Only last week, German prosecutors seized $63 million in Bitcoin from a scammer who secretly installed crypto-mining software on the computers of unsuspecting users.
Albeit the seizure is huge, there’s one little hick up that’s proven to be what experts are calling a ‘legislative’ overkill: the prosecutors don’t have the password to access the BTC holdings.
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A detailed report in Reuters read that police from the landlocked state of Bavaria confiscated the digital wallet containing 1,700 Bitcoin from the offender, but have so far failed to gain access. The man—who already served his jail sentence, spanning more than two years— is “maintaining his silence” and “won’t give them the password”.
One of the prosecutors was of the view that the offender might have forgotten the password, stating that “we asked him but he didn’t say”.
Numerous attempts have been made to crack the password, but without anything definitive, perhaps the contents of the digital wallet have been lost forever.
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While the underlined news undoubtedly concerns illicitly obtained Bitcoin, it’s not the only recent tale of “a significant stash of Bitcoin locked behind a password that has since been lost or forgotten”.
The New York Times did a similar story last month, highlighting the plight of Bitcoin millionaires who lost access to their crypto fortunes after forgetting their passwords.
Honorable mentions to programmer Stefan Thomas, who has only two remaining tries left to guess the password to his IronKey USB. If he fails, BTC worth $220 million will be lost forever.
