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2 attempts left: the programmer remembers the password to the wallet from 7,002 BTC

Programmer Stefan Thomas has forgotten the password from the secure drive storing the private keys of the wallet with 7,002 BTC ($ 240 million). He had only two attempts to guess the password.

Stefan Thomas a few years ago lost a piece of paper on which was written the password from the secure IronKey drive that stores the private key of the wallet. In this case, Thomas has entered the wrong password eight times. If he makes a mistake twice more, he will lose the private key forever – IronKey drives irrevocably encrypt information if an incorrect password is entered ten times.

“I’ll lie and think about it all night. Then I will get up, go to the computer, try to type a password that will not work, and again plunge into the abyss of despair, ”said a programmer from Germany who lives in San Francisco.

According to him, he received bitcoins back in 2011, when he lived in Switzerland. They were given to him by one of the early Bitcoin enthusiasts for the fact that Thomas created the animated video “What is Bitcoin?” In the same year, the programmer lost the password sheet from the drive.

According to the analytical company Chainalysis, about 20% of all mined bitcoins are irretrievably lost. Up to 70 people turn to Wallet Recovery Services, which helps restore access to cryptocurrency wallets.

Recently, a user on the Reddit forum shared his joy – he restored the keys to the Bitcoin wallet, which has stored 127 BTC since 2011. After that, he sold bitcoins worth $ 4.2 million.

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