Topic: I found a paper wallet on a beach ... seriously - page 6. (Read 5720 times)

That brings me on another thought (I'm on a roll today): those barrels with money are only meant to distract thiefs from digging further, where they'd find my private keys

Yeah, I feel pretty secure with my setup too, so there's no "canary" involved either.

Joke's on you, that's where I store my barrels full of millions of dollars, not my bitcoin back ups! Wait...

That's not a bad idea, actually. However, I am more than happy that all of my off site back up locations are incredibly secure and are highly unlikely to be found by anyone either accidentally or deliberately looking for them. If any of the back ups were to be compromised, it would far more likely be due to a massive natural disaster, in which case the canary wallet would not help (although I would probably be aware of the fact via news reports or other media). And in the case of someone deliberately looking for my back ups, they would know not to spend the canary and attract attention to themselves, since as I said after finding one back up they would still need to search for others to be able to steal anything from me.

Just a thought: you could add a "canary": a very simple unencrypted paper wallet with private key QR-code and instructions how to claim it. If someone finds it, you lose the small amount, but you'll know your backup is compromised without driving into the desert to check and digging a hole at N34 59 20, W106 36 52 each time.

As explained above, a better solution would be to make a transaction sending a tiny amount of coins to the paper wallet address, and including an OP_RETURN output with some information on how to contact OP, perhaps with a link to this thread. This prevents any issues in the rare but possible case that the true owner has a signed transaction involving the original output stored somewhere.

Yeah, that's a good point. I also have a number of back ups stored off site, as everyone should. These backs ups are obviously highly secured and incredibly unlikely to end up on a beach somewhere (not to mention that no single back up is enough to compromise any of my wallets), but at the same time, I obviously don't check on these back ups every day. It is possible, however unlikely, that I would lose one of my back ups and not realize for a period of weeks. There is no telling how diligent or otherwise the true owner of these coins might be, and it could very well be months or even years before they realize that their paper wallet is lost.

We agree on all points in this particular case, however the thing with this particular private key found on the beach by the OP is that it is a physical object represented in a paper wallet form. Whoever the original owner is or who their successors are, they have lost a physical object that used to be in their possession somewhere and somehow. Hopefully, that's not their only backup, they will discover sooner or later that it's missing and move the coins elsewhere. 

Your explanations and an example with an analogy allowed me to look at this case, when OP found paper wallet on the beach from a completely different angle.

Before that, it seemed to me that needed to wait a while, and after that OP could assign btc using the found paper wallet. After reading your post, I am now firmly convinced that in no case should you touch these coins if the finder has at least the rudiments of morality and morality. I think it applies to this case as well as any other.

I also think OP can try to let the owner know that his seed phrase has been compromised. For example, send a small amount to another address and return it back with a signed message with information so that the owner moves btc to another address. It is not a fact that the owner will immediately detect this if he rarely checks his wallet and it may turn out that he has no other access due to the lost paper wallet, but it's worth a try. 

Bitcoin should not be treated as a physical asset. With a physical asset, if someone else possesses it then you do not. If you lose cash, a credit card, your wallet, your phone, or any other physical asset, then it is obvious to you that that thing has been lost as it is no longer in your possession. Losing a private key is not the same, since it is entirely possible for two people to both possess the same private key at the same time. A better analogy in this case (ignoring the whole self-custody aspect) would be like someone having a key to your safe, or access to your bank account. If I look at the contents of your safe, and then 5 years later see the same contents in that safe, do I get to take them for myself since you haven't used them in 5 years? If I have access to your savings account with $10k in it, and 5 years later is still has $10k in it (plus interest), is it morally fine for me to clear out your account since you haven't used that money in 5 years? Of course not. Bitcoin is no different.

Coins not moving does not equal coins lost. It is nonsense to suggest otherwise.

THIS is an excellent approach! But as OP wasn't involved with Bitcoin before, unfortunately unlikely to happen. Transfering a little dust to the paperwallet's address together with a commentary OP_RETURN should cost less than ~1000sat (I'm too lazy to figure out the cheapest amount). Optional removal of dust (very signaling move for the real owner if (s)he cares to look!) would need to be done by the finder himself (don't trust others with the private key!).

That's exactly what I said previously as a reply when someone suggested they would hold on to the paper wallet for a year and if the original owner doesn't move the coins, then they would consider them as lost and take them. But we can't put such flags on bitcoin UTXOs just because a similar law exists for some other assets or physical objects. For example, items from the Lost & Found at some airports are stored for 6 months, after that they get auctioned off. We shouldn't use the same logic with bitcoin. For all you know, I might have been incapacitated to check on my coins in that one year period you decided to give me.

Yeah, I also assume this is the reason. Which is a shame really, given all the better options given in this thread for trying to alert the true owner to the situation.

Exactly this. It is entirely possible that this was a back up which the true owner had hidden off site, and is not going to check on for months or even years. He is perhaps entirely unaware it has been lost (which is why the better options I mentioned above were recommended). I have coins which haven't moved in years and I don't plan on moving in years. If they've not moved in 10/20/50 years, does that make them any less mine (or my heir's), or does that make stealing them any less immoral? Of course not.

So make a transaction from somewhere else, paying dust to the paper wallet and including an OP_RETURN output. Or top up the paper wallet with dust then spend that dust making an OP_RETURN output. Anyone looking up the address will notice something going on without invalidating the original output.

But it wasn't a pinky swear so the consequences aren't that drastic.
If it's all made up, it will be interesting to follow what this forum account does from this moment on. Depending on future activity or the lack of it, we will see if we were tricked by OP or not.  

Previously I had suggested to spend the output with an OP_RETURN message. Ethically speaking, that's neither a good option, because some owner's relatives might have access to that money with a signed transaction wherein he has granted them inheritance. Spending the output would invalidate that transaction which is supposed to be broadcasted in the future.

There might be 120 unspent transaction outputs with value equal to some of that range, but I haven't read he's said it's consisted of just one output. The owner can have funded bunch of times, with a total value of ~0.6104 BTC.

While I enjoyed the diverse discussion in this thread and your decission is up to you what you do, it's a disappointing outcome in my opinion.

Suppose the original owner still has a copy of the private key and thus is still able to move his coins. If he moved them for whatever reason when you check the next time, then fine, story and any moral issues are gone. But what if he doesn't see the urge to move the coins? As you don't publish the public address of the paperwallet, you make no effort to let the owner get aware of his loss. How does that make any later decission of yours to proceed in any way with the paperwallet more justifyable?

If the original owner doesn't have any details to prove his ownership unambigously, then it's almost a lost case for the owner, as I then don't see a way to distinguish pretenders from the original owner. The real owner could tell you the exact amount on the paperwallet and it would be good if the amount uses all 8 digits past the decimal separator. Pretenders could try to guess it based on what you disclosed about the amount (I guess more hits on 0.6BTC, but your 0.6104...ish, might actually reduce possible unspent transaction outputs considerably if 0.6104xxxx are correct). How do you want to separate pretenders from the real owner then?

I get ~120 unspent transaction outputs in the range of [0.61040000, 0.61049999] with the following filtered search request:
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/outputs?s=time(desc)&q=value(61040000..61049999),is_spent(false)#f=transaction_hash,index,time,value,value_usd,recipient,spending_transaction_hash,spending_time,spending_value_usd,is_spendable,is_spent

It's even less hits as I was lazy and didn't exclude too recent transactions...


Nice try! 

How much for the book, I love it! 

He, the Internet stranger, swore you it's true, NeuroticFish. How can you be such a prick... 

Seriously, OP. Which part of "The original owner can't detect it if you don't publish the address" do you disagree with? Unless there isn't such wallet and you're just making fun of us, which can't have happened since you swore.

I don't expect newbies trust mixers. There are still stories that only "bad boys" are mixing, remember? Also I expect some start getting afraid that the exchanges won't accept mixed coins.
One has to learn a little more to understand the value of mixers, so I would not rush it, nor have unrealistic expectations.

Then he should send them to a mixer. It is not that hard and would make this way more interesting. If he doesn't want to doxx himself he should post here in the first place 

I'd assume that he wants to keep it private so in case he is cashing in those coins he is not doxxing himself.
The alternative would be that all of this is just a nice story.

I am just curious, and I can see that some other members are as well, what is your reasoning against posting the bitcoin address here? The string that begins with either "1", "3" or "bc1". Bitcoin addresses are public information. You can find all of them on any block explorer.

It's why I gave a few possibilities, by removing that piece of paper or whatever the deemed backup is, you could potentially be making it impossible for the original user to recover it. However, as you rightly said, that wallet could've come from miles away since the tides could be covering it. I'm kind of glad that this discussion came up, since the beach provides certain moral decisions, which aren't easy to make, as there seems to be a scope of consequences whatever you might decide to do, hence why I compared it to the train tracks, where doing nothing also presents a problem.

One thing for sure is, you know your intentions, but while those intentions might be good, removing that wallet could potentially hinder the recovery of it. It's a bit like the butterfly effect where your decisions can alter things, that you weren't planning on altering.