Bitcoin, despite some of the negative feedback -- and the accolade for being the future of money -- is secure.
It is so secure that once you lose the password, there's no way to ever open it again.
Many people have lost a large amount of money in the digital currency after losing passwords that prevented them from accessing their funds. But then, the money is intact from other people trying to steal (hack) your Bitcoins, and that includes the federal authorities.
For instance, German police who seized a convicted fraudster's wallet that has more than 1,700 Bitcoins have found themselves facing a brick wall when trying to access the coins worth almost $65 million (at current cryptocurrency rates): they can't unlock the funds because the hacker will not give them the password.
Prosecutor Sebastian Murer said they asked the hacker to reveal the password, "but he did not say... perhaps he doesn't know," Reuters quoted Murer as saying.
Bitcoin is stored on a system known as an electronic wallet that is protected through encryption. A password is used to open the wallet and access the digital currency. Using the password is the only way to open the wallet.
The hacker, who was from Kempten, Bavaria, was not named in the report. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment for covertly installing an operating system on other computers that mined Bitcoin on his behalf.
In the years since the Bitcoin pirate was sent to prison, the value of the cryptocurrency skyrocketed, turning the funds into a large fortune. The value reached a record peak of $42,000 last month.
In Germany, another man had a crypto stash of around $220 million last month that he could no longer open because he'd lost the password. In the same month, a man from Newport said he had mistakenly thrown away around 7,500 Bitcoin, valued at roughly $275 million.
According to the New York Times, around $140 billion in Bitcoin, or approximately 20% of all Bitcoin, is stuck in electronic wallets because of lost or forgotten passwords.
The price of the world's most popular virtual currency breached past the $40,000 mark on Saturday as it has almost regained all the losses it sustained since hitting a new record early last month.
After reaching that level, Bitcoin shed almost one-third (32%) of its market value and all its impressive year-to-date rallies, bottoming out at $28,844.30 on Jan. 22.
"We're seeing Bitcoin steal the attention as retail adoption pours in through mainstream attention," Michael Gord, CEO for trading firm Global Digital Asset, said in remarks quoted by CoinDesk.
