A look at those unlucky enough to forget the password to access their bitcoin; Chainalysis says 20% of all bitcoin, or ~$140B, appears to be lost or stranded
Also the Libor transition and Chinese stock bans. Charlesarthur / The Overspill : Start Up No.1462: the bitcoin millionaires with no money, the “clean” CES, the trouble with scotch eggs, Uganda bans social media, and more Omar Faridi / Crowdfund Insider : $130 Billion in Bitcoin (BTC) Is Now Permanently Inaccessible due to Lost Private Keys Associated with Crypto Wallets Shaurya Malwa / CryptoSlate : Bitcoin veteran has $220 million in a locked wallet...and he can't access it Tim Alper / Cryptonews : Two Wrong Guesses And This Programmer Loses USD 241M in Bitcoin Michael Lavere / CryptoGlobe : San Francisco Bitcoiner Has Two Guesses Left Before Wallet Encrypts $240M in BTC Forever Sally Ho / cryptodaily.co.uk : Computer Programmer Forgets Password To A Bitcoin Fortune Financial Times : Selling a Spac dream: auto start-ups angle for Tesla shine PYMNTS.com : Bitcoin Daily: 20 Pct Of Bitcoin Trapped In ‘Lost’ Wallets; Goldman Says Bitcoin Is Maturing Tweets: Steadman&trade / @asteadwesley : yo this is incredible https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : Um, for $220M in locked-up Bitcoin, you don't make 10 password guesses but take it to professionals to buy 20 IronKeys and spend six months finding a side-channel or uncapping. I'll make it happen for 10%. Call me. https://twitter.com/... Nathaniel Popper / @nathanielpopper : Counterpoint. This guy from Barbardos is more than willing to take the risk of being his own bank — with all the potential losses — because it is really hard to get a bank account, or any other digital financial account where he comes from. https://twitter.com/... Lisa Kramer / @lisakramer : Man who was “drawn to Bitcoin partly because it was outside of the control of a country or company” forgets his Bitcoin wallet password, loses access to $220 million, and now concedes maybe banks serve a useful purpose after all. https://www.nytimes.com/... @beatinthebookie : Seems like a bad business model, imagine losing $220 million because you cant remember your password. https://twitter.com/... Aaron Levie / @levie : Best argument yet for making 12345678 your crypto password https://twitter.com/... Evan Greer / @evan_greer : This is my nightmare except instead of $220 million in Bitcoin I'm terrified I'm gonna lose all my photos of my 20s https://twitter.com/... Matt O'Brien / @obsoletedogma : The future of money is losing $220 million because you can't remember what password you used 10 years ago https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Dylan Reeve / @dylanreeve : Very early in the lifecycle of bitcoin I bought what I think was about $5 worth online. This was around the time two pizzas were bought for 10,000btc so I think it might have been around 2,000btc. I put them in some hokey wallet app and then forgot about them for years. https://twitter.com/... Lachlan Markay / @lachlan : This is absolutely excruciating https://twitter.com/... Robert VerBruggen / @raverbruggen : Lol wasn't this basically a Silicon Valley plot? https://twitter.com/... XRPatience / @xrpartisan : I have a fantastic memory in the form of a bullet proof steel seed plate in a fireproof, waterproof bag in a fireproof, waterproof safe in a brick and concrete basement. Don't take chances people. https://twitter.com/... Matthew Smith / @mattsmithkiro7 : I think it's a miracle to remember passwords to transfer old 401K funds. Meanwhile, some dude has $220M worth of Bitcoin and is two bad tries away from losing it all. 😳 https://twitter.com/... Stefan Thomas / @justmoon : A painful memory. I hope others can learn from my mistakes. Test your backups regularly to make sure they are still working. An ounce of foresight could have prevented a decade of regret. That said, I'll do what I always do which is focus on building things, e.g. @Interledger. https://twitter.com/... Jacob Tamme / @jacobtamme : Big believer in not worrying about things I have zero control over but I am definitely worrying about this https://twitter.com/... Atlas / @ancapchildren : I just read “I've been wrong over and over” https://twitter.com/... Jacob Margolis / @jacobmargolis : “Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.” 🙃 anxiety inducing lede from @nathanielpopper https://www.nytimes.com/... Roddy / @roddymcglynn : Not quite $220 million, but I bought £100 worth of Bitcoin in 2014 that's now worth about £8,000. Used my now-deactivated uni email account to set up the Bitcoin wallet so it's now inaccessible. Why am I such an idiot 😭😭😭 https://twitter.com/... Howie Lindsey / @howielindsey : Well, now I don't feel so bad about those @qdoba points I lost... https://twitter.com/... Osaretin Victor Asemota / @asemota : This is why I keep saying that the whole self custody thing is like putting money in a mattress then forgetting your home address. https://twitter.com/... Jonathan Zittrain / @zittrain : If cryptocurrency doesn't crash, it'll end up handled by regular brand name banks on behalf of their customers for just this reason. https://twitter.com/... Duncan Weldon / @duncanweldon : Fun finance question: if Mr Thomas could verify that the hard drive had $220m of BTC on it and there were only two password attempts left... how much could he sell the hard drive for? https://twitter.com/... Teddy Fusaro / @teddyfuse : This is the part of the rally when #bitcoin spills over to mainstream journalists and commentators with LOTS of opinions and feelings but who have done very little research on the topic. https://twitter.com/... Ian Sherr / @iansherr : PEOPLE — PASSWORD MANAGERS AREN'T THAT HARD TO USE https://twitter.com/... Xavier Amatriain / @xamat : LOL. I even lost my username 😭 https://twitter.com/... Josh Barro / @jbarro : My price target for Bitcoin has been $0 for years and obviously I've been proved wrong over and over, but I'm still right about the larger truth, which is that Bitcoin is stupid. https://www.nytimes.com/... Cliff Levy / @cliffordlevy : Talk about lost password anxiety: “Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.” This story by @nathanielpopper is kind of bonkers. https://www.nytimes.com/... D.O / @docolumide : Just imagine how forgetting a password can separate you from a personal fortune of $200M. (I know this feels: I've an old PGP-encrypted drive whose encryption key password I've been guessing at intermittently for the past 8 years to no avail.) https://twitter.com/... Nathaniel Popper / @nathanielpopper : One takeaway from this story. Bitcoin wanted to make it possible for you to be your own bank. This promise, though, didn't contend with how bad people would be at securing the keys to the bank. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...