmoreJaz]

I came to accross the same story in the Guardian a few hours ago.

In a tweet, this guy claims he would try to make it happen for 10% of the Bitcoins in the wallet  - https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1348999178702057476

If something is so valuable that one went ahead and tried to safely secure it, Why would one have to forget the password? 

Just like what said above its really talking about being careless.We cant afford to forget a password which do contain millions even though those coins you had earned way back was just $2-$6 each on the time you had work out on something and getting paid then i would say that these kind of mistakes can really possibly happen.

You wouldnt expect that price rose up that high and you would just only find those keys or remember to tinker everything when you do saw that those amounts will really be a
life changing one.

You dont have password/keys? = no coins.  and 2 attempts left is like having a heart pounding scenario.

they never expected that bitcoin will be valuable today. not even in their wildest dreams that their stash will be worth millions of $s to this day. so they were being careless. i bet, there are a lot more stories like this one. a lot of bitcoins are lost because of this type of prob. now, are we going to categorise them as millionaires even if they don't have it on their hands?

[Zionatin]

That's so sad. It is also sill that someone in the I.T industry would make such a foolish mistake. Furthermore, the ironic thing is they encrypted their USB to "protect it" By using security and "protecting it" they shot themselves in the foot. No point trying to protect something that is under no threat. They should never have encrypted it and rather just kept it somewhere where it stays offline and safe.

The chances of this happening vs the chances of being hacked are way off.

[dansus021]

That's so sad. It is also sill that someone in the I.T industry would make such a foolish mistake. Furthermore, the ironic thing is they encrypted their USB to "protect it" By using security and "protecting it" they shot themselves in the foot. No point trying to protect something that is under no threat. They should never have encrypted it and rather just kept it somewhere where it stays offline and safe.

The chances of this happening vs the chances of being hacked are way off.

That's to bad
I actually just like this guy i don't pretty care with Private key cause doesnt have much money in it but now i do care much more but 7000 is Freaking crazy

[rokon1234]

Everyone should save their password in a secured place.Because, password is one of the important think of a crypto user and bitcoin private key is more important password then other password,their have big chance to lose your money.