A programmer holds a USB drive with 7002 Bitcoin private keys and only has 2 password attempts left, worth about 777 million dollars
Programmer Stefan Thomas holds an IronKey encrypted USB drive containing the private keys for 7,002 bitcoins, which were earned as a reward for his 2011 educational video "What is Bitcoin?" Recently valued at approximately $111,000 each, this amounts to about $777 million.The IronKey device is set to permanently lock and delete its contents after 10 incorrect password attempts. Thomas has tried 8 times and has only 2 attempts left. The manufacturer Kingston stated that there are no backup passwords or alternative recovery methods aside from the original password set by the user. Thomas has sought assistance from the digital forensics company Naxo and security researcher Chris Tarnovsky, and he previously declined Unciphered due to having reached a verbal agreement with both teams. As of the end of 2025, the IronKey remains stored in a Swiss vault, with no confirmation of a successful recovery by mid-2026.
