With Bitcoin prices increasing by over 50% since it reached its all-time high of $20,000 last month, those locked out of their cryptocurrency wallets are becoming desperate as they calculate how much wealth they would gain if only they remembered their passwords.
Around 20% of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin - worth a total of $140 billion - are in stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. Wallet Recovery Services, a firm that helps recover lost digital keys, told the Times that it received 70 requests a day from users who are trying to access their digital wallets - a number that is three times higher than it was a month ago. In an interview with the Times, Stefan Thomas, a programmer living in San Francisco, said that his strategies to remember his password continue to fail, leaving him with only two guesses to figure out his password before being permanently locked out. His 7,002 Bitcoin is worth around $220 million as of this week.
The password should allow him to unlock an IronKey, a small hard drive containing the private keys to a digital wallet that holds his Bitcoin.
Former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos, tweeting about the story on Tuesday, appeared to offer to help Thomas access his wallet - for 10% of its value.
Source: BusinessInsider
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