Topic: del (Read 89 times)

Are you perhaps referring to a "reward" that people often offer for helping them recover there wallets and/or private keys?

I know in the past that I've helped people recover "lost" coins (passphrase recover, missing words from recovery phrases, fork coins in multisigs etc)... and often users have given me 10% (sometimes more) of the recovered amount as a reward for helping them out.


As for what you should do if you "find" someone else's private key... that's something of an ethical discussion... what would you do if you found a wallet full of cash on the footpath?

Malware is a broad term...
I know there are copy/paste virusses circulating that replace a bitcoin address in the clipboard by an address belonging to the creator of the virus...
I know there are fake versions of certain wallets floating around...
I know there's software floating around that logs keys...

Those are all "malware" in my book... and the victim always ends up being robbed...

I guess it depends on the situation really... The odds of accidentally "finding" a private key whose public key hash (address) was funded in the past are very, very, very close to zero (no matter what hardware or setup you use)... So, if you accidentally "find" a private key it's either:

• because the RNG used by the first "owner" was flawed
• because you used completely immoral and illegal techniques (like keyloggers, malware, evil maid, physical theft, phishing, extortion,...)

In the first case (the original creator of the private key used a flawed RNG), you might argue that you might dare to ask the original owner if he/she is willing to give a reward... Eventough technically you're NOT entitled to one!!!
In the second case (illegal methods used to acquire a private key), i hope the police catches you.

Now, once again, if you find a private key that's able to spend unspent outputs that do not belong to you, the victim will have a hard time catching you (eventough it's NOT impossible). It's like finding a wallet with money on the street: nobody is stopping you from pocketing the money, but if there is a security camera in the neighborhood that catches you in the act, the victim CAN press charges and you CAN end up in jail... No matter how small the odds are, this DOES happen from time to time...


In the past, i HAVE seen people messing up their transaction fees, paying huuuuuge fees by accident... I've seen some mining pools who were able to mine the block including those transactions giving part of the fee back to the person who messed up their transaction in the first place... In those instances, a reward might be fitting...

It's weird seeing you asking those newbie questions since I've seen that you know a lot about cryptography. I guess that's why:

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Once you try to spend an output of 0.6 BTC and choose to only send 0.3 BTC, then the rest of the coins will be sent to a change address, yeah. You can see those if you click on View -> Addresses and scroll down a little.

I'll need you to explain this. What haven't you understood? If you find a private key that was generated before by another person, you have access to their money.

1) electrum will take care of this for you. If you have multiple unspent outputs funding addresses belonging to your wallet, electrum will pick those most suitable. If needed, a change address will be generated and used automatically...

2) there is nobody governing bitcoin... If, for some reason, you find a private key belonging to somebody else, legally you should not touch those funds... But if you do, there's nobody to stop you (unless your victim goes to the police). There might be a difference between the method used to generate this private key: i guess that if you generate a private key whose public key hash (address) was funded in the past by accident, and law enforcement catches you, you'll have to give those funds back to the rightfull owner... IF you use illegal "tricks" (like malware or phishing), you'll probably end in jail...
But it's all very technical and difficult: it's hard (but not impossible!!!!) to trace bitcoin transactions, it's hard to determine who is the "rightfull" owner of an address, it's hard to connect an IRL identity to an address (but, depending on the circumstances, it's not impossible either)

del