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Stefan Thomas: His problem is not new, but the New York Times reporting in the wake of the Bitcoin high made it world famous
Photo: NICHOLAS ALBRECHT / The New York Times / Redux / laif
Sometimes Stefan Thomas just wanted to give up and finish with the matter.
At some point he came to a point where he said to himself, "This should be a thing of the past, for your own sanity." So he told the New York Times, which reports on the predicament he has been in Years ago.
Stefan Thomas is a well-known programmer from Germany who lives in San Francisco - and whose name is going around the world these days.
Beyond the tech scene, Thomas is now known as the man who forgot his password and now only has two chances to get 7002 bitcoins.
That would currently correspond to almost 200 million euros.
Thomas owns a huge digital treasure, but cannot open the chest.
According to the article, the IT expert owns an encrypted memory, called IronKey, which contains the private keys he needs to use his Bitcoin and then convert it into dollars, for example via a cryptocurrency trading platform.
The IronKey is secured with a password, the problem is outlined: The user has ten attempts to enter it correctly.
After ten incorrect entries, access to the data stored on the IronKey is no longer possible.
Stefan Thomas has tried eight times to enter the password correctly, it is said, based on passwords that are typical for him.
But there was no success.
The piece of paper on which Thomas once noted the password has not been to be found for a long time.
It's often about millions of euros
Cases like Thomas' keep making headlines: if Bitcoins are held for a long time, it is not always intentional.
For example, there are also deaths among Bitcoin owners in which cryptocurrency fans have not given their digital heritage any thought.
Or bitcoins that no one can access for other reasons.
The total amount of Bitcoins is technically limited to 21 million, around 18.5 million are already in circulation.
Chainalysis, which specializes in cryptocurrencies, estimates that around 20 percent of this - which is equivalent to more than 100 billion euros - must be considered lost because users no longer have access to them.
For users who have lost their private keys or their access codes to wallets, such situations are extremely uncomfortable: Especially those who came into contact with the digital currency in the early days of Bitcoin could get a comparatively large amount of Bitcoins for very little money - shares that years later may be worth millions or even billions of euros.
The story of James Howells, who lost access to 7,500 Bitcoins because one of his hard drives ended up in the trash, has become famous.
Stefan Thomas received his 7002 Bitcoins as early as 2011, in a year in which a Bitcoin was initially worth barely one euro and later also more than 20 euros.
At the beginning of 2021, a Bitcoin can be sold for just under 30,000 euros.
According to the New York Times, Thomas got the 7002 Bitcoins from a cryptocurrency enthusiast - as a thank you for producing an explanatory video about Bitcoin.
The clip with the title "What is Bitcoin?" Is still online today.
It has now been viewed almost ten million times on YouTube.
“A painful memory.
I hope others can learn from my mistakes «
In the same year, Thomas lost access to the private keys or his storage device.
According to an older "Wired" article, Thomas originally had three storage locations, but the IronKey was already the last hope to get the Bitcoins in 2011.
On Tuesday, Thomas shared the New York Times report on himself on Twitter and commented: “A painful memory.
I hope others can learn from my mistakes.
Test your backups regularly to make sure they are still working.
A bit of foresight could have prevented a decade of regrets. "
Twitter users like Aaron Levie, the head of the cloud company Box, commented on Thomas' situation with not seriously meant slogans such as "The best argument so far to make 12345678 your crypto password" or "The most expensive forgotten password in history".
Others thought about how the case could be filmed in an entertaining way, or reported their own Bitcoin woes.
Stefan Thomas himself has a somewhat more harmless story from the field in store: In 2018, he confided to the San Francisco Business Times that he had once turned down the offer to resell the Bitcoin.io domain - for allegedly 3,000 Bitcoins.
It wasn't his only bitcoins
The idea that people should manage their own money is more skeptical than before, says the article in the New York Times.
"This whole idea of being your own bank - let me put it this way: do you make your own shoes?" He says.
"The reason we have banks is because we don't want to be bothered with all of these things banks do."
According to the report, Thomas keeps his IronKey in a safe place in the hope that cryptography experts will find new ways to crack complex passwords.
The chances are not necessarily bad: Facebook's former security chief Alex Stamos offered Thomas on Twitter to help him crack the IronKey for a profit sharing of 10 percent.
A joke, Stamos emphasized later.
Before that, however, he also wrote that they were not talking about an NSA crypto processor, according to Stamos, but about an older $ 50 device for private users.
Despite his password drama, you probably don't have to worry about Stefan Thomas' finances: Thomas was, among other things, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the start-up Ripple, whose own digital currency, like Bitcoin, has grown in value over the years.
So actually he is someone who is extremely well versed in the field of crypto currencies, Thomas should also have a lot of personal contacts to experts from the industry.
In addition, Thomas also indicated to the "New York Times" that he owned or had owned other Bitcoins beyond the 7002 inaccessible Bitcoins.
And in those cases, according to the article, he can also remember his passwords.
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