Your $200M in Bitcoin Can’t Be Accessed, What Would You Do?

In 2011, Bitcoin was only worth $2. Naturally, Stefan Thomas decided to take a risk on the currency and bought a LOT of it. Today, that same vault is worth upwards of $200M. Pretty crazy, right? The only thing crazier is that he can’t access any of it. 

Falling victim to a blunder that we all experience at times, Stefan Thomas has forgotten the password to his digital wallet. Yes, he cannot access his $220M because he can’t remember the login info. In a recent feature, Stefan Thomas told Inside Edition, “I vaguely remember writing the password down and putting it somewhere safe. When I needed it, I was desperately searching everywhere, and I couldn’t find it.”

Bitcoin allows a user to guess a password ten times before the wallet is locked forever, meaning Stefan Thomas has ten attempts to recover his fortune. That would be the case…if he wasn’t already down to 2. 

As of now, Stefan Thomas has two more chances to reclaim his millions. If not, his empire of wealth will be gone forever. Because Bitcoin is decentralized, there’s no contact, no lifeline, no “forgot password.” If he guesses incorrectly, they’re gone for good. 

Fortunately, Stefan Thomas isn’t too distraught. Recently, he told CBC:

 “So I sort of had to make a decision, right? Like, either I let this define the rest of my life, and I keep thinking back to it and I just, you know, as you said, lose sleep for the rest of my life, or I just, you know, face the fact that this money is gone, these bitcoins are gone, and I move forward, and I get back to work. And I chose the latter.”

Even so, a small shred of hope may shine through. During his interview with CBC, Stefan Thomas hinted at possible solvency to his colossal dilemma, noting:

“There is a way to take a scanning electron microscope and take apart the physical chip and literally go into the silicon chip and take away layer by layer, like a few atoms thick, and then read out the actual memory cells. And then with that technique, you should be able to bypass that limit of 10 tries, and then you can have a supercomputer try, you know, billions of passwords per second.”

If Stefan Thomas can recover his wallet, he’ll have a large fortune on his hands. If not, he’s hopefully gotten enough media coverage to cover his lost fortune.