A former Ripple CTO finds himself in possession of $238 million worth of Bitcoin stored on a USB drive, but he’s forgotten the password. With only two attempts left before his private keys are lost forever, the pressure is on.
Back in September, a Seattle-based white hat hacker lab demonstrated their ability to potentially crack the IronKey S200 thumb drive that houses 7002 Bitcoins. They shared their success with a senior writer at WIRED Magazine.
Surprisingly, Stefan Thomas, the former Ripple CTO, declined an offer from the Seattle startup known as Unciphered to help him access the contents of the USB drive.
Former Ripple CTO Makes Progress Toward Accessing His 7002 Bitcoins
Thomas informed WIRED that he has already enlisted a different team to tackle the issue.
The ex-Ripple Labs leader aims to provide this team with a fair chance to recover the 7002 Bitcoins before considering hiring another company. He indicated that they might collaborate with the Seattle-based firm if they cannot devise a viable solution themselves.
The cybersecurity company that successfully accessed the IronKey S200 is keeping their method under wraps. Nevertheless, they were able to generate three random passphrase options for the USB drive without any prior knowledge of its content.
Reportedly, it required a staggering 200 trillion attempts using a high-performance computer to successfully identify three accurate passphrase terms. This instance may serve as an alarming glimpse into the potential impact of quantum computers on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ripple.
The Risks of Self-Banking with Bitcoin
Stefan Thomas, not only due to his involvement with Ripple Labs but also his personal encounter with locking away 7002 Bitcoins on a USB drive since 2011, provides valuable insights into the “be your own bank” concept associated with Bitcoin:
“The whole notion of becoming your own bank – let me put it this way: Do you craft your own shoes? The existence of banks is precisely because we prefer not to handle all the tasks banks take care of.”
Ripple stands as a blockchain-driven digital payments platform and currency exchange service embraced by financial institutions globally. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is the pioneer of hash-based blockchains for swift payment settlements, functioning on a decentralized peer-to-peer network.
At the time of writing, Ripple was trading at $0.55, while Bitcoin’s price was at $34,000.
