Topic: I found a paper wallet on a beach ... seriously (Read 5825 times)

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Right, however to avoid other users trying to claim the wallet you'd have to be as vague as possible, and ask questions that realistically only the person that lost it would know. Even then, you probably can't verify it to the point that there's no doubt in your mind that someone owns it. I guess it depends on how it's find, and if there's any accompanying information with it, but thinking of the worse case scenario it could still be rather difficult to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that someone owns it. If they don't use the platforms you use, that just makes it a ton more difficult.

You'd have to be prepared to hold onto the wallet indefinitely, but the question remains are you still making it too difficult for the person who lost it, because you've taken the action of actually taking the wallet (despite being for safe keeping) away from the area that it was lost in.

Yes, because there are manners to protect yourself. If I ever found a paper wallet on the street, and checked it had funds, I'd register to some Reddit / Bitcointalk / other forum with a pseudonym under Tor, and describe what happened. Strangers couldn't find me, and if the real owner noticed the post, he could provide enough evidence for me to hand it over (e.g., the town we both live in).

I watched a movie where a certain rich man's son was kidnapped, and when the news was flash on TV stations about the incident, this rich man started receiving messages from multiple groups and persons demanding for a ransom claiming to have kidnapped the man's son whereas the actual kidnappers haven't contacted the man for any request yet. The man got confused not knowing who could be the real kidnapper. In same vein, should the founder of the wallet decides to open a thread on any internet or cryptocurrency boards/forum and got to entertain multiple persons claiming to be owners to the missing wallet and especially in a situation where there's no means of identification that was found in the physical wallet in which the paper wallet was found in. This subject now becomes rigorous and disturbing to knowing who the real owner is. Sometimes the real owner may not be using any of the socials, maybe!

Right, and in the same way I don't expect my cash to be returned to me when I've lost it. A lot of the time I don't even bother going to check since I've already expected it to be taken. However, that entirely depends on how you lost it. As mentioned above, if it's in a wallet then it makes sense to try to recover it, and you can go back to area since smoeone might have handed it in to the organisation or whatever.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. I'm not sure what situation would present itself that you're carrying the very backup to your Bitcoin wallet physically with you. I'd be much more inclined to believe people were carrying a non encrypted hot wallet on their phones, than their seeds. However, generally I've often been surprised by users methods. A lot of users will ignore the initial warning that pretty much every piece of software has about storing your seed in a safe place upon generation.

Maybe. But maybe he does. In any case, cash found on the street is not better in any way.

And I neither expect from people to carry paper wallets on their physical wallet. It doesn't make sense to me. Paper wallets are backups. You don't carry backups on your bag, unless you move away. If you want to spend bitcoin outside your place, use your mobile phone with a lightning wallet installed.

Fiat, as in physical notes are usually accompanied with a wallet, although that's not always the case. Obvoiusly, if you just find notes on the street without anything else, it's impossible to find the true owner of those notes. However, Bitcoin wallets I wouldn't expect to find in a normal wallet (physical wallet, that stores money, and cards), since I don't really associate it with that.

If you get robbed in the streets, what do they ask for? Phone, and wallet right? So, putting your Bitcoin wallet, especially a seed in a physical traditional wallet like that would be insecure, even if carrying this information in the first place is insecure, its more so by carrying it in items that typically are targets to be stolen.

So, someone might store their wallet in non traditional ways, like a capsule on their key ring or someting along those lines. When you lose this, you'll have no accompanying information, which effectively measures it as useful as losing cash with no additional information.

Also, yeah I know several people that don't actually know Bitcointalk.org exists, despite being invested in Bitcoin. So, there's that. As well, social media tends to be avoided by a certain demographic within the Bitcoin community, especially those that value privacy so Reddit, and Twitter start getting eliminated there.

The owner might not browse those internet boards or be much active on bitcoin-related discussion boards at all. You can take some funds out and return the same coins with a message, but the owner might not be looking at what is happening on the blockchain. The coins can be someone's long-term cold storage that will only be accessed years down the line.

How so? If someone loses their paper wallet, you can open threads in Internet boards. Or send some funds there with a message, describing where and how you found it. There's absolutely no manner to verify who's the one who lost their cash on the street, unless the physical wallet with the identity is also dropped.

It's absolutely true that it can take care of a lot of things. I agree and I will remember @Welsh. That incident and what came before it can provide a valuable lesson especially for me personally when travelling.

Things that should be well taken care of can even be careless like that. A leather wallet that only has fiat ATM cards or other cards in it can fall, let alone a paper wallet. For me, what the OP did was a good initiative even though the owner of the paper wallet made a fatal mistake.
At every opportunity we always warn ourselves to keep valuable assets such as Bitcoin well because they are not display items.

I've seen it. It's a typical case of "stop making stupid people famous".
Compared to crypto, creditcards are terribly insecure. It's amazing those things still exist. I've never shown videos of my creditcard on Facebook, and yet, it has been abused.
Banks do anything they can to earn money. Just last week, I read that Dutch banks agreed that certain applications (like parking, or entering a train) can always use the NFC-chip on your bank pass, even if you disabled it! I'm so glad my crypto doesn't move without my explicit consent.

I don't know if you remember a case from a few years ago when a young woman was bragging on Facebook of her new credit card. She made a video where she showed the card to her "friends" and "followers". Both sides of the card! I think you can guess what happened next. She made a second video soon after begging people to stop buying stuff using her card details because apparently they got stolen somehow. It's a big mystery.
I don't think she knew at the time that she can call the bank to have the card blocked.

I prefer both: a hot wallet for small purchases, a (BIP38 encrypted) paper wallet for the rare occasion of impulsively buying something more expensive (this hasn't happened yet). Obviously, this shouldn't be your only backup. If you lose it, your funds are still safe. If you need it, you have it. And you don't need to keep it in a hot wallet for years.
The paper wallet is the size of my bank cards, I won't easily lose it.

People do dumb shit all the time. Just yesterday, I found $1000 because someone posted his private keys. I've read stories of people forgetting €50,000 in a taxi. It happens.

Whoever is that careless and carries $14-15k of digital assets with them in a trouser pocket into which they constantly put their hand or other objects, doesn't deserve those coins. That's not the way to handle bitcoin or a seed backup. And if you are going on a holiday, don't take everything you have with you. Prepare a few UTXOs in advance and use a combination of mobile wallets, paper backups, laptops, and even digitally saved backups (just for your short holiday). But don't stick a piece of paper somewhere where you could easily lose it.   

You probably shouldn't be carrying your seed or private key around with you. I'm a big advocate for that, however if you are you should probably think about carrying something a little more substantial, and have it tied to you rather than having it in your wallet where it can fall out undetected or blow away. A piece of hefty metal, would probably be the better option. Although, again I'm not a fan of carrying your seed around you. I'd much rather a hot wallet, that you have to remember the passphrase too, which only has a small amount on it. Enough, for what anything you might want to purchase during your travels.

You don't technically need to carry your backup or your main funds with you. Take a hot wallet, and that'll take care of most things.

It is possible that this case happened because the owner did not realise when removing the contents of the wallet (which we often put in our trouser pockets) when he wanted to pay for something he bought that the paper wallet containing 0.6 BTC fell.

I think cases like this can be a very valuable lesson for anyone who stores Bitcoin assets in paper wallets.
When we want to go on holiday or want to celebrate important moments with loved ones abroad, first make sure all the items we carry. Don't let the BTC that we store in the hardware wallet also slip into it.
If you want to bring Bitcoin assets, just the ones stored in the mobile version of the wallet because we are not moving house, but just a holiday.

Yeah, a bit of sarcasm from me. I was mainly interested in the moral consequences that a situation like this could present. I mean, who takes their paper wallet backup out, and about in the first place? Literally, mine hasn't left it's backup location, ever. I have no reason to move it in the future either. The only reason would be to restore the backup, and recover my coins. At which point, I'd probably move my coins into a new address, and start the whole process over.

I don't carry any Bitcoin out with me, so I guess I'm probably in the minority there. There's just no need for me too, it's not like I live in a big city, which has loads of shops willing to accept Bitcoin. So, I'm currently mainly using it as a store of value or a way to just be in control of my money rather than using it as a currency per se.

Since we're now going towards the scenario of creating anonymous email addresses to leave notes to contact the anonymous wallet owner: just write your email address on your paper wallet. That makes it much easier for everyone involved
I don't think it's going to help though, you just shouldn't lose your paper wallet where someone else can find it. And considering I've never read about it (other than trying to scam people) about it, I don't think it happens often.

The only paper wallet I could easily lose, is the one I keep in my (leather) wallet. If I lose my physical wallet from my pocket, I lose my paper wallet. My wallet has enough bank cards in there to identify me, and the encryption on the paper wallet makes sure nobody can ever take my funds.

I think it's a massively complex problem. I'd hate to be in this scenario, and in fact it's one of the reasons I didn't like helping users with their lost passwords anymore, because it's hard to prove they aren't just giving you vague details in hope you can help them get into it. If you post on social media or this forum about someone losing the wallet, you're going to get people claiming to have lost it, and some of them might be able to decipher certain information if you've included it in the explanation. The best way of doing it would be to be as vague as possible, hey guys, found a wallet this weekend let me know if you've recently lost a wallet, and from there you can kind of filter out the users that are trying a shot in the dark.

However, it's still a massively complex issue, and ultimately the decision you make could be a wrong one without adequate proof. There's not a whole lot of adequate proof if they haven't got backups, and at that point they should just move the Bitcoin to another secure address.

Honestly, I think I'd hate to be in a situation where I find a wallet. I've handed physical fiat wallets, credit cards, and things like this into the police a few times or sometimes just the establishment I'm at. For example, a restaurant because the person might come back to claim it. However, that's easy to verify. Bitcoin isn't exactly easy.

P.S for those of you planning to lose your wallets in the future, please don't. Take good care of them, because I don't want to be in this situation, ever .

The issue with this line of thought has been pointed out in this thread, before. In essence, the reason it is immoral is because there are a ton of scenarios where the actual owner has another copy of the keys and expects the money to still be there when they try to use those keys in the future.
For instance, this paper wallet may be one of a few backups and they may not check the integrity of those backups regularly.