From Slate
Bitcoin has had quite a week. On Thursday, the cryptocurrency surged past $19,000 a coin before dropping down to $15,600 by Friday midday. The price of a single Bitcoin was below $1,000 in January. Any investors who bought Bitcoins back in 2013, when the price was less than $100, probably feel pretty smart right now.Read more: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/12/08/people_who_can_t_remember_their_bitcoin_passwords_are_really_freaking_out.htmlBut not all early cryptocurrency enthusiasts are counting their coins. Instead they might be racking their brains trying to remember their passwords, without which those few Bitcoins they bought as an experiment a few years ago could be locked away forever.
That’s because Bitcoin’s decentralization relies on cryptography, where each transaction is signed with an identifier assigned to the person paying and the person receiving Bitcoin. It’s how the system is able to process large transactions without a central bank, since each exchange is guaranteed by authenticating when money is going from one wallet to another using both public identifiers and private passcodes, and no one can access your Bitcoin wallet without your private password. If someone else somehow had your password and swiped your coins, they’re gone for good. Passwords are used to unlock your bitcoin wallet address, and if you forgot your password, those coins are locked away. There’s no central point of control to help retrieve your Bitcoin or change your password. If there was an easy means of cracking open people’s Bitcoin wallets when a password was lost, the cryptocurrency would be worthless, since the whole point is security without centralization.
“I’ve tried to ignore the news about Bitcoin completely,” joked Alexander Halavais, a professor of social technology at Arizona State University, who said he bought $70 of Bitcoin about seven years ago as a demonstration for a graduate class he was teaching at the time but has since forgotten his password. “I really don’t want to know what it’s worth now,” he told me.
Ouch that hurts. I have a friend that lost some to a corrupted HDD. It still haunts him. Even more so when I keep him updated on the price.
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