I think you’d probably need a team that could clone the drive first and then you could do your attempts. From what I understand, that’s difficult here because of the encrypted flash drive he used (tho obviously not impossible).

I’m sure someone like Cellebrite or the other agencies that have done iPhone hacking could do something like this — or at least figure out how to clone the drive to do multiple attempts at getting into it - but I don’t know how many places would do it on someone’s word that the crypto is there.

Like, yeah, for 25%, I bet you could find people who could get it done. But I don’t know how many of those people who would undertake that work on a promise. What if it’s like Al Capone’s vault [1] and turns up empty?

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mystery_of_Al_Capone%27s...

I think the comment above is: "show me cracking a similar drive with nothing on it" as a capabilities test.

if they could crack it for 1/4, why would they give him any of it?

"Sorry, we couldn't crack it, bye"

They demonstrate that they can crack it on a replica drive of the same model, then do the work in front of him to extract the private key.

And if the bitcoins somehow move after they "fail" (remember, the blockchain is public), he knows who to sue.