A developer in San Francisco named Stefan Thomas owns 7,002 bitcoins. He kept this currency safe by placing it in a digital wallet with a password. The current estimated value of these bitcoins is around $220 million.

The issue here is that the developer had written the password on  a piece of paper a few years back, but unfortunately has misplaced it. There were a total of ten attempts to guess the password and he has already used up eight.

These bitcoins are stored in the IronKey (a hard drive). This hard drive only allows 10 attempts/guesses before encrypting the contents permanently. This password is only known to the user and Bitcoin cannot assist in this regard.

The developer earned these bitcoins in the year 2011 by creating an animated video on a topic related to Bitcoin introduction. The prices in the digital currency sector are very volatile. The Bitcoin prices have seen a fair share of extreme fluctuations. It ranged from a few dollars per Bitcoin to even $41,000 recently.

Thomas, the programmer, has placed the IronKey in a safe place away from him, so that he can relieve his stress, and focus on improving his mental health. He is hoping that someday, cryptographers, might develop a way to securely retrieve the Bitcoins from the wallet. He is not alone in this situation, as it is estimated that around 20% of existing 18.5 million bitcoins are either lost in hard drives or abandoned in digital wallets across the world. Based on the current conversion rate, it comes around $140 billion.

The cryptocurrency surpassed a $1 trillion valuation last Thursday. In the recent past few years the general public has become more privacy conscious. The recent debacle of WhatsApp has also hinted towards such a trend. In a future not far away, the general public might want to keep their financial transactions and wealth in the form of a digital currency, which cannot be seen or traced by anyone. This trend could further increase the value and acceptance of digital currencies throughout the world.