Jul 2012 - IronKey Lost Password Stefan Thomas - $148k (United States)
"He had a problem with jobs as a freelancer:difficulty with payments across borders. Some of Thomas' bank accounts and international trade were closed. With the discovery of Bitcoin, making payments became easier.
Mt. He stated that before the Gox exchange, there was no website or platform where the Bitcoin price could be tracked or traded. In 2010, Mt. A relatively small Bitcoin community emerged with the Gox exchange.
Thomas said that with the emergence of the stock market and Bitcoin seeing price activity, it started to attract people's attention. “People were impressed by Bitcoin technology and were talking about the benefits it offers.
Personally, I was intrigued by Bitcoin's contribution to payments, and I worked on it in my spare time."
"He did not see Bitcoin in a long-term perspective, either. But one day, he saw a community award for making an animated video about Bitcoin. The reward was 13,000 BTC. Thomas got the support of some of his friends for this and won the prize. The reward was 9,052 BTC.
He spent 2,000 of this award on those who helped him in the project and other expenses. He threw the remaining part into his crypto money wallet."
"Protected Bitcoins Thomas wanted to protect his Bitcoins after the amount started to increase. It established a cryptocurrency wallet system consisting of 2 backups and 1 main wallet to protect thousands of Bitcoins it owns. He set up the passwords for all of them and now felt completely safe.
Until July 2012. Everything has changed Stefan Thomas realized that he could not access the Bitcoins he was protecting on July 11, 2012. When he tried to enter the cryptocurrency wallet, his password was rejected and he saw that he had 2 access rights left."
"When he lost his wallet password, the value of his Bitcoins was around $ 148,000."
“When I lost, I panicked. I was very bad. Making such a mistake saddened me. I researched how I can get my Bitcoins back. I said maybe I should have given up."
Further Analysis
Stefan Thomas was one of the earliest bitcoin proponents, and got paid in bitcoin for making an early explanation video about the bitcoin protocol back in 2011. After paying those who helped him, he put the rest of the bitcoins in an IronKey wallet and proceeded to forget the password. It was around July 11th, 2012 when he realized he may never get access to his bitcoins again. As the price of bitcoin has risen his story has been the subject of a large number of mainstream news articles.
How Could This Have Been Prevented?
More Cryptocurrency Exchange Hacks/Scams/Frauds
Bitcoin Savings and Trust > > < < BTC-e Hack
Sources/Further Reading
Bitcoin Owner Who Lost Password Made Peace With Potential $220 Million Loss (Dec 31)
Programmer Locked Out of Bitcoin Wallet, Forgot Password (Dec 31)
Learn the Story of the Programmer who Lost Millions in Bitcoin (Dec 31)
Reddit - Dive into anything (Dec 31)
https://archive.ph/uL4YP (Dec 31)
Forgotten Bitcoin password: Latest gamble to recover lost cryptocurrency fortune (Dec 31)
Stefan Thomas, former Ripple: "I've lost almost $60 million." - The Cryptonomist (Dec 31)
This man owns $321M in bitcoin — but he can't access it because he lost his password | CBC Radio (Dec 31)
What is Bitcoin? (v1) - YouTube (Dec 31)
$220M in Bitcoin May Be Encrypted Forever on IronKey - Ciphertrace (Dec 31)
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