Topic: Bitcoin OGs, Can We Please Practice What we Preach? (Read 395 times)

Some people looks for sympathy to get moral support or for donation, only the person knows the reason behind his action.  About people looking for sympathy in order to get some financial support from their listener, it happens everywhere. We have seen people do that, not only online but in the street as well.  Others are even knocking on every person's door to ask for help while presenting that they are in distress and in need but I am sure most of them are just modus operandi to trick people.

I don't say that this person do this stunt to get money from its viewer but if there is a donation address posted on it, then it is clearly the case but it seems the person story is real since he is not asking for any donations or whatever that will benefit him financially.

I believe he is sharing the story in good faith, that people will learn from his experience and learn to secure their financial account properly that hacking incident will have a very slim chance of happening.

This makes me feel somewhat ill....I have felt the feeling of being hacked so I know exactly what it is like, but to lose 25 BTC at this period of time in the world could be a potentially life changing outcome. This will stay with him for life.

One thing I am in complete agreement about is the use of cold storage vs. hardware. I'm not sure why this guy had not just set up a paper wallet or an encrypted drive with the pk in it, and protected it as well as a backup. After all, it is over a million dollars.

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I'm going to take yet another opportunity to campaign for the need for a cyber security & privacy board to help members of our community learn and protect from these kinds of scenarios.

No cybersecurity measures = increased vulnerability to being hacked/theft
No privacy = increased vulnerability to targeting

These topics are directly relevant to Bitcoin, if you think these topics should be on a board in this forum:
Discuss here | Vote here

A lot of scam and hacking happen everyday and it's not new that most people who claim to be bitcoin security advisers still end up not following the right security strategy in saving their keys. What matters is following the right instruction ushered by these people. Whether the influencer practice it doesn't matter anymore. It's a sad experience to have meddled with that of his dad's investment too. Many people behave this way, until they become the victim of hackers. What would you say about those who still have millions stored on exchanges, despite all the alarms spreading in the market concerning not saving funds on exchanges.  It only describes how these people show less care about their privacy. And still believe they're safe. It only worries me to hear such situations as these. Isn't it awkward that he must have bragged about the amount of bitcoin he possess elsewhere. Maybe in a social club or forum. Since he's telling the world about his loss, that means he's been taking his bitcoin holdings publicly too. So, I wouldn't blame those who still doubt if he's saying the truth or not.  Because he looks like a person seeking attention or finding traffic. Why did his coin get lost exactly 11 years since holding. If he's been saving such an amount using an online wallet or a less secure technique, then he must have experienced such a set back long ago. However, it's bad to kick a fallen man. He still gets my benefit of doubt. I'd say that people should take custody of their decision. No one should be blamed for saying what they don't practice. It could be their decision. A lot of people still promote what they do not use.

I don't agree with the claim that holding with a "hardware wallet" is better. Unless by "hardware", you mean paper and pen that you write with your own hands and don't let any electronic devices see, particularly in this case, a camera.

In fact, some of those gadgets can actually increase the vectors of attack, as was seen in exploits of certain devices.

Write your seed words by hand, do another copy by hand, secure each paper in a different physical location. That's the best cold wallet. You can get creative in how the words are stored/obfuscated/stenographed, but remember, no electronics.

And if you are going to trust your seed words to a password manager, you better trust that encryption algo and not use a weak password. 12chars is the bare min, but more is better. This is the guy that did 6? forget it.

Also do all your money stuff in a more secure OS, like Linux. Leave the rest for games or stuff that can be lost/stolen.The Internet does not run on windows server for a reason...

I don't need to read between the lines to understand what you are talking about, but if you use some words like "preach" then you are implying that we are doing exactly that here, and Bitcoin is a technological invention, not some religious community where someone preaches anything. In addition, I have already written that such stories are completely pointless considering that Bitcoin does not exist since yesterday and what you wrote has been written countless times, only with the difference that you are building a story around a character who does not seem too convincing with his story.

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It wouldn't be the first time that such things come to people's minds, and then someone sympathizes with them and sends them a nice donation. If something like that happened to me, I certainly wouldn't record a video and post it on social networks, because I wouldn't want people to recognize me on the street as an incompetent fool who lost millions of dollars.

In addition, he may not even be aware that he is harming himself in the long term, because today's employers check their future employees online, and such things do not bring anything positive in the eyes of most employers.

He may be accused of being a liar, or anything. But the question is, what can he get for lying in this situation?

If ever the story he shared is real, he really is. Being an old-time investor, you should know the things needed to fully secure your wallet and that includes using different wallet or a hardware wallet.

We never know if this is real or not. But I have this question in mind, what and why will he do that, maybe for sympathy.

In the video he says so himself, that he is being accused of being a liar, a swindler, etc. Although it may be a strategy.


I completely agree, it's almost $1M at current prices. To have it all in the same basket and stored like that is retarded.


Although he sounds honest in the video, I don't rule it out, really. Some people have an art for deception.

I think he is a liar.

Or stupid as fuck. If you have only 25 btc and store it the way he did he deserves to lose out for being that stupid.

To not have five coins in five different accounts is an act of arrogance that deserves the punishment he got.

Or he is lying.

Cold wallet. Not necessarily hardware wallet. I don't preach hardware wallet cuz I don't use a hardware wallet. I preach cold wallet because I use a cold wallet. No need to get a hardware wallet if you don't want to. Plenty more ways to do cold wallets other than just hardware wallets.

Such a sad irony. But am I the only one wondering how someone had up to 25 BTC and still took security for granted? Having half a Bitcoin is more than enough for you to get a cold wallet, let alone a whopping amount of 25 BTC! That’s almost a million dollar and a cold wallet is nothing compared to that. Well, for me, I take my own advices. Whatever I advice people to do in this space, I already do it or would do it if I was in the position to.

Virtual machine is not a replacement for a dedicated device, it's likely better than just running a hot wallet on an online machine, but still it's quite vulnerable.

I'm not afraid that telling about my setup will make it easier for any attackers to hack me, because this is a very common setup, I read a guide about it many years ago, and it was a common advice back then.

And I doubt that anything of what I said will make someone try harder - hackers actually prefer to go for soft targets instead of wasting their time on low success chance attempts.

I love your set up and I can imagine it, hoping that I can replicate the action in a Virtual Machine but my problem is that wouldn't this be a dangerous thing that you're sharing your set up to other people and how it all interconnects because you're giving away a vital information about your bitcoin and your wallet so I just hope you know that there's a possibility that this sharing of your set up can backfire to you someday. Plus your way of saying that no one will be able to bypass your set up will just make malicious people try harder, I mean a dox will definitely be your weakest point.

This is very hard for all traders because it's additional expenses to move funds around but the security aspect of moving out fund from exchange to store in an external wallet is for the safety of hack or exchange collapse, let's say if the exchange didn't collapse there wouldn't have been a way to lose his entire funds but if he was taking out profit or taking out capital and traded with his profits this would have been a different case but all this same we should always act smart and play safe with our funds to avoid stories that touches.

I agree. Someone who wants to start needs to understand how to use wallets coming from desktops and the importance of how to keep it.

There have been various incidents that when a crypto person didn't shut his mouth and they were targeted by the criminals that have been monitoring them for so long.

Because of them being vocal, they were already made planned by these cons.

Lolz.
Read in-between the lines and understand what I meant by what I said, the phrase "not practice of what we preach" is more like an idiomatic expression, which simply means, to not do for ourselves, what we advice others to do, am I supposed to even explain what this means to you?
I thought you should know, but anyways, let that be.


Do you think you helped someone with advice that has already been written several thousand times on this forum?
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Since the current users of this forum will not be the only users forever, YES, I helped someone, even though every user on this forum already know this, someday, some one who is not here yet, would maybe through a search engine stumble into this thread, and will learn the importance of cold storage wallet, or hardware wallet, which ever anybody chose to call it.

And how can they learn or know about things like this  if we that know don't constantly talk or discuss about thing like this? We all know how busy this forum is, we need to make sure that important things like this are discussed from time to time so that new members will learn as well.

That attitude cuts across. An OG here who's always advising members to invest only in Bitcoin once opened up to me when I chatted him privately and wanted to know why he was investing only in Bitcoin while he could add some credible alts in his investment. Dude shocked me by telling me he was also investing in alts. He was merely fronting in the forum and wanted everyone to see him as a maximalist. Such habit, just like that of the victim in your post is pretentious and deceitful.

Exactly the same disposition I've concerning this hardware wallet thing. The way many talk about it like it's infallible. Security and safety of our funds depend largely on us than on any device.

This is not a church or a sect that someone preaches here, this is a forum where Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies and some other things are discussed. You may be speaking for yourself, but anyone who understands what Bitcoin actually is has long understood what "not your keys, not your coins" means.



Do you think you helped someone with advice that has already been written several thousand times on this forum? Do you think that private keys on every hardware wallet are absolutely safe? What about those who don't know what clipboard malware is, or those who have no idea how to properly store their seed - or those who will share the same seed with various companies so that they can store it for them?

The hardware wallet is just a step in the right direction, but nowhere near what you imagine.

It was his fault, hardware wallet was never wrong in terms of securing your coins.

Actually using and holding Bitcoin isn't that hard since we're already familiar about using mobile banking or digital fiat, so we should've understand about the basic digital security.

Using something that you're not completely understand is really bad, you can't just throw your money with closed eyes.

I feel sorry for this man and his father not only because they lost almost a million dollar worth of Bitcoin but also because they had been holding it for more than 10 years. They were solid hodlers. They should have been abundantly rewarded for believing in Bitcoin all those years. It wasn't easy for sure having went through all the bears in the past decade.

This is a very expensive lesson they will learn. We will also be learning from this. Cold storage has always been the advice. But we still hear news of stolen funds from hot wallets every now and then.

I disagree that hardware wallets are the only secure wallet for set custody as you have said. Hardware wallets are just cold storage because they are setup not to get in touch with the internet only and to safely transfer bitcoin. The software wallets you mentioned if setup properly can still do just the same work. It is to be used on a device that has never came online and will never come online (airgapped device). And just like hardware wallets you transfer your funds and monitor the incoming transactions using watch only wallet on another device that is connected to the internet. This watch only wallet create the unsigned transaction and then send it to the offline wallet which is then signed there and return back again and then the transaction is broadcasted.

There are people that even trust this self created airgapped wallet than hardware wallets because some hardware wallets sometimes changes policy in future that could affect the back up of the wallet keys or seeds, example is the new ledger wallet policies. The only problem with this airgapped wallet is it requires someone experienced or tech savvy to actually set it up, a newbie can easily make mistake and therefor should just go for hardware wallets