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Locked outside
With the recent highs in the price of Bitcoin, an unfortunate phenomenon is emerging: People who have amassed great fortunes in cryptocurrency are realizing that they have long lost the passwords to their crypto digital wallets.
Take Stefan Thomas, a programmer in San Francisco, who said The New York Times that he has 7,002 hidden Bitcoin – currently worth around $ 236 million, almost a quarter of a billion dollars – but has no idea how to access it and can only guess two more passwords before being locked forever.
Even putting crypto’s long-term prospects aside, the key message from these horror stories is that taking charge of digital finances is a huge risk if you can’t manage your passwords.
Crypto Startups
The problem of buying or mining crypto and then forgetting how to access it is so prevalent that there is a whole emerging industry for cybersecurity experts who can help the potential rich gain access to their fortunes after having forgot their passwords.
“Even savvy investors have been completely unable to handle any kind of private key management,” said Diogo Monica, co-founder of crypto security startup Anchorage. NOW.
Major stop
For Thomas and others in his situation, having millions of dollars just out of reach has soured the whole idea of a decentralized currency like Bitcoin, according to the. NOW.
“This whole idea of being your own bank – let me put it this way: ‘Do you make your own shoes? ” NOW. “The reason we have banks is that we don’t want to deal with everything the banks do.”
READ MORE: Lost passwords block millionaires from their Bitcoin fortunes [The New York Times]
Learn more about crypto: Crypto Thief Stole $ 54 Million Guessing Weak Passwords
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