Topic: Will You Return Hardware Wallet That Contains 3+ BTC in a Hotel Room? (Read 428 times)

Let's have a practical mind, a lost money in a hotel can be recovered by the owner itself, s/he just make a report/complaint in the hotel's management. Regardless if you knew the owner or not, the chance of it getting recovered is pretty high, cctv are all over the place, once they knew and saw that you're the one who is in charge in owner's room then you deny that you never get/found the money when its on the cctv, you will end up losing your job and getting imprisoned.

About the HW, no matter how do you look at it, once you knew how HW works, you can't recover or you can't open it in coz its protected by a pin. As a hotel worker, the chance of having the knowledge and tools to recover it is pretty low. So your best choice is handle it to the management coz owner will come back for it probably.

If you turn to social media, that would be the start of your headache since there will be lots of impostors to claim the lost hardware wallet, I would not do that if I am in your situation.  The person who lost something important will definitely go back to places where he is been and will keep on inquiring about the lost object.  It would be easy if it happens in a hotel but it would be difficult if it happen else where.


That is one brilliant move, since you can report lost items to the authority and when time expires for the owner to claim the object, you can claim it yourself and be the rightful owner of that item.

Believe it or not, it really happens in real life. I know that there's a lot of people want to do good things and live with their lives to the fullest. But we didn't know what they're going through to life, that makes some good people to be bad. This comment was made to remind those people not to do bad things, but to put in their mind that if they always do good things in life just like returning what's not theirs will give peace of mind and good conscience.

"Finders, keepers," right? Wrong. A unexpected windfall, especially an untraceable one like Bitcoin, is tempting, but its not ours. In such conditions, envy is natural but not moral.

Its tense. The cognitive contradiction between sudden prosperity and morality is difficult to resolve. Wisdom and cooperation are needed. No matter how doubtful we are that the missing cash would be returned, we must help. Inform the authorities, act honorably, and maintain your name.

First of all, I will say that Bitcoin and fiat currency are not the same, to open a hardware wallet or to make a transaction, many times its private key and the password of the owner of that wallet are needed, so if you don't think about morality here, then I don't think you will get any benefit from getting that hardware wallet or I will get any benefit.
And I don't think the owner of a wallet worth three bitcoins would be such an ass that he would leave it private with it. But if you think about the conscience, you can return that hardware wallet to the owner if you want, especially if you look at the list of passengers rented by that hotel, you will get his name, address or number and also sometime his email. So it's pretty simple or easy to find or locate the hardware wallet owner for just sending a mail on his email. Moreover, if you cannot connect or communicate on his email or mobile number, then talk to the authority of the place he is coming from, like if he is a foreigner, then communicate to their high commissioner or ambassador.

According to the story, the bitcoins was found in a hotel room. The hotel management will definitely have a record of the customers who previously occupied the room. I would inform the management and have them contact their list of customers who used the room recently to see which one is the owner. If perhaps they can’t reach the owner because of maybe wrong information in their books. I’d drop a email for them to reach me if someone comes searching.
  

Will you hope that your hardware wallet that you carelessly lost never get back to you? I am sure you will pray that a good samaritan find the hardware wallet and try to locate the owner, only someone with a dead conscience will see something value like Bitcoin and not think about what the rightful owner will be going through.

If I see someone hardware wallet on the floor I will head to the police station first unless I can find the owner nearby, they must also have recovery seed as back up too I guess so even if I can't find the owner the Bitcoin is still safe because the recovery seed is stored somewhere by the owner.

But in care of the police will buy the right time for the owner to use recovery seed and recover the Bitcoin when he noticed that the hardware wallet is lost.

How could I even return the money if OP says that I don't know who it belongs to?
If I found only the seed phrase to someone's wallet, curiosity would make me check it out to see how much money he has. I wouldn't steal his money, but I'd want to see who he is and maybe try to give him a warning that he should move. I'd probably send dust transactions from his wallet to let him know he's compromised.
If it was a hardware wallet with a password visible and I couldn't get to the person who lost it, I wouldn't leave it there. I'd of course take it and use it. Better me than some other random guy.

In such a situation, it is imperative for me to return the money promptly. If the money does not belong to me, I have no right to use it, as I believe in a higher power that watches over us. If the money was found in a hotel, it would be relatively easy to return it, given there would be a record of the person who stayed there. However, if I cannot identify the rightful owner and their whereabouts, I would turn to social media and the press to seek help in locating them.

Should my efforts be unsuccessful, I would not hesitate to involve law enforcement. I would file a written complaint and hand over the money to them, so they can take appropriate actions and disseminate information to relevant parties. My utmost priority would be to ensure that the money finds its way back to its rightful owner, in accordance with my principles and the belief in doing the right thing.

Lolz, 😂 you make me laugh bud, handing that over to the police will the the biggest and most foolish mistake you make in your lifetime..
And even going to the radio station to announce such a thing will only open doors to random scammers to try to claim they are the owner of the funds, and if you don't have a way of verifying who the true owner is, you might end up giving it to the wrong person through pressurization from claimers..

Best thing to do is, if you don't know who owns the bitcoin, and no means of locating the owner, and you don't also know anybody that might have a link to locating the true owner of the bitcoin, keep it, it's not a crime, and it's still better than dashing those bitcoins to the police who will still keep it to themselves.

Returning it to the owner is the best thing to do not only because it’s the ethical way but also it’s useless to owned the hardware wallet since you can’t access it without the seed phrase. The owner can easily import his backup seed phrase on a non custodial wallet to recover his funds immediately before you can brute force or reverse engineer a hard ware wallet.

You can receive a reward money to the owner if you returned rather than having a useless hardware wallet unless you sell it as second hand in the market. 

Yes - it's never the same as someone finding a physical wallet filled with fiat. Hardware wallet is completely useless if whoever finds it doesn't know how to access the assets inside. The wallet has an inherently strong cipher especially if the owner has a large amount of bitcoin or other vrypto assets.

Oh I agree - might be good for key decoration or something.

Exactly - I also recommend returning the wallet to its original owner. But I'm curious how one can know the amount of assets in someone else's hardware wallet?

I'd report that I have it but I will not give it to the hotel must meet the owner in person

I didn't expect read any comment from any user saying that they won't return it. Nobody would want to look like a morally depraved person. But unless the person who picked up the device and knows what the worth of the content is, there is going to be a mental battle that will start-off in their heads. It will be between right and wrong. What is good and what is bad. Especially if you are in a bad place. It would even become worse if you tell family and friends.

Whatever the case may be, the right thing must be done whether there is an external reward or not. Because the best reward is being proud of yourself that you did the right thing.

I believe in hard work & and I also believe that despite the hardship, corruption & troubles in this world, genuine good people still exist, just as you said a good name is better than silver or gold, what that woman did is exactly what I would have done if I happen to have found myself in such scenario, because I was trained since childhood to be ever always contented with the little I have, and I'm now contended, although 3 Bitcoin would have been a life changer to anyone who might have mistaken picked such huge amount, but yet, of what benefit will it be a build a foundation on a stolen fund, which most times happens to be a curse people bring upon themselves by taking what does not help to them.

For me if I find a bitcoin wallet with a seed and I know the owner of the wallet I will return it to him and ask for my reward, but if I can't find out the owner of the wallet I won't hand it over to the police anyway.

Bitcoin is illegal here in my country, so handing over the wallet to the police will cause problems primarily for the owner of the wallet and maybe for me as well, so it is better not to hand it over to the police and continue searching for the owner of the wallet by other means instead of getting involved in problems.

Yes, I get your point; it's nearly impossible, but not as if it's something that's impossible. The OP never mentioned that it's something that happened; it's just an imaginary story, apart from the part where he said a cleaner came across $70k.
But for the imaginary part of the story, it's possible that something like that can happen; mistakes do happen. Ok, just come to think of it, what if it was a client that came to the hotel for a business deal and right there in that hotel he received the 3 bitcoins? Right in his hotel room, the passphrase is just on the bed. Then he rushed to the toilet, and the cleaner stepped in. Seeing the wallet phrase and the hardware wallet, he (the cleaner) just took them and left. The question now is whether he will return the wallet or just stop his job and run away, because he (the client) will definitely find out that the clearner took it.


Let me tell you about a mistake I made in the past. I had a small diary that contained quite a lot of secret information about myself, my experiences in life, and my wallet phrases. So one day I went out to do something at a cyber cafe, and I brought along my diary. After my business was over in that cafe, I forgot that diary there, and when I got home, I had already spent some hours at home before I realised I had forgotten my diary at the cafe shop. I immediately logged into my mobile wallet, and my asset was still there. I just created a new wallet and moved my assets from the old wallet to the new one. The reason was because the pass phrase for the wallet that contained my funds was written inside the diary.
And my question is, what if someone had mistakenly read the diary and seen those phrases? Maybe I would have lost my asset. So, all I am saying is that mistakes do happen unexpectedly.

so the private key is there  I would keep it until someone looking for it and I tell them to not bring a private key to an occasion like this it and of course give it back maybe the owner would send me 0.1 BTC as a reward hahahhahah

Or in my evil soul would send to my wallet and staking it somewhere and when person looking the btc i send the regular 3 btc while I get staking reward hehehhehe

Every person is different and every situation is different as well. That woman did the right thing but, based on your story, she found the money in a hotel room so for example thanks to the electronic keys they could know she was the first person entering the room after the customer left, it's not that she found that money in the middle of nowhere. It would be interesting anyway to know how the customer could prove that he/she actually had that money.

Anyway going back to your example, which is pretty nonsense, how would you track back the original owner? Maybe besides the crypto wallet and the seed he lost also his ID?

Well, one can never know until they find themselves in that position but, my conscience won't let me be at peace if I find myself holding what doesn't belong to me or what I know for certain is hurting someone out there and worst still, when this person is known and you ca see the changes this event is bringing on his or her existence. That would be just so much go bare and there ist any pride in that.

I beleive I would be more comfortable handing it over rather than  keeping it to myself. I get to accord myself certain reputation and who knows, the person who has been done this good would never forget you and could also preach you to persons or organisations that could lewd to your uplifting some day. It pays to be good.