Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

I am the owner of 19BWxdCtmTcWupG6tQjXZD7F4hDd6ftEri

I logged in and had a look about 3 hours ago and lo and behold, exactly one Bitcoin has disappeared.

The wallet is kept by Blockchain and I have emailed them. Their response is that they have no control over it therefor nothing they can do. \
I have read several issues Blockchain have had in the past and wonder if it has to do with that?

I have relocated the remaining Bitcoin in another wallet which is with Blockchain at the moment still, but protected with 2 factor authentication. But I do not comprehend how this could have happened - it seems almost surreal. I had about 14 Bitcoin in there and whoever took it, took exactly one bitcoin. Why not everything?

Does anyone know what is going on or can unravel this for me?

id guess its a script or an addon of some kind, browser addons or something

What do you mean? Something on my browser that could have done that?

I am on a mac...

But why one bitcoin???

Maybe they hoped you didn't notice.

he mean that you are probably infected in some way, you seems to remember having downloaded something suspicious or that you weren't so sure about it?

btw mac isn't immune to virus, this is a myth that apparently is tough to destroy

Does your transaction log tell you where it went? Was it sent to another wallet? Was it 1 transaction, or many smaller ones?

This again highlights the huge weakness of bitcoin as they are stored and protected (not!) at the moment. If people loose money in a banking account most of the time they will get their money back. For bitcoin.... it's just "so sorry, too bad".

yeh it went to one wallet. One transaction.

Does anyone have any ideas what I should run on my mac to check for viruses etc?

I moved it to another wallet, now protected with 2 factor auth. Is that safe?

I highly recommend Comodo Internet Security - it is free also

Exactly. I lost a million in cash today, left it on the street for a few minutes while I went into a strip club. I guess somebody dishonest must've taken it, all my life savings :(

No worries though because I told my bank and they gave me another million in cash. Gotta love the banking cartel sometimes.

Lol, Ok my point is it's not that clear cut. The bank won't give you back your money if they think it's your fault. They could argue that you didn't fulfill your responsibility to secure your computer properly and refuse to refund losses, this is NOT unheard of and does happen in some extreme cases though most of the time the banks are insured against fraud so they don't care as much. I know of a case where a person had money stolen from their bank account and the bank refused to reimburse them because they used their year of birth as their PIN.

something is wrong, this is too suspicious... EVERYBODYYYYY sell sell sell selll selllll before it is too late!!!!

 ;D

You're so wrong, this is not a bitcoin weakness but rather people's carelessness of keeping their bitcoins in a web wallet, it's like giving your money to a stranger and hoping nothing happens to it.

I don't know what happened to OP, I don't think it was a hacker or something like that because they would have swept the whole wallet but whatever it was I would suggest you to learn about Electrum and cold wallets and move your funds asap or else you might end up losing them all.

You probably got infected with some virus that either made the transaction for you or logged the password and the attacker stole some Bitcoin. I wonder why they didn't take all 14 BTC and only took 1?

Yeah, people believe that. However, the sole reason for the lesser amount of malware is because hackers don't bother. The market share is tiny compared to Windows.
The situation is quite unusual here. Let me get this straight, does the wallet from which the coin was stolen have 2FA or not?

So even if they took the password they still would have had to authenticate via email. So I do not understand that?

Also taking 1 Bitcoin - just so weird guys - I mean I would snap it all and walk and I bet 99.99% of people would if they intended to steal something. Not take 1 Bitcoin here and there. This just makes no sense.

Can you point me to a suitable link on Bitcointalk wrt Electrum and cold wallets? As I have to look into that now - if this did happen I have been extremely lucky and will have to think of another way of storing.

Also, with regards to Blockchain there was a lot of talk about them having had not properly secure wallets in the first place??

No it did not have 2FA enabled - I just moved the remaining ones (Also a Blockchain wallet!) to another Blockchain wallet that does have 2FA while I figure out what I am going to do next.

But that still does not explain why it happened - because I have logged in from another connection or browser or pc before, and it only allows me in once I have authenticated via email as well...

That's the thing - I don't think it was a hacker either - hacker would have taken everything, and also, would have had to authenticate via my email if logging in from somewhere else - even if he/she knew my password.

That is why I was thinking it could only have happened with a virus, with my session open, or there are these issues which I assumed had been sorted with Blockchain: e.g. this - https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/gentleman-hacker-returns-stolen-bitcoins-blockchain-info/

how is it weakness of bitcoin?!!

as i understood from OP , he didn't have 2FA enabled on his account. i have seen a lot of this which led to losing bitcoin stored on blockchain.info 's wallet. besides it is a well known fact that online wallets aren't exactly the most secure place for storing bitcoin.

so it would be the service's weakness and not bitcoin

Blockchain.info had bugs in their random number generator before that caused many people to have the same Bitcoin address in their wallet. I wonder if that is what happened again, and some other person had OP's address too but didn't fully realize what happened so didn't clean the address out and only tested it.

I have no idea....I am busy talking to BC - but so far have had the blunt response - sorry bud it's gone bblabla.

It is just so bizarre that only 1 Bitcoin would disappear if hacked - makes no sense at all.

Anyway have 2FA enabled now but I'm going to have to move my Bitcoins as I feel very insecure with Blockchain right now.

I would recommend you use Electrum if you want a SPV wallet or Bitcoin Armory if you don't mind running a full node.

i stole it and mixed it with other address

Can Blockchain provide log information about the user session which moved the btc, IP address, operating system, browser type etc?  That can help try to prove to them that it was not you, therefore be more helpful and friendly to you.

Also I suggest you keep control of the Blockchain account containing the Bitcoin address that was stolen from.  In the future maybe the authorities may be willing to investigate such crimes (when 1 BTC = 1Million USD!), so you need to prove you are the owner of that address.

This sounds really strange.. Are you sure you didn't move the funds yourself when you were drunk or something? ;)

Lol no....I was quite sober. half hour before that I moved something.

BlockChain don't seem to respond with more than the following:

"I'm sorry to hear of this trouble, but the bitcoin network is designed to make chargebacks impossible. Blockchain.info never has access or control of a user's bitcoins in any way, which means only the end user has 100% control over his own bitcoins. This means we have no power to stop or reverse a transaction for you, or even know what exactly happened here."

I will keep pressing them - like I said my main concern is if something strange happened in their wallet - there have been a lot of stories of BlockChain wallets screwing up so I just have to find out which it is - whether I have been actually hacked or whether something has gone wrong with their wallet which many people have seemingly complained about, when I searched around the net.

Find it strange that they are not more forthcoming, considering the amount of issues that they have had with wallet one would imagine they would want to investigate and figure out.

Unfortunate story bro but unfortunately this does seem a little like user error. Why didn't you have 2FA?
You will have this as a harmful lesson in storing your bitcoins securely.

It is puzzling why they only took 1 bitcoin as opposed to just swiping all 14. I can't figure that out, this to me tells me it can't have been a hacker?

It sounds stupid but did anybody else have access to that wallet? Are you 100% sure you didn't send that single bitcoin somewhere and forget? I just can't understand why if somebody was willing to steal 1 they didn't steal all 14. Maybe we have a thief/hacker who sort of has morals ;D

You are right, unfortunately people coming to bitcoin have a hard time understanding the importance of securing their funds. They need to wrap their head around that they are their own bank now and they need to make sure their money is safe. Backups, maybe cold wallets, antivirus and so on.

You probably know... nearly nobody thinks a harddisc can break until it happens. Then you start to back up things.

Who do you live with?  Do you maybe have kids or roommates that are low on cash?  Do you ever step away from your computer to goto the bathroom or get a drink while logged into your Blockchain wallet?

That would explain it, including why it was only 1 BTC instead of all 14 BTC.

It seams that the bitcoin stolen from you is still sitting there where it was withdrawn (https://blockchain.info/tx/b53833d9f8ff13a11b5ea931b25aee1dc763bdcb701fc94da7f2be21ae5cfb52)
I would advise you to take a look at your browser history to see if there was any activity directly on your PC, because there's no chance in hell thief would take only 1 bitcoin
from your wallet, they would most definetly take all, but as a security measure you should update AV and scan computer, take a look at active processes for suspicious ones, and
check start-up exe's in registry just in case.


I agree with him, since bitcoin is still sitting there where it was withdrawn, observe those who could have access to your PC, you just may be surprised with what you find.

I too had bitcoin come up stolen from a wallet I had on Blockchain.info , but I cleaned some spyware malware and all kinds nasty lil things i didnt know were on my computer using malwarebytes and windows defender and Ccleaner, then i went under the security settings for the wallet and whitelisted my I.P. address (I have static IP never changes so that helps :-)) so far twice choosing that security option as stopped someone from accessing my wallet... clean your computer change your passwords and take extra security measures that the wallet offers

What you are suggesting in a good advice, but it still doesn't explain why the potential attacker chose to take only one bitcoin from his wallet.
Like previously stated, it's quite possible that the person who took the coin is someone op knows in real like, who had access to his PC, but also doesn't want to do him extreme loss.

Also, whitelisting IP's is not an option for many people, because they're on dynamic IP like myself, so someone not well informed might just lock himself out messing with whitelist settings.

I was also the scene, when I want to log suddenly blockchain requested verification email ..
When I see in my email, no email from Blockchain ..
I've been many times to send a message to the support of blockchain, but the response was zero ..

Did you store your private key anywhere insecure?  That is what I think of.

You could have 2 factor turned on with a wallet.  But if you lost your private key it would not matter that is game over.   

My guess it's a hacker. He showed you that your wallet is compromised, and he took 1 Bitcoin for payment. You did exactly what he wanted you to do, by moving the money to a more secure wallet.

We have seen this before, I would just need to search for it on Reddit. The hacker removed all the coins, and he made it public. The people who could prove to him that they owned the compromised addresses,

were reimbursed with the full amount. Hope you learned something from this. 2FA on online wallets, is a MUST not a option.  ;)

That seems strange. Maybe your bitcoin is sent by yourself unintentionally. If not then you for sure have forgotten the exact number of bitcoins you had in your wallet.

I don't think that your bitcoin was taken by a hacker. Because him would take all your bitcoins and not only one.

And at the end blockchain wallet have problems. One my friend had lost its bitcoin from this wallet time ago. I would suggest that you use coinbase. Which have two factor auth to.

This address is empty now https://blockchain.info/address/19BWxdCtmTcWupG6tQjXZD7F4hDd6ftEri

Did you clear it? Then why in small jumps? And is 0.0001 Bitcoin the standard fee on blockchain.info wallet? If so then it might be a hint that it was sent from there and not with a private key. A small hint though.

But in fact i think the most probably answer is that you sent it yourself and forgot that you paid something at that time. Can happen for various reasons when you overworked.

Maybe you wanted to send from another address and chose another one?

By the way... is this address maybe part of a shared wallet? Your deposit address maybe? If its a shared wallet then this address doesnt belong to you.

Im  not sure now if blockchain offers that possibility.

I agree bitcoin is not for technology noobs.

If you are not storing your BTC on an offline computer they are not safe.

They are 100% telling the truth.. they have no clue about your private key, etc.  Blockchain.info can do nothing for you.  The odds are VERY high you have maleware on your comp. 

... their product is designed to ensure they cannot take your BTC.. nor a gov if they take over blockchain.info.....  due to the fact it's an online walle one should never store mass amounts of their BTC there. 

It's not Bitcoin's fault, it's people fault because they probably don't take enough measures to keep their computer safe. But make no mistake, this will be a huge reason why companies like Xapo will be double figure billion companies in the future if not more. All the people that aren't computer literate enough will simply hold their Bitcoins there.

They need to know the private key. Maybe they dont want to look into it but the wallet only can work when they know the private key.

So maybe an employee thinks he can steal a bit by withdrawing 1 bitcoin there, one bitcoin there and so on?

Besides that... why were the address emptied with 2 transactions then. Doesnt sound like op would have done it. And a hacker not too, because they would take all.

blockchain.info most certiantly DOES NOT need to know your private key...

only hold pocketchange in such a wallet.

for bigger amounts, use cold storage or a hardware wallet:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=899253.0

True i only hold maximum 10 BTC on thoose kinds of wallets.

They use normal 1... bitcoin addresses right? Then how can it be possible that its impossible for them to know the private keys? The wallets are on their servers, which means one way or another they, or at least an employee has to be able to get the keys.

Maybe i did not think it through how it could be done otherwise.

I believe they do.  And they definitely have your private key if they are withdrawing and depositing on your behalf.

Your browser on your computer encrypts/decrypts your blockchain.info wallet.
Blockchain.info only holds and stores your encrypted wallet and sends it to you.
In theory, they do not know your private keys.

Here is their explanation: https://blockchain.info/wallet/how-it-works (https://blockchain.info/wallet/how-it-works)

Blockchain.info can not withdraw your BTC on your behalf. That makes no sense.

Thats interesting and i hear that the first time.

So the only thing that could compromise that would be when blockchain info somehow could achieve the passwords. Maybe by fetching them from the start or getting them with a compromised script, delivered by a corrupt employee, to the customer.

I couldnt check the image on my current internet so maybe they used an encryption that someone negates that chance. Though it have a hard time imagining how.

Really?  This has been well established since blockchain.info wallet was first announced.  How did you manage to participate in this forum long enough to become "Legendary" status without understanding that blockchain.info receives encrypted private keys and does not receive the decryption key?


Correct, if the user receives a compromised web page (or if the user's browser or computer is compromised), then their password and their private keys can be captured and transmitted to the criminal.

This is what I was thinking...  

I grow very tired of arguing facts with people so I just leave lol.

we need to  protect more, i think known people are done it seems.

By not using online wallets. :P

I never understood why someone would put his coins to a website that only serves as a wallet when he could hold his coins safe at his own home too. So i avoided all these offers. In hindsight i believe it was a good thing. I remember a lot of these wallets, claiming they are ultra secure, only to be "hacked" in a short time. :D

You Wot mate?
They're the wallet provider. They can do anything they want with your bitcoins because they keep your private keys. (Even if you export them they still have a copy of the private keys).

Sure, but previously when you said:


Someone responded explaining:


You do understand that your wallet doesn't actually have your bitcoins, right?  Your bitcoins (to the extent that they even exist) are represented in the blockchain that every full node has a copy of.  Your wallet is just storing your private keys for you.  If there is malware running on your computer, it can steal your bitcoins (by gaining access to your private keys) just as easily from your desktop wallet as from a web based wallet like blockchain.info.

Yes, i know that bitcoins belong to those who can access them on the global blockchain and accessing can who has the private key. Regarding blockchain.info, i simply did hear the first time that blockchain doesnt actually has the private keys. Thats interesting.

Sure, private computers can be hacked too though you can protect yourself against it. I think the past has shown that generally the risk of losing coins in an online wallet is magnitudes higher than the risk losing them on your computer, when you are cautious. The percent of online wallets that went down would have brought bitcoin down when the same percent of personal wallets on computers would have been "hacked". The online wallets are simply great targets for hackers, while hackers wont bother with personal computers too much when it is hard to get something. Hackers would prefer the quick and dirty way of mass hacking.