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Topic: Friend gives wallet seed to stranger and bitcoins disappear from his wallet (Read 991 times)

hero member
Activity: 1040
Merit: 538
Defend Bitcoin and its PoW: bitcoincleanup.com
Your friend isn't getting his money back, that's for sure. But I don't know how did he have 2.6 Bitcoins and didn't know the basic safety rules, he should have researched a bit, that isn't a small amount of money, and he surely shouldn't have trusted a stranger. And he can forget the police, they wont react when cryptocurrency is involved. They don't know about it and there is no way to find the thief.
newbie
Activity: 47
Merit: 0
 Wink Wink Actually, it is not ok to show your personal instructions to anyone else. It will hurt itself. Since he has shown his instructions to others, it is advisable to not see anyone else later. It is best not to have relations with a stranger.  Wink Wink
newbie
Activity: 198
Merit: 0
One there is a notable mistake he made which i quote "a stranger"he actually played an expensive game with his wallet and thats the result for it
am amazed at this silly mistake because his chances of getting the strange is almost impossible hope he recovers from it and must have learnt his lesson by now
full member
Activity: 854
Merit: 100
He is a victim of ignorance. When I got into bitcoin, I knew nothing about how it works and I spent days online searching for all relevant information. It is rather unfortunate he ended up loosing his wealth upon consultations from a stranger. I hope he takes lessons from this and becomes very vigilant when dealing with strangers.
newbie
Activity: 13
Merit: 0
 Would you ever give your keys to your house to a stranger. Then how can you give bitcoin seed to a stranger. He must be enjoying the free money  Sad
full member
Activity: 322
Merit: 106


     A friend who asked for instructions on how to use certain features of his wallet, was apparently tricked into divulging his seed to a stranger, and now his 2.6 btc are missing from the wallet, and so is the stranger. Does he have any recourse?

With that big amount of coins!!!! .I WOULD NOT  let it to be like what you said asking for help to someone you doesen't know. Or giving information about your coins.. Lol
Bitcoin transaction is irreversible and the only way to track it is to find that man who stole all of his coins. LOL
The coins will not gone forever bu it will circulate and will store on another wallet where the man placed it
sr. member
Activity: 686
Merit: 253
why would he give a wallet seed to a stranger? whatever the reason, wallet should not be given to stranger because wallet is the most important component to store bitcoin and altcoin.

Sometimes we forgot and being careless without realizing we are giving the important key for our wallet. My advise is that, separate the wallet address from private keys / wallet hash / seed etc from the same file with our wallet. This way, we minimize the risk. Better yet, we have to encrypt the said file.

Carelessness is a human trait and no matter how hard we try to be perfect there may be some among us who will still fall short of this virtue and may still not be able to perfect thi and so i will recommend hardware wallets for such folks.
hero member
Activity: 850
Merit: 504
why would he give a wallet seed to a stranger? whatever the reason, wallet should not be given to stranger because wallet is the most important component to store bitcoin and altcoin.

Sometimes we forgot and being careless without realizing we are giving the important key for our wallet. My advise is that, separate the wallet address from private keys / wallet hash / seed etc from the same file with our wallet. This way, we minimize the risk. Better yet, we have to encrypt the said file.
sr. member
Activity: 1652
Merit: 262
why would he give a wallet seed to a stranger? whatever the reason, wallet should not be given to stranger because wallet is the most important component to store bitcoin and altcoin.
full member
Activity: 336
Merit: 106
Do not talk to strangers, especially today many exploitative people and most victims are new in crypto. The wallet seed never gives anyone the key to your treasure that you just need to open. Avoid accessing sites as well as asking for your private key.

#Datarius

sr. member
Activity: 728
Merit: 265
I think the possibility is zero because if he only intends to help then that wouldn't do. Maybe the stranger gets intrigue when he saw that the wallet has an amount on it. The only possible recourse is to identify the thief and file a case against him/her.
sr. member
Activity: 364
Merit: 250


     A friend who asked for instructions on how to use certain features of his wallet, was apparently tricked into divulging his seed to a stranger, and now his 2.6 btc are missing from the wallet, and so is the stranger. Does he have any recourse?

No way is he getting those BTCs back. I think this matters should be addressed as it is very alarming that btc holders are losing their coins through hacking and stupidity (sorry for my word). This just shows that there are numerous btc holders out there who blindly jumped in on the train. They didn't realized how important btc security is until they've lost it. People should learn not to trust anybody and stupidly consult strangers who claimed to know how to solve their queries with their wallets. Asking for privkeys and seeds are automatically an alert sign and should raise very high suspicion.
sr. member
Activity: 434
Merit: 250
The hard thing when bitcoin we move to another wallet address, why should give seed to people he does not know, need to understand money will make everyone blind and forget even I also do not trust anyone even though he is my friend, learn from mistakes hope to be better keep money
member
Activity: 107
Merit: 12


Going forward, my friend tells me he will buy more bitcoin, but be more careful next time. Right now, he will be on the sidelines because he has no more money to invest.

He is thinking that this was a great kick in the balls from the stranger. What if btc goes to 10k, 25k, 50k? I told him he needs to hope for the best, however, expect the worst, and move on.

Really pain in his heart to lost BTC2.6
What kind of wallet did he used?
What kind of features did he asked?
How long your friend have been using/holding bitcoin? A newbie or layman could be tricked obviously.
But, the most funny part is: the stranger at a bar that is known to have a lot of bitcoiners around.
Hopefully police could manage to find this stranger which known to have a lot of bitcoins around.


He bought the bitcoins about 1 year ago.

He was using electrum wallet on his computer.

He wanted to know how to password protect the seed. The stranger apparently was next to him watching his computer.

He had been holding for one year, but never really paid much attention until recently. I would say he is considered a newbie.


I believe electrum tells you to never show the seed to anyone. It comes up in a text box. It's unlucky and a very easy thing to do in public.
donator
Activity: 1617
Merit: 1012
Years ago I used to trade bitcoins face-to-face at cafes (not bars). I NEVER took my main wallet with me. I always created a new wallet on a burner phone/laptop and filled it with just enough to cover the transaction.

Likewise if I wanted to learn about wallet features from strangers at a bar I would take a wallet with 0.026 BTC and leave the real wallet with 2.6 BTC at home.

full member
Activity: 406
Merit: 111
What wallet did he use? Cause I know most wallets show an explicit message to never share the seed, this isn't like ticking off the terms & agreements on something without reading it...
hero member
Activity: 798
Merit: 503


     A friend who asked for instructions on how to use certain features of his wallet, was apparently tricked into divulging his seed to a stranger, and now his 2.6 btc are missing from the wallet, and so is the stranger. Does he have any recourse?

For someone who was able to have 2.6 btc in his wallet and not understanding the basic security that even a newbie with even few satoshis know about. I therefore have nothing to say to your friend because losing your seed or private key is more or less losing the whole wallet itself. Its then serve as a lesson for everyone to be more careful in doing our transaction and the amount of information we want to divulge but for a stranger, its definitely out of it entirely.
full member
Activity: 180
Merit: 100
That is very upset story. It is very very very important that you should not share your private key / wallet seed with anybody.
legendary
Activity: 2898
Merit: 1253
So anyway, I applied as a merit source :)


     A friend who asked for instructions on how to use certain features of his wallet, was apparently tricked into divulging his seed to a stranger, and now his 2.6 btc are missing from the wallet, and so is the stranger. Does he have any recourse?

First of all one never share the private key or seed (passphrase) of their wallet with any stranger friend or foe. Because one who has control over the private keys has control over their bitcoins. Technically speaking the coins dont belong to anyone in particular but the owner of the private key. So if that is stolen then the coins are also lost. One can try contacting the owner of the addresses to where to bitcoins were sent but it is highly unlikely that they will return it even if they are found.
full member
Activity: 364
Merit: 104
I feel sorry for your friend. Wallet seed is most important thing for us in crypto market. We shouldn't give our seeds to anybody, be very cautious about it.
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