The story of Stefan Thomas, the former CTO of Ripple, who cannot remember the password to access the hardware of his 7,002 BTC bitcoin wallet, has been making the rounds for some time. The recovery company Unciphered has even offered to decrypt the device.
Summary
The story of the former CTO of Ripple and his 7,002 BTC bitcoin wallet whose password he cannot remember
Once again we hear about Stefan Thomas, the former Chief Technology Officer of Ripple, who can no longer remember the password to his 7,002 BTC bitcoin wallet hardware.
Basically, the bitcoin wallet hardware in question is IronKey, and there are only two attempts left to guess the password.
And indeed, Ripple’s former chief technology officer forgot the credentials to access the device, which is designed to wipe data if a person enters the wrong password ten times.
The fact is that Thomas has been unable to access his 7,002 BTC, worth over $244 million at the time of writing, for years.
The missing bitcoin wallet of Ripple’s former CTO and Unciphered’s call to action
The issue of Ripple’s former CTO’s outstanding bitcoin wallet and its 7,002 BTC has gone viral on social media, not least as a reminder of the importance of not forgetting your passwords.
Anyway, in a bid to save Thomas, late last month crypto recovery company Unciphered offered to unlock the famous IronKey hardware.
In essence, Unciphered published an open letter to Thomas, presenting itself as a crypto recovery company made up of reverse engineers, cryptographers, analysts and legal minds.
As well as pointing out the near impossibility of breaking a FIPS-140-2 level 3 classified device (such as the IronKey hardware wallet), Unciphered also described their Project Everest.
According to the company’s analysis, it appears that in test after test, they were able to break into the device and develop a method to crack the hardware and access BTC keys that had been kept secure for years.
Wired also reported on 25 October that the company was able to access the data on a similar IronKey after “200 trillion attempts” – apparently bypassing the drive’s 10-attempt limit.
It is currently unknown what decisions Thomas will make, and whether Unciphered’s Everest project was ever considered by the former Ripple CTO.
Reactivation of some old Bitcoin Whale wallets
On 1 November, three old Bitcoin Whale wallets apparently moved 6,500 BTC.Â
These were three addresses that had not been active since 5 November 2017, a full 5 years ago, and during the hot phase of the penultimate major bull run.
At the time of writing, the total BTC moved would be worth around $230,000. Of course, the identity of these whales is unknown, but what can be traced is that the first BTC received by these wallets dates back to July 2011, when BTC was worth $13.5.
Meanwhile, the price of BTC has risen above $30,000 since 23 October and has not fallen since. At the time of writing, BTC is worth $34,900, an increase of 26% since last month.
