Millions of dollars of Bitcoins can\u2019t be accessedPicture via unsplashStefan ThomasA recent article in the New York Times by Nathaniel Popper describes this terrible situation.Stefan Thomas has forgotten the password he needs to get to a digital wallet that holds over $200 million in Bitcoins. The correct password would allow him access to a hard drive which contains his private keys to a digital wallet which holds 7,002 Bitcoins. Thomas has been trying for nine years to remember the password, but he\u2019s running out of tries. The hard drive allows ten tries before it wipes itself clean, and Thomas has just two tries left.Thomas was born in Germany and is a computer programmer. While living in Switzerland in 2011 (he now lives in San Francisco), he produced an animated video for a client who paid him the 7,002 Bitcoins. (Irony: The video was titled, \u201cWhat is Bitcoin?\u201d)As for his lost password, Thomas has put the hard drive in a secure facility in case someone comes up with new way of cracking complex passwords. Keeping it far away helps him to try not to think about it, he said. Out of sight, out of mind.The Bitcoin SystemBitcoin\u2019s creator has said Bitcoin\u2019s central idea was to allow anyone in the world to open a digital bank account and hold the money in a way so that no government could interfere. So Bitcoin is the preferred currency when the users want to remain hidden and out of the banking system. A lot of a transaction\u2019s data is hidden behind a password which you need to get into your account. Thomas lost the paper where he wrote down the password. With traditional bank accounts and online wallets, banks and other financial companies can retrieve users\u2019 passwords or reset lost passwords.Bitcoin\u2019s unusual technological setup makes\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Millions of dollars of Bitcoins can\u2019t be accessedPicture via unsplashStefan ThomasA recent article in the New York Times by Nathaniel Popper describes this terrible situation.Stefan Thomas [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}