- Tech magazine Wired also testified that Unciphered had helped them recover data on a similar IronKey device, after “200 trillion attempts.”
- Nearly 29% of Bitcoin’s total circulating supply could be lost forever.
Crypto recovery company Unciphered has offered to recover 7,002 Bitcoin [BTC] locked to the wallet of Stefan Thomas, former Ripple [XRP] Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
Thomas has an IronKey hard drive containing Bitcoin worth $244 million (at the time of writing). But he forgot the details needed to unlock the drive and access it. So far he has made eight attempts to access the drive, but so far without success.
He only has two attempts left to access his tokens.
If these two attempts also fail, all information on the drive will be erased, including the private keys needed to access the stored cryptocurrency.
Particularly non-encrypted wrote an open letter to Thomas on October 25. It claimed that its team can bypass the ten-try limit to unlock its wallet through a wallet loophole, thanks to the efforts of hardware hackers, crypto mathematicians and exploit developers.
The team claimed to have successfully unlocked IronKey hard drives multiple times. She is confident that she will be able to do this again.
Tech magazine Wired too published supporting testimony on October 25. It claimed that Unciphered had helped them recover data lost on a similar IronKey device, after “200 trillion attempts.”
Unciphered did not indicate in the letter how much Thomas would charge for the chargeback. So far there have been no indications that Thomas took up the offer.
It seems that Bitcoin’s recent bull run has brought many crypto enthusiasts back to prominence. BTC was trade around the price of $34.6K at the time of writing.
Huge volume of Bitcoin lost
Blockchain analytics firm IntoTheBlock revealed in July 2023 that nearly 29% of Bitcoin’s total circulating supply could be lost forever. These tokens showed no signs of movement for over five years.
Have you ever wondered how many Bitcoins are lost forever? Our data shows that 29% of $BTC hasn’t moved in over 5 years. It is possible that a large portion of these are lost coins. #Bitcoin
— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) July 17, 2023
On July 17, analytics firm Glassnode had claimed at the time that the total amount of Bitcoin lost had reached an all-time high (ATH) of 7,781,224,168 BTC.
📈 #Bitcoin $BTC The Number of HODLed or Lost Coins Just Reached a 5-Year High of 7,781,224,168 BTC
View statistics:https://t.co/dJK8rxBVD3 pic.twitter.com/nF9KjaR2jv
— Glassnode Alerts (@glassnodealerts) July 17, 2023
Such astonishing figures are worrying as they have a significant impact on day-to-day trading volume.