The former chief technology officer of Ripple Labs has just two more password attempts to lay his hands on $240 million in bitcoin that has been locked in an IronKey hard-drive for over a decade.
Stefan Thomas was paid 7,002 bitcoins for making a cryptocurrency explainer video ten years ago. At the time each bitcoin was worth between $2 and $6.
But with bitcoin prices surging, Thomas has made eight failed attempts to access the loot using his most commonly-used passwords and has lucked out every time, the New York Times reports.
Two more failed attempts and the drive will auto-encrypt its contents, consigning his fortune to the ether.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it," Thomas told the New York Times. "Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Elsewhere, a UK man who threw away a laptop hard drive containing bitcoin he believes is now worth close to $300 million wants his council to let him search for it in landfill.
James Howells had 7,500 bitcoins, on the hard drive, which he mistakenly threw away in 2013.