German-born programmer Stefan Thomas now has two more attempts to sign in before the whites lose more than $ 220 million.
The former Chief Executive of Ripple Technology reportedly forgot the password of the hard drive, IronKey which has a personal key for its cryptocurrency wallet that stores 7,002 Bitcoin (BTC).
Based on today's BTC price which reached $ 37,415 per coin, making the total accumulated amount reach $ 261.9 million!
Telling his story to The New York Times, Thomas wrote the password on a piece of paper before losing the post.
IronKey users are given 10 chances before being locked in forever if they fail in a row.
With eight attempts, it seems Thomas found a dead end with only two chances left.
Through a tweet on Twitter, Thomas described the incident as a "painful memory" and asked crypto investors to learn from his mistakes rather than bear regret forever.
To date, an estimated 20% of Bitcoin assets are stored in an inaccessible wallet, bringing the total to over $ 140 billion.
Following this news, Ethereum (ETH) founder Vitalik Buterin suggested social recovery wallets to prevent the same incident from happening again.
