https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55645408
"We've all been there - brain fog makes us forget our password and after eight frantic attempts, we have just two left.
That's the situation for programmer Stefan Thomas but the stakes are higher than most - the forgotten password will let him unlock a hard drive containing $240m (£175m) worth of Bitcoin.
His plight, reported in the New York Times, has gone viral.
Ex-Facebook security head Alex Stamos has offered to help - for a 10% cut.
...
Mr Thomas, who was born in Germany but lives in San Francisco, was given 7,002 bitcoins as payment for making a video explaining how cryptocurrency works more than a decade ago.
At the time, they were worth a few dollars each.
He stored them in an IronKey digital wallet on a hard drive.
And he wrote the password on a piece of paper he has lost.
Own bank
After 10 failed attempts, the password will encrypt itself, making the wallet impossible to access.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the dilemma has put him off cryptocurrencies.
He told the New York Times: "The whole idea of being your own bank - let me put it this way, do you make your own shoes?"
"The reason we have banks is that we don't want to deal with all those things that banks do."
"We've all been there - brain fog makes us forget our password and after eight frantic attempts, we have just two left.
That's the situation for programmer Stefan Thomas but the stakes are higher than most - the forgotten password will let him unlock a hard drive containing $240m (£175m) worth of Bitcoin.
His plight, reported in the New York Times, has gone viral.
Ex-Facebook security head Alex Stamos has offered to help - for a 10% cut.
- Bitcoin tops $34,000 as record rally continues
- Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin hits three-year high as investors jump in
- Man searches for hard drive with £4m worth of bitcoins stored
...
Mr Thomas, who was born in Germany but lives in San Francisco, was given 7,002 bitcoins as payment for making a video explaining how cryptocurrency works more than a decade ago.
At the time, they were worth a few dollars each.
He stored them in an IronKey digital wallet on a hard drive.
And he wrote the password on a piece of paper he has lost.
Own bank
After 10 failed attempts, the password will encrypt itself, making the wallet impossible to access.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the dilemma has put him off cryptocurrencies.
He told the New York Times: "The whole idea of being your own bank - let me put it this way, do you make your own shoes?"
"The reason we have banks is that we don't want to deal with all those things that banks do."
