Two wrong passwords and Stefan could lose over $240m worth of Bitcoin

Stefan Thomas, the programmer who forgot his password and tried eight times with only two attempts left which will let him unlock a hard drive containing £175m ( $240m) worth of Bitcoins.

An Ex-Facebook security head Alex Stamos offered to help for a 10 per cent cut.

Mr, Thomas who was born in Germany, but now lives in San Francisco was given 7002 bitcoins as payment for making a video explaining how cryptocurrency works more than a decade ago as at that time Bitcoins were worth only a few dollars each, but now one Bitcoin is worth £24, 850 ( $34, 000) as the leading cryptocurrency continued to soar, as the gain this year is about $5000. He stored them in an IronKey digital wallet on a hard drive and wrote the password on a piece of paper which he has lost and can’t remember.

After 10 failed attempts the password will encrypt itself, making the wallet impossible to access.

He told the New York Times: “ the whole idea of being your own bank – let me put it this way, do you make your own shoes”. The dilemma has put him off cryptocurrencies.

Currently, about $149bn worth of bitcoin is lost or left in wallets that cannot be accessed, according to cryptocurrency data company Chainanalysis. An entrepreneur who lost about 800 bitcoins when a colleague reformatted his laptop containing the private keys to his wallet. In 2013, a Welshman searched a landfill site without success after throwing away a computer hard drive containing 7, 500 bitcoins which at the time was worth more than £4m and now be valued at over £250m.