The New York Times reports that a German-born programmer in San Francisco has two tries left to access his Bitcoin account with about $220 million worth of bitcoins in it.
Stefan Thomas told The Times that he forgot the password to his account with IronKey, an encrypted hard drive.
According to The Times, IronKey only gives users 10 guesses to get their password right before encrypting the hard drive's contents.
The BBC reported that Thomas received 7,002 bitcoins as payment a decade ago.
Thomas said he wrote the password on a piece of paper but has since lost it, according to The Times.
The BBC reported that since the story has gone viral, Alex Stamos, the former head of security at Facebook, has offered to help - for a 10% cut.
In recent months, the value of Bitcoin has surged to about $36,000 on Tuesday, according to Business Insider.
Thomas told The Times that this experience has completely turned him off of cryptocurrencies.
