![A daily mail article about the story of Stefan Thomas, an American who is in a situation where he can't find a whopping 240 billion won money because he forgot the password of his Bitcoin wallet. [데일리메일 캡처]](https://i0.wp.com/pds.joins.com/news/component/htmlphoto_mmdata/202101/13/9efa590c-4172-43d7-836e-fe61701f35b5.jpg?w=560&ssl=1)
A daily mail article about the story of Stefan Thomas, an American who is in a situation where he can’t find a whopping 240 billion won money because he forgot the password of his Bitcoin wallet. [데일리메일 캡처]
There is an American man who forgot the password of the electronic wallet of the cryptocurrency’Bitcoin’, which is soaring in value every day, and made a whopping 220 million dollars (about 240 billion won) of money.
According to foreign media such as the UK Daily Mail on the 12th (local time), computer programmer Stefan Thomas, who works in San Francisco, California, USA, received 7002 bitcoins in exchange for producing a video related to cryptocurrency in 2011. The price of 1 bitcoin 10 years ago was between $2 and $6, and the amount he received at the time was between $14,000 and $42,000. In terms of Korean currency, it was about 15 to 46 million won.
Thomas said that he left it in his electronic wallet and forgot it. However, as the cryptocurrency market has recently risen, the price of 1 bitcoin has exceeded $30,000. The value of bitcoin in his electronic wallet also jumped to about 220 million dollars (about 240 billion won).
The problem is that he forgot the password without checking the wallet for a long time. 10 times the number of times the password can be entered for the electronic wallet. In an interview with the media, he said, “I tried combining passwords that I used frequently, but so far there have been eight errors.” He said that there are only two chances left to find bitcoins worth $220 million.
When the number of password input errors reaches 10 times, the hard disk drive built into the electronic wallet is completely encrypted, making it impossible to find Bitcoin forever.
Thomas said, “I lie down and think about what my password was,” he said. “I came up with a new password combination and ran to the computer and tried, but the wallet did not open.”
When his story became known, an internet security expert from Stanford Internet Observation, a company that monitors cyber activities, came up with a proposal via Twitter saying, “I will find my password within 6 months, so I will give you 10% of my bitcoin.” It is known that one.
NYT reported that 18.5 million bitcoins are currently tied to e-wallets for similar reasons to Thomas.
Reporter Dayoung Kim [email protected]