If you had 7,000 Bitcoins, stored in a USB drive, and you only had 2 chances left to try the password, would you panic?

This is a real incident. He owned 7,000 Bitcoins, but almost lost access to his wealth forever—this story is worth every trader thinking deeply about.

In 2011, a programmer named Stephen Thomas made a video titled “What is Bitcoin.” He received a special reward for the video. Not cash, not stocks—7,000 Bitcoins, which he stored in a USB drive, along with a rule: if he entered the wrong password 10 times, the USB drive would be completely wiped. In the end, he forgot the password himself. Now he had already tried 8 times, and the USB maker said they had no way to help!

Back then, Bitcoin didn’t have anywhere near the kind of influence it has today. Many people didn’t even know what it was. In the market environment at that time, these digital assets didn’t attract much attention. Many people even thought it was just a technical experiment.

However, more than a decade later, as Bitcoin’s price has gone through countless cycles, those once-ignored numbers have turned into a massive fortune.
This fortune wasn’t stolen by hackers, didn’t disappear due to a market crash, and didn’t vanish because of losses from bad investments. It simply sat there quietly—waiting for a password. That is Stefan Thomas’s story.

He once had 7,000 Bitcoins, but because he forgot the password for his storage wallet, he was locked out of his own digital wallet. The encrypted device that stored the private keys only allowed 2 password attempts. Once the limit was exceeded, the data inside could no longer be recovered.

Reachable wealth was kept out by a single password like this. When many people saw this story, their first reaction might be regret: “If it were me, I would definitely save it properly. How could someone forget something that important?” “This is an asset worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”

But if we think from another angle, the most worth-attending part of this story isn’t those 7,000 Bitcoins—it’s the human nature behind it.

Because in trading markets, similar things happen every day. People don’t miss out on 7,000 Bitcoins—they miss the chance that could change their life.
In 2015, many people thought Bitcoin was just a bubble. In 2017, after the price rose, many people chased in, and then exited during the crash. In 2020, many believed the price was already too high and didn’t dare to participate. In 2021, the bull market arrived, and some chased at the top.

In 2022, when the market fell, some people cut their losses and left out of fear. Looking back a few years later, many people find that:
It wasn’t that you had no opportunities—when the opportunities truly arrived, you hadn’t prepared.

This is actually very similar to Stefan Thomas’s story. His 7,000 Bitcoins didn’t disappear—they were simply locked behind a wallet he couldn’t open. The same goes for many traders: opportunities have always been there, but many people don’t have the ability to hold onto them.

When prices rise, they’re controlled by greed;
when prices fall, they’re controlled by fear;
and during range-bound periods, they’re affected by market noise.

In the end, it’s not that the market doesn’t give opportunities—it’s that you don’t have the ability to抓住 them. The truly difficult part of trading has never been finding one single correct call.
It’s about maintaining patience through long-term uncertainty. Many people spend huge amounts of time studying indicators, studying techniques, studying all kinds of prediction methods, hoping to find a way that can be correct forever.

But the market has no such answer. Real mature traders eventually understand:
Prediction is only part of trading. Risk control, emotional management, and waiting for opportunities—these ultimately determine how far a person can go.

The story of 7,000 Bitcoins reminds us that wealth not only needs to be discovered—it needs to be protected.
Having opportunities is a skill. Holding onto opportunities is an even greater skill. The most regrettable thing in the market isn’t that you never encounter opportunities, but that when opportunities come before you, you weren’t prepared.

In 《江枫交易日记》, I’ve always believed: candlesticks and indicators are only the results of price, not the cause of price.
What truly determines a trader’s fate isn’t whether one specific judgment is right or wrong, but whether—through repeated market tests—you can continuously correct yourself, so you can stay at the table long-term.

If 10 years ago someone had given you 7,000 Bitcoins, do you think you could really hold onto them until today?
Or would you leave early at some point because of fear, doubt, or temptation?

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