Topic: BTC sent by mistake to localbitcoins wallet. How to recover? (Read 670 times)

Yes Bouncback the local bitcoins address  ending with DXNTU is mine . I tried be polite in my last messages  to lb . But I think that answers are send automatically.  I stopped to do any actions  for 2 months and I feel helpless.  I might try to search on redit as suggested.. Thanks for that .

This was the huge amount as of now,we are in the bull run.So it’s seems to be the more value in the next year.If the O.P was successfully recovered the bitcoin from the Localbitcoin,it may give him the good dollars as a return of his hard work for the recovery process.The O.P should have enough proof to verify to the localbitcoin.After localbitcoin official announcement,the left bitcoin become their asset legally.So you should start to begin the process by sending them mails and all possible support option.Localbitcoin was the oldest one like the coinbase,So we hope they never act like the bot to your mails.Hope this new year will bring you more happiness by the wallet recovery.If they allow you to recover at least 80 percentage of dollars will get you 4K dollars worth of bitcoin.

consider using reddit and look for people like you.

if you find enough people maybe you can get more attention.

meanwhile lets hope that 2024 is better for you.

Thank you Smart Virus and Mistercoin for your reply. In this final hours of 2023 I wish you all best of luck in 2024. It might be too late for me to ask Local Bitcoins to return my founds. My last messages were already ignored and there was no window of opportunity or idea expressed to prove that btc send by mistake came out from my Bittrex account. I had to take my lack of attention as a very bitter lesson . I will make my last attempt this year to reach them and I will see how it is going  to work . Thank you all again for engaging in this discussion.

Sorry to hear this happened to you. Unfortunately, it is most likely they won't send them back, but I hope I'm wrong. Since they announced their discontinuation of services, I am surprised they even replied to you. The only thing I can think of to do is to continue contacting them. Offer to show them identification and proof of your person. There's really not much else you can do in this situation. One thing to remember though is that honey is often better than vinegar, meaning that you will get better results by being respectful, calm, patient, and polite; rather than angry and resentful (at least in the communications with them).

Keep trying and good luck! I know it must be a terrible feeling to have something like this happen. 

MrC

The whole Bitcoin system is one that doesn’t dwell on flaws. Have the case with the miners and you might have a well different result if you’re lucky and that is. In cases where you accidentally paid more fees than reasonably possible on a transaction.

In this case, there isn’t much you could do rather than hope for the support to see reasons as to why they should refund or credit your Bitcoins. It’s your Bitcoin and they’ve got no right over it but as well, they’ve got rights not to credit it as previously informed of the expiry of the address.

That brings me to a situation I found myself in earlier this year where, due to maintenance, all previous addresses used by the exchange I was using was deemed expired as the exchanged was handling some bugs in there system.
I made same mistake like you did but mine was within hours before the announcement and it seemed actions were taken before the announcement. I reached out to support as, Bitcoin addresses can’t possibly be expired so long as you’ve hit keys to it.
The situations could be, events of discovering a potential hack and trying to evade adverse effects that might result in having its users find’s tampered with.
Bottom line was, I had my coins founded later, after about a week.

Your best chance would be to still seek them out and hopefully, they might just be nice to you if they want to.

But 02/23/23 to 02/23/24 is 12 months.

They very likely have all shit intact and are hoping for

A) some holders to forget the coins are there.
B) some holders to die or get sick and miss deadlines
C) your style of mistake to happen



by the way. there could be 10000 or more addresses in their hands and if only 1% make your mistake for 5,000 that is 100 x 5,000 = 500,000

so I would be certain they have the keys.

Knowing some will do what you did.

https://localbitcoins.com/ is not the same with local bitcoin exchange, there is no problem with Bittrex or whatsoever.
The OP has withdrawn BTC from Bittrex to his LocalBitcoins address by accident, and the problem is that the LocalBitcoins already shut down their service.
325HM2TfxoxViAmwrZ1tRGotaW3FwDXNTU is the OP deposit address on LocalBitcoins, I suggest to read at least the first post of this thread.

This makes me wonder. To prevent this kind of thing from happening again, there are already sites doing address clustering like wallet explorer, based on addresses posted on the internet by these services. A lot of service websites' addresses have already been identified like this, so why not (theoretically) make a plugin for the wallet software that attempts to find the identification for the address e.g. Localbitcoins address, and then displays it below the "Receiver address" text input?

May I know is your local exchange Bitcoin address? 325HM2TfxoxViAmwrZ1tRGotaW3FwDXNTU, there have Bitcoin fund and actually not problem with withdrawing fund from Bittrex have been credit to your local exchange account. You have forward as many possible how to receive your bitcoin and its very big amount more than $5,000 current bitcoin price today. You need to show us with your local currency exchange respond exactly when giving them transaction explore of bitcoin have been success landed to local exchange bitcoin address.

Keep forward its and looks not problem with Bittrex but more your local exchange, to make clearly you need give us which one your local exchange bitcoin address and tracking there have BTC fund or not, for Bittrex seems have been permanent close operation and impossible check or tracking again.

You must understand that you can't deactivate a bitcoin address and prevent it from receiving bitcoin. What you can do is check where you are sending your coins. I know that you don't want to hear this and that it might feel like kicking you while you are down, but this is all your fault. You should have verified the address you wanted to send to before confirming/broadcasting the transaction. Sadly, it's too late now. 

Bitcoin requires you to be your own cashier, security department, monitoring service, financial consultant, etc. It's tricky in the beginning, and that's why care and attention to detail are a must.

Support personnel only have the very basic understanding of how crypto works. They were probably trying to say that neither you or them have access to private keys. However, someone set up their systems and private keys are being saved by someone and somewhere.

This is a very costly mistake to be honest, i check the explorer link in the op and the said bitcoin which was mistakenly sent to local bitcoin address is currently worth over $5,000 dollars, this is a decent amount of money which no one in their right senses will be happy losing, but unfortunately, this has happened, and from the situation of things, op is completely helpless to himself, and we too here are completely helpless to him as well, the only way this money can be retrieve for op is if local bitcoin; out of their own benevolence and reputation, decides to send the money back to the op, or to the address where it came from - but this is if they will do or quick before bittrex disables withdrawals since they too are shutting down.

But again, what I said above can only be possible if local bitcoin still have access to the wallet in question, which op sent the bitcoin to, if they claim they do not have access to that wallet anymore, or simply refused to help op retrieve the money, then it's very unfortunate that nothing can be done, either technically or practically, since the exchange in question is closed and no longer serving users.

What does "active" mean? Your bitcoin address generated from any wallet can't reject incoming transactions. This is the basic Bitcoin protocol that you need to know. I think your incident was because you copied the address in your personal list of destination addresses, not recently copied from your account so you didn't know the obvious warning they were planning to stop the service. cmiiw

Does Bittrex automatically fill it for you, or is your browser auto-fill acting up? As far as I can tell from their latest FAQ, it seems like there is no authentication after you request withdrawal[1]. So yeah, that really sucks.

Hopefully, you won't repeat the same mistake in the future. You can turn off auto-fill or something similar if it is not related to username/password if you still plan to use your phone. CMIIW.

[1] https://bittrex.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8719694186267-Crypto-Withdrawals

TO Z-tight  You are right 12 months for all to close is also some kind of responsibility partly fulfilled  by posting warnings and limitations yet done without specific details for such circumstances  like mine . Also leaving all addresses  active so transac
tion  actually can be done is kind of lack of responsibility or in other words waiting for an opportunity  ( mistakes can happen) . In these case banks at least have some formal protocols enabling  for corrections , refunds etc ...but here is still wild territory where is no mercy  for mistakes even for such hard working  people like me when savings for such a mount lasted for more than half a year or longer.

Thank you Baby Bandit . You seem like ano individual  with empathy and good heart. Local Bitcoinsunethical conduct should be widely spread and my storry  and simmilar incidents should be brought  to light as warning and  a lesson. It is frustrating  to be powerless  and it seems like a lost case unless some people know the solution.

Good point Pmalek. Thank you for noticing  this as for sure I will monitor if my founds move or disappear.  Thank you again.

In addition to Pmalek. If my founds would  be touched can use It against  them as they claimed in support that as if they could not have any access at all any more . To my question who has access to private keys they answered that Local Bitcoin is web based wallet . What kind of answer is that ?!!! I guess once the business is finished their so called support quality also became brief and dismissive to redirect or marginalise logical and obvious technicalities of the btc addresses.

I also think that In my following messages  to local bitcoin support I could inform them that in case of any movement from this address I would initiate legal investigation  where that money comes from , what is the source or  I can warn  them that Finish tax office would be informed about doubtful  ,unclear and dishonest sources of the huge part of such assets that it would make it more difficult for them to pay taxes  and perhaps more investigations for appropriate  institutions.  Local Bitcoin would reconsider if it is worth to embark on such criminogemic  path .
I can't mention everyone's names here to thank . But I am immensely  grateful  for your time , ideas and support expressed  here so thank you for all I had not mentioned  yet.
Here I just would like to explain in details my mistake. I made transfer using a properly working phone.  Once I did all necessary  steps to send btc I had assumed that the next window after imputing google attention  number would tak me to another part where actu I could type my desired address. Here however  it was not what I thought  instead there was a narrow window where automatically  past used addresses would briefly show but this I had noticed  just after authorisation  and it was too late to reverse it. Why I did it to myself  is very awful   and I am so ashamed of it . I also thought that there would be next window with another Google authenticator but only after I would see no other addresses but just empty window  ready to carefully  type or paste the right address.



That's very sad to know. Losing that amount of Bitcoins very well, knowing the bull market might be around the corner, is terrifying. I just hope the Local bitcoins team gets their faces off their asses, stop acting like robot and help you out like normal humans who know that people can make mistakes. You might start trying to engage with the actual founds on social media platforms if they have accounts there.

TO Z-tight  You are right 12 months for all to close is also some kind of responsibility partly fulfilled  by posting warnings and limitations yet done without specific details for such circumstances  like mine . Also leaving all addresses  active so transac
tion  actually can be done is kind of lack of responsibility or in other words waiting for an opportunity  ( mistakes can happen) . In these case banks at least have some formal protocols enabling  for corrections , refunds etc ...but here is still wild territory where is no mercy  for mistakes even for such hard working  people like me when savings for such a mount lasted for more than half a year or longer.

Bitcoin uses a public ledger. You can always follow your coins on the blockchain. You deposited them into your LocalBitcoins account by mistake and from time to time you can check if the coins are transferred to a different address than the one you initially used. That would be a clear sign that someone is still checking and moving coins from the LB team. But even if the don't move, they surely haven't deleted their keys.

The said they no longer process incoming tx's, but they are still in control of the keys to their customers' addresses. They are also in the process of winding down, and customers have 12 months to withdraw their funds, in that case we can say that they would claim whatever is left in accounts and addresses of their customer's when the 12 months withdrawal deadline elapses, and how do you even win a legal fight with them when they have shut down completely and followed all the protocols they set during the winding down process.

Localbitcoins is in my opinion world class scumbags and I doubt they will give back your Bitcoin sadly. They seems to think they have the right to steal their customers money because they don't know how to run a successful service. Trust me I know what I am talking about and I feel really sorry for you if you don't get back your coins.




Why would that even matter tho? 

I guess the BTC will be stay there for a while, nobody will dare to move it before LBC shutdown completely of their service (maybe Feb 2024).

Correct me if Im wrong,
They might have a legal rights to use or transfer that BTC after the termination or deletion of the account because it will be consider as the property of LBC.

Do they have legal rights to use founds? They said that no more transactions  can be made but they didn't  specify  who is the legal owner of such founds.

They can but they won't that is the end of the story.

Because they mentioned clearly any incoming TX won't be credited to balance so legally they are on the right side.

Taking legal fights against them will exceed the actual lost amount so better take it as a lesson learned the hard way will be my advice to OP.

Yes, it is what I implied the meaning of the simple step which can give a lot of information, about that service, about the account, about notifications for service closure, address changes and more.

I assumed OP saved the address and did not log in his account like you said.

Even the platform is still operating, log in step can hep me to know that my account is banned, terminated, suspended and if it happened with my account, deposit into that account will cause a loss.

It's possible, but in that case OP would probably have seen the notifications on the official website that the service has been shut down. It's more likely that he saved the LocalBitcoins address somewhere on his computer (email, personal notes) and mistakenly sent the coins to it thinking they were going elsewhere.

If you don't want to contact the Finish Financial Authority as Pmalek suggested, I would use a law firm in Finland where LBC is based. They are going to know that countries laws much better then a foreign firm.

Your location may matter a bit too, depending on the relationship your countries financial regulators have with the Finish ones. Your local version of the regulators *may* have a better way of contacting the Finish ones or at least a more direct route.

-Dave

Mistakenly sent, but how?

Did you log in your LocalBitcoins account and get that receiving address before sending your bitcoin from Bittrex to that account?

I, myself, consider it is a must step to do because it takes me some seconds to log in my account. It is a simple step but important to let me know that the exchange is still lively, and my account still has no issue, or the exchange changed their hot wallets and my old receiving address is no longer usable for deposit.

If you do that step, you will not make the mistake.

They shut down their services months ago and surely have no responsibility to support customers for mistakenly deposit to an address of a dead platform.

Localbitcoins closing down in February 2023 and today, nearly the end of 2023, you still don't know about it.

It could prove to be expensive and not really worth it if you are going to give most of the money to the law firm to handle your case. I would again advice you to contact the Finish Financial Authority and see what they have to say. It's a serious country and regulator; we aren't talking about Curacao or the Seychelles Islands. Check with them, and you can always go back to discussing the matter with a law firm if they can't do anything.

Goodluck with that buddy, though i am not too optimistic, but you have nothing to lose, except the cost of consulting this law firm i suppose. LocalBitcoins gave customers a 12 month withdrawal deadline which hasn't elapsed since they discontinued their service on 09/02/2023. But the problem now is, they say they no longer process incoming transactions, i don't know why they don't since they hold the keys to the addresses, they can 'easily' process the tx and make it available for withdrawal in your account since the withdrawal deadline hasn't elapsed.

I would like to thank you all guys for engaging  in this matter .
I have found a law firm in London  that specialises  in crypto and I will see what they would  advise.https://www.selachii.com/advice-for-victims-of-bitcoin-fraud.html

That "report" of his makes no sense. He created multiple threads on the matter and I don't know if he presented any proof in any of them. The one you linked to has no proof whatsoever about any wrongdoings. He wants to pay money for information about someone or for their arrest. I guess in his head, the work of the police and justice system depends on how much money you give them, not the evidence you have against them or probable cause.

Sorry about what happened to you especially now that the bull market is coming but the chance of you getting the Bitcoin back is slim unless you report the issue to the authorities.
A user once made a report about the exchange scamming him after they declared the shutting down of their service.

Dropfliesup, I think Sunderland's idea is solid.  That much money is nothing to sneeze at, so putting in some extra effort seems worthwhile.  Lawyers have more know-how with this stuff, so even without an ironclad legal case for getting your money back, having one draft a strongly-worded letter and persistently needle whoever you can over there could pay off and  you gotta be a squeaky wheel to get the grease as they say.  Don't be a jerk about it, but firmly and repeatedly press them to return what ain't theirs. It might pay off in the end!

https://localbitcoins.com/terms_of_service


It will be hard to win the case with a legal way because of this terms.
If I may suggest, how about you trying to contacts some of local bitcoins high ranking staff, or even try to contact the founder Jeremias Kangas via his social media.
You can find his social media info with google.

As Pmalek said above, you have nothing to lose anymore at this point.



Its 0.13386546 BTC or 5,198 USD (today price)

You can withdraw what was there before the 16-Feb-2023 closing date.
Without knowing how their back end worked the support staff that is left might not even have access to the wallets.
BUT, you can try to keep after them. The worst they can do is keep saying no. There might be someone left who can get to the BTC

It also does depend on the amount. If you are talking about 1BTC they might be more inclined to do something vs BTC0.0025

-Dave

Why does their customer service department still exist and communicates with clients if they are no longer allowing users to empty their accounts? It's no longer possible to register a new account. Weird people.
LocalBitcoins is regulated by the Finnish Financial Authorities. Tell the staff nicely again that you made an honest mistake, and if they don't want to help, you'll get the Finnish Financial Authorities involved. They might not care, but at this point, you have nothing to lose.

I am able to log in . My inquires are open via local Bitcoin support desk  . I am able to see the past
address where my btc had been sent and the same address  I could check in blockchain explorer  where I can see my founds stored . I have enough  evidence to prove that these are my btc and I can prove that these were sent by mistake.

I am surprised they are still responding to email inquiries. The site announced its closure at the beginning of 2023.
Sadly, no one can help you. Unless you can personally log in to your account and withdraw your coins elsewhere. 

They still have a log in button on their website. What happens if you enter your login details, can you get access to your account? Try to reset the password via email if it doesn't work.

No one can help you except them since they hold the private keys of their users' addresses.

As for their response, it seems like it's aligned with their TOS here: localbitcoins.com/terms_of_service
But there's no information about recovery of mistakenly sent funds.
The closest policy is about their altcoin recovery rule in "Acceptable Use Policy" which states that they aren't entitled to recover the funds: https://localbitcoins.com/acceptable_use_policy

From your explanation it seems local bitcoin have actually confiscated your bitcoin due to some reason, I don’t think you can do anything other than patiently chat up local bitcoin to get your coins. The phrase not your keys not your coins has played its part here, as they hold full custody of the bitcoin now. Just continuously try chatting with them and maybe it could help.

Also be-careful of scammers that might be coming to tell you they can help, only local bitcoin can release those coins now.

Due to Bitrex exchange closure I had to withdraw  my  BTC and by mistake I sent  it to my old Local Bitcoins wallet .

 The Local Bitcoin refused to return  my founds stating that they warned not to send any btc and that we they do not do any incoming transactions reinbursments.

 Also after my further inquiry, Local Bitcoin staff informed me that they do not provide private keys to users since Local Bitcoin is a  web-wallet .
 It seems that my sincere and honest explanation  that the transfer was done by mistake had no effect on the final Local Bitcoin negative decision. What can be done more in this situation? Can I count on Local Bitcoins reputation ? Anyone can help?

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/325HM2TfxoxViAmwrZ1tRGotaW3FwDXNTU

http://