Can you imagine losing 250 million dollars in this way.
Everyone has forgotten a password at some point, but luckily, the vast majority of digital services have procedures to recover information or a blocked account. This does not happen with cryptocurrencies and therefore, the German engineer Stefan Thomas does not know how to recover the millions he has saved.
Thomas has an encrypted hard drive, called IronKey, with the private keys of a digital wallet. In it he has 7,002 bitcoins, the equivalent of 270 million dollars at the current price (38 thousand dollars).
The digital nature of the currency means that there are many security mechanisms around it, but in the end, it all depends on the ability to remember or to have saved the password that unlocks everything.
Trusting in the paper's tenacity, Thomas wrote down his password on a sheet that had been on his desk for a long time. But one fine day, it was no longer in sight until it was lost and could never be recovered.
The digital asset was encrypted in an IronKey memory and has two attempts left.
Thinking he remembered the number that opened the chest with ease, he tried different combinations. Of the 10 attempts that the system supports, it has already consumed eight. If the remaining two fail, the information on the disk will be formatted to zero.
The very structure of Bitcoin makes sharing easy and open. To store them safely, many users have devices like the IronKey to add a layer of protection.
But the method that was used as a security key has ended up being a much bigger problem than the digital criminals lurking around the network.
The problem with the loss of the password has led Thomas to question the mechanism of cryptocurrencies. "This whole idea of being your own bank, let me put it this way, 'do you make your own shoes?' The reason we have banks is that we don't want to deal with all these things that banks do," he explained to the New York Times.
The possible solution
Bitcoin atrapado en un sistema de encriptación.
La solución no parece fácil. Una posibilidad vía la ofrece Alex Stamos, profesor de la Universidad de Stanford y anterior responsable de ciberseguridad de Facebook.
Según explica Stamos, por 256 millones de dólares se podrían contratar varios profesionales con múltiples IronKey y trabajar durante varios meses para encontrar un fallo de seguridad que permita acceder a la información que contiene la llave.
Thomas recibió los 7.002 BT como pago por un servicio realizado en Suiza en 2011. Por entonces, desconocía el valor de esta criptomoneda. Aceptó el pago, un poco desconfiado pero dispuesto a asumir el riesgo. Preparó en ese momento todo el protocolo para proteger la billetera digital.
En ese momento, su saldo apenas equivalía a unos 5.000 euros, pero 10 años después y tras la popularización de las criptodivisas, el valor de los bitcoin que guarda en su cartera se incrementaron un 44.000% más.
Según los datos revelados por la empresa Chainalysis, entre un 17 y un 23% de los bitcoins existentes están perdidos en el olvido. En algunos casos son carteras con pocos Bitcoins, pero en otros como el de Thomas, representan una gran fortuna con el valor actual.
La empresa Wallet Recovery Services ayuda a encontrar claves digitales perdidas. De acuerdo con ellos, han llegado a recibir 70 solicitudes diarias de personas que querrían recuperar sus contraseñas.