7,000 bitcoins locked on USB stick. Owner not rushing to unlock them

[freedomgo]

I believe this is his bitcointalk profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2211 - he has been inactive since 2015.

But he was last active in 2018. Probably if that was really the account, your thread might be notice and will get answer, that would be even weird. 

Maybe he had already lost the coins permanently, maybe it was all a lie, or maybe he's so wealthy that an extra $240 mills doesn't make much difference to him.

We would never know if he's telling the truth unless these 7,000 bitcoins are unlocked. However, the fact that he seems to be giving up might suggest that there's no amount in that wallet. It's just strange why anyone wouldn't explore every possible solution to recover that $235 million if it truly exists. Even someone as wealthy as Elon Musk would surely exhaust every possibility to retrieve those funds.

[Lucius]

~snip~
With Stefan Thomas, it's so strange that he chose to use that risky method to store his wallet and he did not have other backups. Backing up wallets like this is very dangerous and I read many times and also advise many members that they must do some different backups of a wallet.

I wouldn't call it a very risky method if you know what you're doing, but if you treat serious things in life carelessly, sooner or later it will backfire on you. However, in the specific case, all that BTC was actually a reward for the work done, and considering how much it was worth 10+ years ago, it was obviously not important for him to save the backup in a better way, or to make several of them.

From the article it can be guessed that that BTC is not that important to him, because he saved enough BTC to have more money than he needs, but it seems to me that he just wanted a little attention, and that he wants his case to last as long as possible.

[kryptqnick]

This is such a weird story... Someone can give it a go, but he declines. Maybe they charge too much, in his opinion? Or perhaps he's afraid that they'll use up one of his two attempts?
Honestly, I didn't know about storage that erases the content after 10 attempts. It just feels like such a risky thing to use for one's money, although I see that some disagree with that.
Thanks, op, for doing a follow-up and sharing a video with Stefan. But it didn't feel to me like he said he had a rock-solid contract. He just said a person needs to have a contract, but not that he actually has one. But maybe he does want to stick to the people who are already trying to help him.

[so98nn]

Core Features

Self-Destruct Sequence

If the IronKey Cryptochip detects any physical tampering by a hacker, it will self-destruct. Similarly, after too many consecutive invalid password attempts your IronKey will self-destruct using flash-trash technology

Damn, this thing is crazy as sci-fi stuff. It initiates the self-destruction mode and erases all the data. I would stay away from this thing for sure. Just look at the man's status now, he might not be sleeping well in the night, and in the day he must be dreaming of getting his IronKey unlocked somehow. He is done if is not able to access the PIN now. By the way, he went too far with the 8 codes. He should have initiated the contract with that company long ago considering the number of bitcoin that he is holding on that little stick. He is already rich, all he had to do is make his side of move and experts were ready to unlock it. Maybe those two guys are just playing around him and will take Bitcoin once he is tired. Lolz. You never know man, it's 200 plus million dollars, peeps can go nuts. We are also heading towards bumpy ride of halving so things gonna get crazier for him.

[digaran]

IMO, he should use this opportunity and take out his coins, according to NIST, cryptography algorithms used in Bitcoin are safe at least until 2030, this is what factoids say sometimes, I'd say 2030 is very optimistic, they could break one year from now, or 1 month, so taking your coin and holding the private key in hand is a good practice. Though this only applies to keys with exposed public keys, otherwise your coins are safe for billions of years, unless we can break rmd160 and sha256, then your coins won't be safe even if they have no public key exposed. Sooner or later crypto has to change algorithms related to private keys.

[Kakmakr]

I also think he signed some kind of contract with the first experts and they want their commission to be paid, so they are forcing him to stay with them, until they manage to crack it.

I would just pay them their fee and ask the second company to "unlock" it, so that I am guaranteed to get the money back. Why should you risk losing the coins or forced to wait for a company that might only be able to do this ..years from now?

[davis196]

I wonder why this guy is inactive on the forum since 2018. Did he lost access to his Bitcointalk account or he just doesn't have the time to post on the forum? He was doing solvency audits on crypto exchanges back in 2014 and he participated in an altcoin project.
How the hell can you perform solvency audits on centralized crypto exchanges back in 2014? This seems suspicious to me.
Maybe he will stick with the two experts until they unlock the USB, but he will switch to the company after they fail at unlocking the USB.

[Lucius]

Just look at the man's status now, he might not be sleeping well in the night, and in the day he must be dreaming of getting his IronKey unlocked somehow.
~snip~

I wonder why this guy is inactive on the forum since 2018. Did he lost access to his Bitcointalk account or he just doesn't have the time to post on the forum?
~snip~

Guys, you're not exactly a beginners that you can't read a few posts and understand some things - because as I already wrote in my previous post, that man managed to save enough BTC to have, as he says, more money than he needs, so this 7000 BTC is not something that keeps him awake at night.

The reason why he stopped being active on the forum is probably that he became a millionaire thanks to BTC, and I would like to see anyone in a similar situation react in a different way.

It is worth noting that Thomas likely isn't hurting for money. In the 2021 piece with The NY Times, he said he had managed to hold on to enough Bitcoin (and not lose the passwords) to give him "more riches than he knows what to do with."

[mucho_mass]

Stefan Thomas probably has alternative sources of money or savings, so he can afford to wait until he is sure that access to the flash drive will be 100% guaranteed. Actually, he does everything right.

Yes, he's the CEO of Interledger a payment network company which deals with money and Bitcoin too.
A successful startup as far as I can tell, so I guess he's not really that much worried about his locked bitcoin.

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

Omg, he must be telling a lie, because if he would really had those BTCs then he would not hesitate to share the BTC wallet address. After all, we can check on any explorer that either he has those BTC or not. I found this address on his profile:
1DzKYgC3r3cgCujJPmnA8kQWYkHHKZFNVk
If it belongs to him then the amount is around 100.5 btc which does not say he has around 7,000 btc. But all I am saying here is, you might be true (op) that he is just framing the story more and more to get some fame.

Yes, I totally agree with you on what you just said above that this story about him missing access to his 7000 Bitcoin to be a fabricated story until proven otherwise, because I just checked the wallet address you gave above which "Stefan Thomas" used for a loan transaction sometimes ago here on the forum, and from my own research, I'm made to understand that the wallet address is having Zero balance (i.e $0), of which the only transaction I can fine there are the ones he did of 100 BTC, of which he was given, and later sent it out to a different wallet address, making the wallet empty, as you can see below.

   

[serveria.com]

I believe this is his bitcointalk profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2211 - he has been inactive since 2015.

The Thomas dude is a tech guy. I ran through some of his posts to get a feel of that. Now, this is the major reason I don't regret not being into Bitcoin as an early adopter. I'm sure I would've lost my coins too one way or the other and that would be with so much pain, seeing what a treasure Bitcoin is now. Just imagine someone having close to $240 million in Bitcoin but can't assess it. This is going to be worth more in coming days. Nonetheless, what I don't understand is why isn't the dude giving access to those other ethical hackers who claim they can retrieve it for him?

Perhaps he's afraid they will run away with his money? Just imagine if you would possess 7k BTC on a USB drive. Would you give it to some unknown "ethical" or perhaps "not so ethical" hackers?

Yes, there is no proof he actually owns this amount, there were 100BTC and 500BTC wallets belonging to the same guy mentioned before on this forum, but nothing regarding a 7k BTC one.

[Faisal2202]

Yes, I totally agree with you on what you just said above that this story about him missing access to his 7000 Bitcoin to be a fabricated story until proven otherwise, because I just checked the wallet address you gave above which "Stefan Thomas" used for a loan transaction sometimes ago here on the forum, and from my own research, I'm made to understand that the wallet address is having Zero balance (i.e $0), of which the only transaction I can fine there are the ones he did of 100 BTC, of which he was given, and later sent it out to a different wallet address, making the wallet empty, as you can see below.

There was no need to use the term ("own research") because it is not much of a research here, it simply copying the address I gave and pasting it on explorer and taking SS and uploading it on image host site and pasting the link here. Nothing else. Plus the link is provided when I wrote the address, I already aware that he used that address to take loan but I did not write it in my last post because there was no need.

Well, I did mention in my post that if someone would do further research on the addresses he (stefan) sent his 100.5 BTC because it might be possible that one of those addresses might have 7,000 BTC.

Actually I was using a tool named as https://oxt.me/ which was free back then but now I don't know how this is working but if anyone have enough time then can track all the transactions from base address to last address and can verify manually if he really had that much BTC or not.

Note* if my words are a little rude then I apologize in advance but you literally repeated my words so I thought I should clarify things, but again sorry if my words were not soft.

[benalexis12]

Omg, he must be telling a lie, because if he would really had those BTCs then he would not hesitate to share the BTC wallet address. After all, we can check on any explorer that either he has those BTC or not. I found this address on his profile:
1DzKYgC3r3cgCujJPmnA8kQWYkHHKZFNVk
If it belongs to him then the amount is around 100.5 btc which does not say he has around 7,000 btc. But all I am saying here is, you might be true (op) that he is just framing the story more and more to get some fame.

If that USB stick really has that much BTC in it then why he is not accepting the offer from a company, is that the price they might be demanding in exchange? If that's the case, I would say, something is better then nothing. It will take some time to check the sending and receiving history of the above wallet address (if done manually) to know that either he is telling true or not.

This story is not weird then this one:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5471367.msg63042638#msg63042638 (overview is some guy, was able to buy btc at the lowest price and then tagged as hacker from mt gox)

7000 bitcoins is far from 100.5 bitcoins, but 100.5 bitcoins is a large amount when converted to today's bitcoin value. How about if each bitcoin becomes 100k$ at 100.5btc, the value is also around 3.17m$? Not bad, right?

That's why the person in question made a false statement earlier. Because it was mentioned at 7,000 bitcoins, and that's not good, and we all know that here on the forum platform, if I'm not mistaken.

[alastantiger]

Apparently, he has two other experts working on cracking the USB. They have been unsuccessful for over a year, but he still wants to give them more time. According to the article, he only had a hand-shake deal with those two experts, so nothing really preventing him from going elsewhere.

Maybe he had already lost the coins permanently, maybe it was all a lie, or maybe he's so wealthy that an extra $240 mills doesn't make much difference to him.

Right now for Stefan, it is not how long the process last or whether the funds are eventually recovered or permanently lost after a decade of efforts. It is more about finding closure. And that in my opinion I feel is the reason why he is taking his time, no rush at all.

I have noticed that the recurrent issues of people forgetting their password to their were their bitcoins were stored when they bought it are mostly faced by those who had adopted bitcoin earlier than most of us.

We should count ourselves lucky that there are abundant resource on wallet security and sadly lessons to learn from the bitter and painful experiences of those who have lost their bitcoins worth millions of dollars now to this.