More bitcoin nuttiness

[dorndawg]

Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html

 

[Msubulldogfan1]

Well, that’s unfortunate.

 

[BlueRidgeMtns]

Did he try "password"?**

 

[patdog]

He's far from the only one.

https://news.bitcoin.com/analyst-15...ss-than-14-million-coins-will-ever-circulate/

 

[Quincy A. Wagstaff]

Makes me sick. At 7,002 bitcoin he had to have done that when bitcoin wasn't worth very much. Back then there weren't collaborative custody solutions. I recommend Casa and Unchained Capital. They protect you from attack AND your own stupidity. It also allows you to retain complete control of your funds.

 

[mcdawg22]

Try bigboobz with a z.

 

[Quincy A. Wagstaff]

He's far from the only one.

https://news.bitcoin.com/analyst-15...ss-than-14-million-coins-will-ever-circulate/

If you can manage to accumulate bitcoin AND not lose it (selling, trading, bad OpSec, etc.), every lost bitcoin makes you that much wealthier. I hate it for anyone that loses bitcoin, but in the end it's a donation to the rest of us.

 

[horshack.sixpack]

Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html

I've seen related stories about bitcoin inherited from estates.

 

[patdog]

Until you're the one who loses your bitcoins. Everyone thinks it won't be me, but sometimes it is.

 

[jethreauxdawg]

I’m guessing he knows the password or the hard drive is actually blank and he is just wanting the publicity

 

[hatfieldms]

Just click on the “forgot my password” link

 

[dorndawg]

If 20% are unavailable/not in circulation due to various reasons, seems as though that's a significant contributor to the current value.

I dunno guys, maybe there's some flaws in currency not backed by institutions?

 

[mstateglfr]

If you can manage to accumulate bitcoin AND not lose it (selling, trading, bad OpSec, etc.), every lost bitcoin makes you that much wealthier. I hate it for anyone that loses bitcoin, but in the end it's a donation to the rest of us.

Why is it a donation to everyone else?
If 10 people each own 10% of something and 2 people lose access to their shares, why do the remaining 80% get wealthier? The 20% thats lost doesnt go back into a general pool for the remaining 8. Its just lost and unused.

...or am I misunderstanding what you wrote?

 

[Quincy A. Wagstaff]

Why is it a donation to everyone else?
If 10 people each own 10% of something and 2 people lose access to their shares, why do the remaining 80% get wealthier? The 20% thats lost doesnt go back into a general pool for the remaining 8. Its just lost and unused.

...or am I misunderstanding what you wrote?

Price is determined by supply and demand. There is a max supply of 21 million bitcoin. If 1 million bitcoin are lost forever, the actual max circulating supply is 20 million. It's the same as if those 1 million bitcoin are in the hands of someone who refuses to sell at any price. So the demand is chasing a smaller supply.

 

[ckDOG]

That sounds like an act

Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html

Bet he is faking it to draw more attention and fascination to Bitcoin driving up the value of the product in the process. He will be richer than otherwise would be once he nails it on the 10th time.

Pretty smart strategy with the Bitcoin crowd.

 

[Xenomorph]

Remembering my password for years ago wouldn't be a problem.. but my dubmass would've lost that encrypted jump drive the next day.

 

[dorndawg]

Bet he is faking it to draw more attention and fascination to Bitcoin driving up the value of the product in the process. He will be richer than otherwise would be once he nails it on the 10th time.

Pretty smart strategy with the Bitcoin crowd.

I have zero doubts there is all manner of chicanery surrounding bitcoin, but not sure how a few thousand missing would increase the price in a meaningful way.

 

[kired]

Before I read the article I was going to say he should just open his desk drawer and pull out the little paper he's been writing his passwords on... but apparently he lost that little paper. He's screwed.

 

[mstateglfr]

Price is determined by supply and demand. There is a max supply of 21 million bitcoin. If 1 million bitcoin are lost forever, the actual max circulating supply is 20 million. It's the same as if those 1 million bitcoin are in the hands of someone who refuses to sell at any price. So the demand is chasing a smaller supply.

I understand how price is determined, but dont understand why this reduces the supply. As it is, his bitcoin isnt available to others. And when he is forever locked out, his bitcoin isnt available to others.
What is the difference between someone holding 1000 bitcoin and 1000 bitcoin being 'lost'? Both are out of the available supply.

And since there isnt a difference, there isnt a donation. Unless by 'donation' what you really mean is an increase in value. Thats an odd use of the word donation since it would mean anyone holding onto bitcoin at any given time is donating value to everyone else holding onto bitcoin at any given time.
Yeah...that isnt donating.


And the use of that word is what confused me because I wasnt sure if you actually meant the bitcoin is somehow donated(since I hadnt heard of that before).

Glad we cleared it up- no bitcoin was donated and everyone still has the same amount of bitcoin as before.

 

[Go Budaw]

Price is determined by supply and demand. There is a max supply of 21 million bitcoin. If 1 million bitcoin are lost forever, the actual max circulating supply is 20 million. It's the same as if those 1 million bitcoin are in the hands of someone who refuses to sell at any price. So the demand is chasing a smaller supply.

In terms of investment securities, price is only determined by supply and demand if you are either:

A) A moron
B) A speculator (read: gambler)
C) Both

For the rest of folks that actually want to know if what they are buying or investing in actually has any tangible value (let alone if that value is actually appraised properly by the market or by brokerages), they want to know what the long term image is for growth of the asset based on real world application. The only real world application for Bitcoin seems to be “hey, there’s not that much of it, come get some!”.

That’s why you’ll never convince me that it is any better of an investment instrument than just going to the casino and putting $10k on black on the roulette wheel, and stories like this about forgotten passwords and what not are a hilarious reminder of that. Any asset who’s value is determined by whether or not a certain number of people can remember their passwords or keep up with a thumb drive is not an asset at all, its just a glorified Ponzi scheme that will eventually come crashing down in spectacular fashion.

 

[Quincy A. Wagstaff]

In terms of investment securities, price is only determined by supply and demand if you are either:

A) A moron
B) A speculator (read: gambler)
C) Both

For the rest of folks that actually want to know if what they are buying or investing in actually has any tangible value (let alone if that value is actually appraised properly by the market or by brokerages), they want to know what the long term image is for growth of the asset based on real world application. The only real world application for Bitcoin seems to be “hey, there’s not that much of it, come get some!”.

That’s why you’ll never convince me that it is any better of an investment instrument than just going to the casino and putting $10k on black on the roulette wheel, and stories like this about forgotten passwords and what not are a hilarious reminder of that. Any asset who’s value is determined by whether or not a certain number of people can remember their passwords or keep up with a thumb drive is not an asset at all, its just a glorified Ponzi scheme that will eventually come crashing down in spectacular fashion.

Has the roulette wheel ever beaten gold AND the S&P 500 over a year? Two years? Five years? Ten years?

View attachment 19198

One day you will either be very right or very wrong. I think a 1-10% allocation in the best performing asset of the last ten years is reasonable. 0% is the extreme, risky bet.

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

If you can manage to accumulate bitcoin AND not lose it (selling, trading, bad OpSec, etc.), every lost bitcoin makes you that much wealthier. I hate it for anyone that loses bitcoin, but in the end it's a donation to the rest of us.

Is Bitcoin run by the Jehovahs Witnesses?

 

[GloryDawg]

Turbo Tax now has a question did you trade in virtual coins.

 

[NTDawg]

So he buried his money and forgot where?

 

[Go Budaw]

Has the roulette wheel ever beaten gold AND the S&P 500 over a year? Two years? Five years? Ten years?

View attachment 19198

One day you will either be very right or very wrong. I think a 1-10% allocation in the best performing asset of the last ten years is reasonable. 0% is the extreme, risky bet.

Bernie Madoff beat all those indexes as well. And the folks who were lucky and got in early still got super rich. Then the ones at the end got screwed. Everything will be great with Bitcoin until it isn’t. Good luck in selling at the right time.

 

[Nicephorus]

Crypto outsiders love talking about bitcoin. While I do hold some bitcoin, I continue to think the sleeping giant is decentralized finance tokens. Smart contracts running on blockchain are at some point going to replace traditional financial instruments such as banks in the future due to their efficiency and transparency and redistribution of profits back to the end users. The US Comptroller of the Currency just put an op-ed out about this today:

https://twitter.com/USOCC/status/1349025828072529924?s=20

Market cap of all defi tokens combined is 27.3B. Bitcoin by itself is ~660B. Largest defi token, if you exclude chainlink which is sorta pseudo-defi, is the decentralized derivative platform Synthetix.io (SNX) which is ~2.2B.

Also, outside of bitcoin and ethereum (which all this runs on ethereum), defi platforms are basically the only blockchains people are paying to use and generating cash flows for token holders. This site shows this nicely and doesn't even include the exchange aggregator 1inch.exchange which did 200 mil daily volume recently.

https://cryptofees.info/

I think main thing holding back defi right now is lack of easy access to markets to buy the tokens (many of these are only available to US customers on decentralized exchanges like uniswap.org, sushiswap.fi, or 1inch.exchange) and lack of understanding of what they exactly do and how to use them as there are many terms and abbreviations to learn such as liquidity pools LP, tokenomics, automated market maker AMM, liquidation auctions, synthetic assets (synths), impermanent loss IL, etc...

 

[UpTheMiddlex3Punt]

For that much money, I would buy a few IronKeys and reverse engineer them. There has to be a way to get the (currently encrypted) digital data off of the key as well as figure out how any physically unclonable functions on the device work. Once you do that you can pretty much make as many guesses as you want. The problem is that you still have to eventually find the correct password, which if you made it complex enough in the first place it is going to take so long to crack it that you might as well try to crack the public key for your bitcoin. If you have 20 commonly used passwords then you might have a chance.

But don't worry, this kind of stuff is a feature, not a problem, for Bitcoin. I can't wait to hear about families having their houses foreclosed on because their toddler grabbed the bitcoin key and jammed in so many combos that it will be a year until they can try to unlock the key.

 

[UpTheMiddlex3Punt]

So he buried his money and forgot where?

It's worse than that. He can only check ten 1 square-foot locations on Earth before the money destroys itself.

 

[jethreauxdawg]

1inch.exchange? Did Coach34 start a new site? Either way, I’m not touching that.

 

[dorndawg]

Crypto outsiders love talking about bitcoin. While I do hold some bitcoin, I continue to think the sleeping giant is decentralized finance tokens. Smart contracts running on blockchain are at some point going to replace traditional financial instruments such as banks in the future due to their efficiency and transparency and redistribution of profits back to the end users. The US Comptroller of the Currency just put an op-ed out about this today:

https://twitter.com/USOCC/status/1349025828072529924?s=20

Market cap of all defi tokens combined is 27.3B. Bitcoin by itself is ~660B. Largest defi token, if you exclude chainlink which is sorta pseudo-defi, is the decentralized derivative platform Synthetix.io (SNX) which is ~2.2B.

Also, outside of bitcoin and ethereum (which all this runs on ethereum), defi platforms are basically the only blockchains people are paying to use and generating cash flows for token holders. This site shows this nicely and doesn't even include the exchange aggregator 1inch.exchange which did 200 mil daily volume recently.

https://cryptofees.info/

I think main thing holding back defi right now is lack of easy access to markets to buy the tokens (many of these are only available to US customers on decentralized exchanges like uniswap.org, sushiswap.fi, or 1inch.exchange) and lack of understanding of what they exactly do and how to use them as there are many terms and abbreviations to learn such as liquidity pools LP, tokenomics, automated market maker AMM, liquidation auctions, synthetic assets (synths), impermanent loss IL, etc...

 

[Miketice]

asstastic!

Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html

asdf

 

[SpiritofSuttleHall]

This sounds familiar

Price is determined by supply and demand. There is a max supply of 21 million bitcoin. If 1 million bitcoin are lost forever, the actual max circulating supply is 20 million. It's the same as if those 1 million bitcoin are in the hands of someone who refuses to sell at any price. So the demand is chasing a smaller supply.

Wasn't this the villain's plan in the movie Goldfinger?

View attachment 19199

 

[Nicephorus]

For that much money, I would buy a few IronKeys and reverse engineer them. There has to be a way to get the (currently encrypted) digital data off of the key as well as figure out how any physically unclonable functions on the device work. Once you do that you can pretty much make as many guesses as you want. The problem is that you still have to eventually find the correct password, which if you made it complex enough in the first place it is going to take so long to crack it that you might as well try to crack the public key for your bitcoin. If you have 20 commonly used passwords then you might have a chance.

But don't worry, this kind of stuff is a feature, not a problem, for Bitcoin. I can't wait to hear about families having their houses foreclosed on because their toddler grabbed the bitcoin key and jammed in so many combos that it will be a year until they can try to unlock the key.

Standard for current hardware wallets is to derive keys from a 12 or 24 word pass phrase using a standardized dictionary. A toddler could drop your wallet to the bottom of a Templeton trough during halftime of a conference game, and you could just create another wallet with matching keys from the pass phrase assuming you stored the phrase somewhere secure and safe. Could even put different parts of the phrase at different places.

The wallet password is basically a “25th word” that encrypts the passphrase stored on the wallet for added local security. It is not used to derive the keys. I assume he lost his pass phrase at some point or just never saved it.

 

[Dubs.sixpack]

If you can manage to accumulate bitcoin AND not lose it (selling, trading, bad OpSec, etc.), every lost bitcoin makes you that much wealthier. I hate it for anyone that loses bitcoin, but in the end it's a donation to the rest of us.

No doubt. Has a similar effect as as stock buyback.

 

[FreeDawg]

In terms of investment securities, price is only determined by supply and demand if you are either:

A) A moron
B) A speculator (read: gambler)
C) Both

For the rest of folks that actually want to know if what they are buying or investing in actually has any tangible value (let alone if that value is actually appraised properly by the market or by brokerages), they want to know what the long term image is for growth of the asset based on real world application. The only real world application for Bitcoin seems to be “hey, there’s not that much of it, come get some!”.

That’s why you’ll never convince me that it is any better of an investment instrument than just going to the casino and putting $10k on black on the roulette wheel, and stories like this about forgotten passwords and what not are a hilarious reminder of that. Any asset who’s value is determined by whether or not a certain number of people can remember their passwords or keep up with a thumb drive is not an asset at all, its just a glorified Ponzi scheme that will eventually come crashing down in spectacular fashion.

The value is in decentralized blockchain technology paired with utility. If you don't see that value in decentralizing things from governments after the last few weeks, I really don't know what to tell you. Decentralized blockchain technology is the future for everything including currency, web hosting, cloud storage, etc...

 

[Mobile Bay]

Did he try "password"?**

The password is one, two, three, four, five.

 

[jethreauxdawg]

Decentralized technology, a.k.a one world government
**

 

[jethreauxdawg]

The password is one, two, three, four, five.

Everybody in the club, come on let’s ride

 

[Quincy A. Wagstaff]

Wasn't this the villain's plan in the movie Goldfinger?

View attachment 19199

lol

 

[sandwolf.sixpack]

If you can manage to accumulate bitcoin AND not lose it (selling, trading, bad OpSec, etc.), every lost bitcoin makes you that much wealthier. I hate it for anyone that loses bitcoin, but in the end it's a donation to the rest of us.

How much bitcoin do you own Quincy?