Bitcoin: born loser tales

No, not because of the price volatility (now at US$39,000) after it hit a speed bum.

BBC reports that about US$140bn worth of Bitcoin is lost or left in wallets that cannot be accessed, according to cryptocurrency-data company Chainanalysis.

Here’s a tragi-comic real-life story about programmer Stefan Thomas who forgot the password that will let him unlock a hard drive containing US$240m worth of Bitcoin.

Mr Thomas, who was born in Germany but lives in San Francisco, was given 7,002 bitcoins as payment for making a video explaining how cryptocurrency works more than a decade ago.

At the time, they were worth a few dollars each.

He stored them in an IronKey digital wallet on a hard drive.

And he wrote the password on a piece of paper he has lost.

After 10 failed attempts, the password will encrypt itself, making the wallet impossible to access.[My note: he has two more chances]

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55645408

And an ever more tragic and funnier story about another born loser. In 2013, a Welsh man desperately searched a landfill site after throwing away a computer hard drive containing 7,500 bitcoins.

At that time this was worth more than £4m, this would now be valued at more than £250m (US$182m).

Meanwhile in Cynical Historian: What the Dutch colonialists in Indonesia learnt from Raffles: Raffles moved fast and broke heads. Given LKY’s track record, maybe he learnt his style of govt from Raffles?

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