Stefan Thomas has been locked out of his wallet holding about $220 million worth of Bitcoin, as reported by the New York Times

The German-born programmer has two guesses left to figure out the password for his small hard drive called IronKey, which holds the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has soared in value over recent weeks, surpassing its all-time-high price of $20,000 at the end of 2020. At the time of writing Bitcoin is trading hands at $34,539 and is up 4.28%.

Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it encrypts its contents forever.

Mr.Thomas' case is not unusual, of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent — currently worth around $140 billion — appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis.

By Emily Mason