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James Howells minted 7,500 Bitcoin tokens when the cryptocurrency was just beginning to see the light of the day. His former partner accidentally threw away the drive where the mined Bitcoins were saved in 2013. Now Howells is ramping efforts to recover his valuable tokens and has hired NASA-linked experts to find his trashed hard drive.
His plight has drawn the attention of hard drive and password crackers, offering their services for a slice of the quarter-billion-dollar pie. Alex Stamos, an internet security expert at Stanford Internet Observatory, claimed he can crack the password within six months. His price? Mr Stamos wants a 10 per cent cut (roughly $30 million) of the fortune. "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," Mr Stomas said on Twitter. "I'll make it happen for 10%. Call me."...
If computer programmer Stefan Thomas fails and burns through his final two of 10 attempts, he will lose 7002 Bitcoin, currently worth an eye-watering $304 million.