Topic: I found a paper wallet on a beach ... seriously - page 2. (Read 5814 times)

I don't think it matters. Honest individuals work in police forces all over the world and the same is true for the worse type of scum on the planet. Would you consider UK's police as a trustworthy one, for example? In that case, you might be interested in knowing that one of their officers was convicted of raping and abusing women for over 17 years. Over 20 cases of rape. Several women complained but weren't taken seriously. The police always protect their own even in such situations.

https://www.euronews.com/2023/02/07/former-british-police-officer-sentenced-for-serial-rapes

It depends on the country, for example, I wouldn't entrust this to police forces of a country that has high corruption index. I don't even think it's wiser to entrust this job to any policeman or policewoman because even they can cheat in this case without punishment, it's not a bank account after all.

It's not that massively complex problem. Did you post on Reddit? Did you post on bitcointalk? Let's say yes. Did anyone came up with real proof that it belongs to them? There are a lot of ways to prove if you really want to and it's not only signing a message. If no one came and you waited for weeks, months, then what's wrong if you consider that from now on, it belongs to you? You haven't stolen from someone. Someone lost it, you tried your best to find the owner but owner did least to find you, then it belongs to you. You push yourself too much, you think like you are the killer if you tried to assist wounded person but failed to escape him.

If we assume the right owner contacts you, there are ways to prove it's their paper wallet. The wallet was funded somehow. Most people create their own wallets and fund them themselves. Check the blockchain and see what address the coins came from.

Ask the potential owner where the coins were deposited from. Then ask them to sign a message from the address that funded the wallet. Or ask them to send you a few satoshis proving they have access to that address. If it came from a friend or an exchange, prove it. Have your friend do the same. If you used an exchange, and you can no longer use that old address, there is a transaction history. Screenshots can be faked. Live video calls where you are logged in and refreshing your payments page on the legit website showing an outgoing transaction to the paper wallet address not so much.

Well, n0nce it looks like you solved my dilemma. Who would've thought it would've been a simple answer like that. I was quite enjoying my thought experiment. It's probably the best idea to leave a note, especially if you know that you aren't going to take anything from that wallet regardless how long. I don't think everyone that stumbles upon it will have that thought process though. I know some users would consider it a donation, and wouldn't think twice about it. Then, you probably have users like me who will overthink the process.

It does somewhat prove though that lost Bitcoin in this type of situation is actually harder to return to its original owner than if it was fiat. There's very little ways to prove you own that Bitcoin once you've lost access to it, obviously by design.

Yes, there are both the options that they don't understand the value a paper wallet can have and not take it seriously (throw it away; 'Nobody will come asking for some piece of paper') as well as the opposite: taking out the funds and being able to plausibly deny it: the finder could have unsealed it, the original owner could have moved the funds, someone else with a backup...

Exactly; you can quickly create a new email address just for that purpose, for instance.

Yeah, that's the line of thought I was operating on. That if someone was looking for it, they'd automatically go to the police station, and ask whether someone has reported any missing pieces of paper or what not. That's the only reason I automatically jumped to that conclusion. However, I guess individuals in the police force might not be trusted with that kind of information.

Probably a decent solution to the predicament. Although, the person may not want to be linked to the wallet, due to privacy issues. Although, I'm playing devil's advocate there. I imagine most people would be grateful that someone went into the effort. Plus, a note could be left which doesn't give too much information away to random people who happen to be passing by. Good solution if you ask me. 

That's the one reason why I even considered myself that police would be an option. Because if people look for stuff where they lost it, and it is gone, they often proceed by asking the police or the local lost & found office. But the drawbacks (trustworthiness of police officers or any human, for that manner, not to take the coins) do outweigh the advantages in my opinion.

There might be one alternative: take it and leave behind a note with your contact information so the original owner can reach out you and pick it up. If this note has the same shape, size and material of the paper wallet, you don't really change the 'situation' at all. It would have the same chance of being destroyed, blown into the sea, stolen, trashed as the original paper wallet.

I knew that answer would probably be controversial. The thing is, even moving the private key can be a problem because when there's no way of proving or finding who owns it. The person might come back to that spot, and try to find it. So, the very act of moving it or taking it could be morally wrong. However, then you have the issue of not moving it, and potentially allowing the next person to come along, and steal it. Giving it to the police, you assume they'll have some sort of moral decency, and influence, but probably not. I mean, they probably wouldn't know what to do with it, and you've already moved the private key at that point.

I'd probably trust myself more than the police due to the fact I know that I can trust myself to never take anything from the wallet, but I'm still not confident in moving it in the first place. I only said hand it to the police because of users who might read this, and I'm not sure I can trust many people to resist the urge. It's very easy for someone to go Ah, I've had this for a year now, and no one has claimed therefore it's mine, but I don't really agree with that either. So, I'll agree it probably isn't a accurate statement, since I personally wouldn't be comfortable with moving it at all, but then am I prepared to allow someone else to steal it when I could've prevented that? Tough decisions.

This is a massively complex problem, which doesn't have an easy answer that it might appear to have.

Maybe it is even harder than that! There is much more uncertainty of the outcome, since private key can and cannot be backed up at the same time.


We must somehow mix the trolley problem and Schroedinger's cat to get a fitting image for this problem. 'Schroedinger's Bitcoin Trolley Problem'?

Agreed.  There are so many ways this could go wrong.  And then you think about it more and by giving it to a stranger, be it even a police man, you are just letting some body else take the funds and pretend it was not them.

Imagine giving a piece of paper to a police man and telling them you found it somewhere.  They will either laugh and throw it away or, if police is corrupt like in my country, they may even steal the funds on it.

I mean, Bitcoin is one of the few things you can steal any time and pretend you have not.  Give me a Private Key with some balance and after I take the funds out, how do you plan to prove it was me?

The conclusion of this story is probably that unless the owner of the lost Paper Wallet proves it was theirs and gets their funds back, there is no moral way of solving this problem.

In fact.  Even by taking the Paper Wallet with good intentions and not sweeping funds off it you are still possibly doing something wrong.  What if the initial owner finally remembers where the Paper Wallet may have been and goes back to the shore looking for it.  Then they find nothing on the beach because some body else took it beforehand.

So you leave it there.  But then some body else will likely take it.  This can go so many ways.  Maybe it is a kid and they are going to rip it apart.  Maybe it is some body who finds out it contains value and sweeps off the funds.  Maybe they just collect waste and give zero F's about what that paper may actually be, collecting it for recycling.

So what do you do.  Do you sweep it and hold on to it until the owner eventually some how finds this thread and proves it was them?  Then what happens if the owner never comes back.  Are you allowed to use the funds through the finders keepers rationality?

Also.  If you sweep funds.  What if one year from now the owner finds their Bitcoin Address, checks it out on a Bitcoin Explorer and sees their funds are gone so they give up immediately thinking there is no way they can get that back anyway.

Like I said.  Unless the real owner gets their hands back on the piece of paper, any 'solution' is surrounded by immorality.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

The act itself is not stealing. The intention of what you are going to do later might be. If you want to do the right thing or try to do the right thing, why would you keep quiet about it? The owner maybe only has that one copy. If you remained quiet, how would they ever know that someone found it?

Think of something else instead of a bitcoin paper wallet.
I find a watch on the beach. I take it home with me, put it in my drawer, and decide not to do anything about it. I might not wear the watch, I haven't sold it or exchanged it for something else, but I took possession of it and it's currently in my control.

How's being quite without moving the money stealing? If somebody owns that money, and does have a backup as well, taking it and hiding it somewhere in your place gives him the opportunity to figure out he lost the paper wallet, and that he must move the funds as soon as possible. If he doesn't own a backup, the money are donated to everyone-- in the same manner as if you burned a banknote.

The Police is the best bet? Come on guys, be more confident with yourselves. I'm sure I'd make a better try than the Police would on finding the owner. I wouldn't even trust handing over a private key in the police department.

I don't disagree, but it's important to remember that Bitcoin uses a public ledger and everyone can stick their noses anywhere they like on the blockchain. It's built into the protocol and is an integral part of Bitcoin. My comfort zone ends where the signing keys begin. That's the thing that is supposed to remain private and which me and you shouldn't have access to. But as long as it's public info, I don't feel like I would be deanonymizing anyone or anything.

Yeah, I know a lot of users would be comfortable with that, and I'm not saying it's wrong for them to do that. I just personally wouldn't be comfortable doing that. It's almost sticking my noses into someone else's business, without having any sort of right to do so. It's hard because if you find it on a beach or a secluded area, you basically have no one to contact or give it too, and like I said even the act of giving it to someone could potentially compromise it. That's why I like the moral dilemma, it's very similar to the train track dilemma, basically whatever you do or don't do has some sort of consequence.

If it was at an event, you'd normally just give it to the event organisers, but you're kind of relying on them to be trustworthy themselves, which you can't always do. Handing it to the Police is probably your best bet, but I know a lot of users would be uncomfortable with that also.

I see no problem in checking if the wallet has any coins. I would have checked. If it was empty, I wouldn't bother trying to find who it belongs to. And hopefully, the real owner wouldn't deposit any bitcoins on it without realizing it is gone. If it was funded, then I would try to find the owner in a few different ways.   

Neither one nor the other. Taking a possibly valuable item (without the intention of using it or profiting from it) isn't the same as stealing it. You are saving it from people who might have other intentions. You are also saving it from water and weather conditions that could destroy it if you just left it there. It's only stealing if you transfer the BTC to yourself or keep quiet about it without doing anything to find who they belong to.

What's the point of not taking the paper wallet in this scenario? If you don't take, someone else will take. At least, OP had a kind intention at first and that's so rare that it worth to bold it.
There are ways to prove the ownership. Maybe the owner had imported keys into his wallet and would be able to sign a message to prove the ownership or maybe he would be able to prove that it was his address in another way:
Imagine, you lost a wallet but you have sent coins there from your Binance account. Owner could prove that by letting the wallet holder to safely sign into his Binance account via qr code scan.
Okay, there are ways if we truly want.

First of all, if you did not try to check how much bitcoin it contained in that paper wallet, then what would you have done ?
You have just left the paper wallet on the beach so that any other person can find it and enjoy this free money or would you have destroyed the paper wallet making the bitcoin supply less by 0.6BTC


I think in such a scenario it is impossible to find the real owner of the bitcoin and it is also not our money, so whoever gets that money he can use it for charity purposes.

Nah, I'm talking theoretically since I'm talking about the morality of something rather than this specific occasion. It was pretty much summed up that there was no theft, and some users speculated that this could've been a scam attempt, which it might have well been. However, I wanted to reference that this is actually a really difficult situation to be in, and personally I don't know what I would've done. Like I said above, I probably wouldn't have even checked if the wallet had any Bitcoin in it, which could've been a waste of my time trying to find a owner of a wallet that has nothing in it.

It would be difficult to find the real owner, which encourages people to take the Bitcoin for themselves, which again isn't ideal.

Were you high when you wrote this?

What exactly are you asking, and why is there a question mark at the end? How are we supposed to know why you were or weren't hacked? I am not sure what Electrum has to do with the quoted posts, but Electrum can be both a cold and hot wallet. Not that it matters in this situation.   

Read the thread you are commenting in, and you might just learn what all this is about. Also, use a lower dosage next time.

That's exactly the problem and that's why you can't say I will give that person 1 month/year to move their coins and if nothing happens, I will just take them myself. Maybe those are the keys that belong to a long-term storage and the owner won't be back to spend their BTC for another 5 or 10 years. You just can't assume that coins that don't move are definitely lost. Some certainly are, others are part of someone's future plans maybe.