820 million dollars are just within reach, yet may never be touched forever — this is not an absurd plot from a novel, but a real-life experience of programmer Stefan Thomas.
The story begins in 2011. At that time, Bitcoin was just a 'digital toy' in a small circle of geeks. Stefan received 7.002 bitcoins as payment for creating a video introducing Bitcoin. Back then, this pile of 'digital strings' seemed no different from worthless paper to most people, so he casually stored it in a cryptographic USB drive called IronKey.
Little did he know that this USB drive held the cruelest rule: equipped with military-grade encryption technology, it only allowed 10 password attempts. After the 10th wrong attempt, the data inside would be permanently locked, with no possibility of recovery.
What he didn't anticipate was that years later, Bitcoin skyrocketed, and the value of those 7.002 digital assets soared to 820 million dollars (about 6 billion yuan). But at that point, he realized he had long forgotten the unlocking password.
He remembers having written the password on a piece of paper, and after searching every corner of his home, that piece of paper seemed to have evaporated. Over the years, he stubbornly tried the password 8 times, with each failure feeling like a step closer to the edge of a cliff — now, only 2 attempts remained.
Global top security experts and data recovery teams came one after another. After examining the USB drive's mechanism, they all shook their heads: 'There's nothing we can do; this rule is absolute.' Until 2023, the Unciphered team claimed to have found a way to bypass the 10-attempt limit, but Stefan declined — he had already signed agreements with other teams and could only go down one path.
In an interview, he calmly said, 'I have learned to let go. Not because I don’t care about that money, but because I have no other choice.'
820 million dollars hanging over his head, like a dream he cannot wake from. But for Stefan, compared to the ecstasy of 'potential possession', the fate of 'inevitable loss' allowed him to touch the essence of life first: some things, no matter how tightly you hold them, what is meant to flow away will ultimately not be retained.
