If you’re thinking about finally getting in on this whole Bitcoin investment thing, it turns out your most valuable asset might be a pen and paper.

There’s a guy named Stefan Thomas in San Francisco and he has a digital wallet with 7,002 Bitcoin in it … which means it’s worth around $234 MILLION.

But Stefan has a serious problem.  The private keys he needed to unlock his account are on an encrypted hard drive … aaaaaand he LOST the password to that hard drive. YIKES!

There’s more.  You only get 10 guesses at the password before the hard drive permanently encrypts its contents and can’t be unlocked.  And Stefan has already made eight wrong guesses.

So he only has two more shots to figure out his password . . . or he’s out $234 MILLION forever.  And since Bitcoin is decentralized, there’s no “get my lost keys” option.  You either have them or you don’t and you’re out of luck.

Stefan says, quote, “I would just lay in bed and think about it.  Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”

(New York Times)