Stefan Thomas, the former CTO of Ripple, holds 7,002 bitcoins, currently valued at $244 million, in a hard drive he can no longer access because he misplaced the digital keys.

The programmer received these bitcoins in 2011 as payment for an educational video he created about bitcoin, only to lose the access code later that same year.

Crypto security specialists at Unciphered have now thrown Thomas a potential lifeline. 

The firm penned an open letter to him on Oct. 25, claiming they have the technical ability to outsmart Thomas’s “IronKey,” the encrypted USB device, and help him gain access to his bitcoin fortune.

Years ago, Thomas misplaced the paper containing his IronKey…

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