Meet Stefan Thomas, The Guy Forgets Keys to $220m Bitcoin Wallet

The latest New York Times article introduced an unexpected way to lose $220 million. Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer, owns a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. As the BTC price passed 40,000 US dollars earlier this year, the tokens in that wallet now worth about $220 million. But the bad thing is that he cannot remember the key to this wallet.

These Bitcoin are bought when the BTC price is around $2-$6 each. Stefan made the purchase and soon forgot them after putting in the digital wallet. The password has been written on a paper while it has been long lost.

Luckily, the digital wallet provider IronKey allows users like Stefan to make 10 guesses before it encrypts its contents forever. Stefan tried very hard to remember the lost passwords and so far he has failed eight times, meaning that after two fails, the money will go forever. 

As the biggest cryptocurrency, the total supply of Bitcoin is 21 million and all Bitcoin is expected to be mined in the following three to four decades. 

Stefan Thomas is not the only one who forgets the important password of the Bitcoin wallet. Among the 18.5 million Bitcoin circulating in the market, around 20% appear to be lost, according to the data firm Chainalysis.

In 2013, James Howells, an IT worker living in the UK, accidentally threw out a hard drive containing the keys to 7,500 bitcoins, worthing about 250 million US dollars. The hard drive has been mistakenly put into a waste bin at his local landfill site in Newport, South Wales, where it got buried. Now he wants to try to find the drive while the local city council does not allow it. 

It’s uncertain that if Stefan Thomas and James Howells will be able to retrieve the million dollars lost, but one thing is certain, the scarcity of Bitcoin will continue to rise.