A crypto recovery firm has offered to help Stefan Thomas, the former chief technology officer of Ripple, access his lost Bitcoin fortune worth $244 million.
Thomas made headlines earlier this year when he revealed that he had forgotten the password to his IronKey hard drive, which contained the private keys to 7,002 BTC. The device was designed to erase its data after 10 failed attempts, and Thomas had already used eight of them.
Can Unciphered Crack the IronKey?
Now, a company called Unciphered claims that it has developed a method to crack the IronKey and recover the Bitcoin keys safely. The firm says it has successfully unlocked a similar device after 200 trillion tries, apparently bypassing the 10-attempt limit.
On October 25, Unciphered, a company specializing in cryptocurrency recovery, publicly proposed to assist Thomas in accessing his IronKey hard drive. This hard drive is notable as it holds 7,002 BTC, which was valued at approximately $244 million at the time the offer was made.
The company did not disclose what it would charge for its service but said it had created a sustainable business helping people recover their crypto.
“We’re prepared if Stefan doesn’t want to work with us, but we’re hopeful,” said Unciphered CEO Eric Michaud. “We already have a business that is growing and we’ll be here when he’s ready.”
Thomas is not the only one who has lost access to his Bitcoin stash. According to estimates from 2022, about 20% of Bitcoin’s supply was inaccessible due to lost or forgotten keys, amounting to billions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency.
Unciphered’s offer comes at a time when Bitcoin is trading at around $34.500 as per data provided by CoinMarketCap, making Thomas’ locked coins even more valuable. Whether he will accept the firm’s proposal or continue to search for his password remains to be seen.
