Bitcoin Forum

I was wandering around on the forum and it looks like I ran out of threads to answer on. Therefore, I started randomly looking at some of the 2009-2010 posts on this forum and found a post about someone losing their 1.2BTC (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=359.msg2993#msg2993) back in 2010. This made me wonder a few things I'm really curious about:
  1. How much BTC did you lose ever since you started using crypto? How did you lose it?
  2. What was the biggest BTC loss you've ever had?
  3. What do you regret the most ever since you started using cryptocurrencies?

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Now let me answer these 3 questions. :)

1. I think I've lost somewhere between 0.05 and 0.1 BTC. ~0.04BTC has been lost on exchanges and wallets forcefully asking me for ID and the rest has been lost through fake casino scripts automatically withdrawing my balance to their wallets once it reached a certain amount of BTC, without leaving even a single trace.

2. If we're talking about "loss" as in BTC sent to/stolen by someone else (or sent to nobody's wallet), it's somewhere around 0.01BTC. Otherwise... read answer no. 3 and you'll find out ;)

3. My biggest regret is that one my alts portfolio had passed 25BTC and I was so stupid and greedy to think it isn't enough. Keep in mind the portfolio value after my last investment at the time was around 1BTC, so that's a 25x profit. And yes, if you're wondering, I've lost almost everything out of that portfolio thanks to a big dump in the markets. Stupidity pops up exactly when you need it the least, or at least this is how it works in my typical scenario.

Hence, I can consider my largest loss was somewhere around 25 BTC actually because I had that much in my alts portfolio and I never sold them all for BTC, although my gut feeling told me to do it.

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What is your story? :) It would be more than interesting if some OG members would answer these questions. I'm wondering how much BTC did someone who's been using crypto since 2009-2010 lost in total.

There's a huuuge difference between paper losses and coins  you once owned that have actually left your custody. My own paper losses are in the hundreds of BTC but I'm not massively arsed as it was intangible and probably impossible to actually realise.

As for real losses it adds up to no more than some dust left on exchanges and giving it to morons who probably lost it, but as soon as it went to them it was no longer mine anyway.

I haven't lost any BTC since I got my first coin. I've never bought alts with my coins, I only have altcoins that I got for free or for a bit of bounty work.

The thing that I regret the most is not buying more BTC when I had the money. I was always cautious and tried to have some fiat and some crypto but going all in in 2016 would probably set me up for life. I don't regret holding altcoins because I treated it like a gambling bet.

Well, I don't think mine really counts as a paper loss. I had the alts on an exchange at the time and I was on the website just about to sell them for BTC but I said no. It was basically a missed opportunity. :)

Well, some of us have learned the hard way. I almost lost >0.5BTC due to a lost Blockchain wallet password, but I've recovered it many months (IIRC, it was close to an year) later.

10 years later you might come here and say you wish you would've bought more BTC back in 2020. You never know - if history repeats, you will.

I never loss a BTC because of forgotten wallet password or any other things,
I loss some BTC due to being greedy and joining some investment schemes,
I used to join so many BTC doubler back in the old days, I couldn't say that I regret it because I also earn a lot from it,
I am always a participant of dobtc.win and I usually get paid but when I feel like my investment wouldn't make it I tried to search for a similar site,
Then I found one and because of my greed I invested on the site not knowing that it was just a pure scam.

1. I cannot give you the exact number. As far as I can remember, I lost a few BTCs in investment scams. I lost less than 1 BTC but still a significant amount in today's BTC value in closed exchanges.

2. I guess the biggest loss was with the investment scam I joined years ago when I was a newbie in the crypto world, which involves a workmate. In terms of paper loss, it was way larger as we all know how much value in USD did Bitcoin reach a few years ago.

3. One of my deepest regrets - although I really don't cry over spilled milk - is that I had weaker hands in the past years. I was also greedy, of course. Emotional decisions made my conversions from Bitcoin to fiat and vice versa a total loss rather than a way to make money.

i think i lost around 5btc in trading (but its from profit already i just want to increase my holding so i try to trade many different altcoin)



i lost around 2 btc in just one ICO way back 2017 before the bull market start. I get back the 0.5 btc since the coins has a price in exchange  ( i am not lost in terms in USD value its the same ) since i sell it  right time when bull market happen.

not selling all the coins that i have and secured it in fiat in the first quarter of 2018 that was my biggest regrets. ( i can re buy back in 2019 if i do selling it rightaway)

Damn mate, you really bring some memory and nostalgia to me.  ;D

My very first post in this forum: How to Recover Lost Bitcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1783681.0). Again, I thought that I could have own more BTC, unfortunately, it was less than 1 BTC to be honest. I was able to recover it because I found the old paper wallet which I print out and then sweep the private key in Electrum.

My answer to questions no. 1 and 2, forgot the exact number but I lost all the results of the faucet (at that time the result of the faucet is still very large maybe about 10k satoshi once claim) lost because the wallet was hacked due to using a generator script faucet and lost dogecoin around  100k-200k dogecoin on online wallets, also lost funds in exchange because the . But honestly when the incident is not too sad because I do not know the value will be very high.

Selling my trading results in 1 day as much as 1BTC when the price is still around $300, and due impatience to sell cheap altcoin that I get for free which if I sold at ATH around 25BTC.
I think mistakes and regrets will be there but it should not affect our mentality but instead makes us more careful especially regarding wallet security.

I lost my bitcoin in the exchange and from investment programs, in the beginning, I joined in bitcoin. I cannot tell you how much I lost, but it's not small for me. I regret it, but I cannot do anything because if I think twice about the story, I think I made that mistake by myself, so I am trying to forget it as that bitcoin cannot back to me.

The biggest regret of me is not selling all of the coins I had because I think that is not enough for me, and I don't sell it right away as soon as the price increase so high. I feel I am too greedy to expecting the biggest profit, although I already got the biggest profit from all of the coins I had. But I am sure that all of the lost I had before can replace by another profit that I will try to get. I believe that we can make another profit in many ways, and if that money is for us, it will come again to us from another way.

To be honest, I think it's really hard to find the exact time when you can sell your portfolio and feels "yeah this is it". 25x increase sounds great but how did you arrive at that point? Why don't you sell it at 2x? Or 3x? It's a question of risk management and all. If you manage to sell it at 3x, maybe your regret will change to "why not sell it at 20x which happens right now" etc.

There is no other way to face this reality except proper risk management (sell 50% at 2x, 25% at 4x etc) and believe that the future is uncertain so if you can save some profits it's way better than nothing.

i believe that there is a good chance that every single person who has ever used any centralized exchanges for a moderate amount of time has lost coins to them either because they were hacked, closed down or because they scammed them and stole their money.
i have also lost a lot of money this way but i have no regrets since i have always invested what i could afford to lose and from day one i was well aware that these exchanges can scam me at any time.

I have lost a lot of time and money on Signature campaigns that did not pay, when I started signature campaigns back in the day. You post for a couple of weeks and you think that you are going to get paid for it and then everything goes south and nobody gets paid.  ::)

I have also lost some coins on Exchanges that got hacked. It is difficult not to store coins on an exchange, if you have buy & sell orders to honor. It is just a risk that you have to take, when you deal with these centralized exchanges with their weak software.  ::)

When cloud mining <aka Ponzi Schemes> was at a all time high, a lot of us participated and bought hashing power, but it turned out that it was just a scam and we lost a couple of coins on that too.  :P

I've never lost BTC due to scams or lost/forgotten wallet passwords,etc.
I've "lost money" selling BTC at the wrong time. ;D
Back in 2015 I've had 1.25 BTC and I sold them at a 500 USD price.
Back in 2016 I've had 0.33 BTC and I sold them at 1000 USD.
How stupid I was for not HODLing all my bitcoin until the end. >:(
I never really expected that Bitcoin could reach 16K USD in 2017. :'(
By the way,this thread is not about nostalgia.It's about regretting the past.

The biggest BTC I lose was about 0.8BTC+ to USI-TECH and some HYIP site because I had so much money that came which I was not expecting, so I wanted to keep earning passive income instead of buying good altcoins and keeping my bitcoin I lost that in 2017. That affected me badly.

How you know when is the end? You thought back then that that was the top price, and you sold it. Now when you know what happens it's easy to say I should have hodl it more, but it there was no bull run, what then? You loose what you earned.
If you bought it when it was 20 and sold it when it was 200, it's a profit one way or another no need to sorry for past profits.

My loss is only one, I bought 0.1 Cas that never came I don't want to say how much I payed for it but that's my only loss.
Bought some when it was 3,5k and then on 4.5k, so i'm still in profit.
People say you loose only if you sell, yeah but not profit you loose something more precious.

I have definitely lost more than my fair share of Bitcoin, though not in the same way other people have.

Several years ago I used to play dice at Just-dice, before it got changed to being a Clams only site. At the time, Bitcoin was worth around $150-apiece and I would wager 5-6 bitcoin at a time on high odds.

Anyway, long story short I managed to increase my bankroll to around 150 BTC after getting rekt for some time then YOLOING around 5 BTC on a crazy bet which I won.

At that time this 150 BTC was worth somewhere around $20k. I sold around two thirds of it, but then sent the remaining 1/3 to a wallet that I stored on my laptop.

You can probably guess where this is going....

Laptop broke down, the .rar file containing both the wallet file and recovery seed corrupted :(

I never lost BTC in the way that I was a victim of hacking, or that I may have forgotten my wallet password. But like most, I lost a significant amount on faucets that never paid me, and 5-6 years ago it was very easy to collect millions of satoshi every week. This was unfortunately the risk that came with faucets that had withdrawal thresholds. I would estimate that the total sum of what I lost is around 0.30 BTC, but it was such a time, inexperience, and a lot of bad people who cheated in every way possible.

What I really regret the most is that I sold 5 BTC that I bought for $1000, for a relatively small profit, but who could have guessed that BTC would jump from $200 to even $20 000 in less than 2 years...

My biggest regret is spending around 2 BTC in 2016, should have hodled it all. Also, invested 0.01 BTC in an ICO scam in my first months here, but I don't regret it too much, I think it's a reasonable price for such a valuable lesson, since then I was never scammed again. I also traded alts and still hold the leftovers waiting for a better opportunity to sell, since some of my positions are in read, but I'm sure that overall I'm in green.

It gives me chills to the bone ;D

 This is the reason why I found this forum back then, I was trying to figure out how to get my btc back on my hacked wallet, I tried searching it on google and there is a link that directed me here. After I read some threads I wanted to thank for the good source and popped up the registration and I did not hesitate to reg so I'm here lol. But the thing is I wasn't able to get my btc back, I think it was about 0.01 or something near.

I can't think of my loses anymore as i am already thankful I made money during the bull run.
Maybe there are some regrets that I did not sell all my altcoins during the bull run, I could have make a lot of btc.

Actually I am not heavily investing on bitcoin, before I became active in this forum, I am already losing money in gambling but it has become a blessing in disguise as it introduce me to the crypto space where I learn a lot and made money in the forum.

overall I earn money.

I don't have many real regrets as far as crypto goes, although I wish I'd kept all the bitcoin I'd bought in 2015.  I never really had much in BTC terms and certainly not in dollar value, but given what bitcoin has done since then....well, it would have been much better had I not sold out early--and I didn't make a profit, either.

As far as lost bitcoin, I did get scammed once in 2016.  I loaned 0.3BTC to TimSweat (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=408469) on the forum, and he jerked me around for quite a bit before finally just disappearing altogether.  I've never made another loan since--it's way too stressful for me, and most borrowers don't have valid collateral to put up anyway.  Oh, and that's when I started to realize how misleading green trust can be on bitcointalk and how dangerous it can be when those green-trusted accounts get put up for sale.  I don't have evidence that TimSweat was a bought account, but it's certainly possible.

I do have another very minor regret.  I wish I hadn't spent bitcoin on stuff over the years when I could have paid in fiat.  Some people love using bitcoin as a currency, but I've never been in that crowd.  I was experimenting with making purchases on electronics and stuff, and it would have been better had I just held onto that BTC. 

Oh well.

Interesting replies, didn't expect this many to come up :D

Hmm. It looks like not as many people as I thought had learned to safely store and use cryptocurrencies the hard way. I did, I lost a little bit but I've always earned more after making mistakes. And I'm more than happy to having learned from mistakes because I'd rather lose $100 through a mistake and prevent making the same mistake in the future than lose $10k because of it.

It would be pretty interesting to hear if someone here has ever lost thousands of BTC through silly mistakes. My story of losing the Blockchain wallet password is way longer than the one I've written in OP - I tried calling out hackers and literally anything possible to try recovering my BTC but they left me hopeless. My password was so strong that even after a few weeks of running a super powerful bruteforce software on a PC 24/7 had 0 results.

It looks like I'm 1 merit away from being the required number to become a Hero of this forum! :D Thank you all for the sMerits!

This is one of the classic coin death stories - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=388169.0 - 1000 mined coins lost due to a dead hard drive. I'm not sure if it's a silly mistake but it was certainly a sizeable one.

 

I'm taking your virginity.

My lifetime regret is not mining or buying bitcoin in the first years. This cannot be undone, and the performance experienced by those who did, will never repeat again.

I guess the feeling is similar to those that did but lost their wallets.

For me rather than nostalgia its more like sadness. My country's economy went from tolerable to miserable in the last decade, so its not like i can go out and get a full time job and start saving again like most people can in other countries.

Salvation was always in front of me but i ignored it when i had a chance.

I lost 50.000 xrp through the shit exchange cryptsy. At that time xrp were not worth much and it didn't bother me. Only when xrp had reached a price of 4 dollars, it annoyed me. But I survived it and xrp is still a shit coin.  :D ;D

Like a fool I had all my Bitcoin and others on Cryptsy.  So when that exchange up and disappeared I lost a total of roughly 3 BTC.  The whole situation put me off crypto currency all together and I have not rejoined it since.

I do from time to time pop in to see whats going on the world of crypto, but not as a participant.

1. I've never lost BTC. I've always used a trusted wallet, and I've never encountered any problems with it. I did lose 0.5 Ethereum, though, which back then cost $150, and it was quite a significant amount of money. I lost it to Ethereumwallet.net or something like that (I wasn't good with 'not your keys not your coins thing' back then, and the website was pretty popular).
2. Zero, since I haven't lost any.
3. I regret buying Ripple when it cost $3 per coin  ;D I did not spend much on that investment, though.

I am an early user of a faucet, I started collecting and referring faucets way back early 2014.  I never had a chance to cash out my earnings on that faucet because I forgot my access to the address.  I have somewhere around 200 plus referral, but just shrugged it out and just moved on.  If I may, I could have earned a good amount on that address already.

Another thing is during the Bitcoin bull run of 2017, I hold around 12 BTC and sold it at an early stage of the bull trend, which was around $2000 and after 3 months Bitcoin reached its ATH.

Wow. That's all I can say - wow.. that's a lot of damn money..


It's my pleasure. :D

I'm blessed that I have never lost any BTC before because I made sure that my wallets are safe. I only invested what I could afford so I don't remember losing a huge amount of BTC. The biggest regret that I have is losing the opportunity to buy Bitcoin in 2010 where a friend already shared everything about crypto with me. Everything happens for a reason so I'm trying to work hard just to gain better this year.

1. In 2014 I lost my first BTC because I thought blockchain could log in using email and finally I lost 0.01 BTC because my email was hacked.
2. Never
3. I still remember buying NXT on ATH because I was greedy to get lots of IGNIS airdrops and I regret that I spent a lot of money to buy NXT.

Not an OG obviously but I learnt about Bitcoin in 2011 I believe. I remember having claimed some BTCs from 'tap faucets', I'm not sure if it was Gavin's faucet or somebody else who was running it at that time, But I claimed like twice by filling out the captchas. It wasn't much I believe around 0.01 BTC at max which were lost to a random BTC address. I didn't even bother creating a new Bitcoin address for myself. I sent it to a random Bitcoin address I found by doing a google search lol... Fortunately, I haven't lost any Bitcoins ever since I started using it personally. No lost wallets or getting hacked. I did lose access to my account tho, I got hacked lol but fortunately, theymos recovered it for me after a few months that's the only "loss" I have had in the cryptosphere...

The only thing I regret is selling Bitcoins at the "moons", I remember i hodled a few Bitcoins when bitcoin was hovering at around $200 bucks, I sold them in the $900 range, I bought back in when bitcoin kinda crashed at went as low as around $300 I believe. I bought in at around $400 and then sold again when bitcoin mooned at around $1200. Even tho I made some great ROIs but I regret selling them now. I remember i sold around 5 BTCs right before we had the biggest Bullrun. Besides that my journey has been quite a positive one overall.

As for the number 1. Question – I can’t really tell how much I have lost in BTC. That was around 2015 I guess. I was just a newbie then and I never knew how to sell my bitcoins for cash, so I stupidly went to this local online forum in my country and was asking for buyers. Then a guy said he’s going to buy it from me, for once in my mind I didn’t even think that he was a scammer, I don’t know why I made such a mistake.

So, I messaged him and asked him how we will be doing the business and he said I would have to send the bitcoins first before he will send the money to my bank account. I sent the bitcoins and he refused to send the money and he blocked me on WhatsApp and even on call. That’s when it dawned on me and I realized how stupid I was by trusting a random stranger that I met online. The amount I sent to him was $20, and that was through Xapo wallet, I don’t know how many Satoshis, but the price of Bitcoin then was around $250.

I think this same answer goes for both Question 2 and 3, because after that I never lost my bitcoins again, I never repeated the same mistake and I learnt to be very careful. So that’s the only thing I regret and it’s never going to happen to me again, I’ve already learnt a lesson.

Maybe 1 btc or more and to those times when im still a fan on joining HYIPs/Ponzis.  ;D
0.5 when i do go all in with Hashocean back in the day.


When im still fauceting ETH wayback and havent realize or late that i should have bought tons of it.

Sharing experiences to reduce sadness: D I hope we can get lessons from stories shared by friends, and this is my experience

• 1. If it is accumulated there is around 0.05 BTC missing from my wallet. It was a reward from a content campaign, I didn't expect to be one of the winners and I was very happy at that time and planned to hold it for long-term investment. But, one month later when I checked the wallet, the BTC was gone and had been transferred to another wallet that I didn't know belonged to, which obviously belonged to a fu*king thief, upss sorry. My email was hacked too.
• 2. Back to point 1
• 3. A mistake that was almost regretted by everyone involved in cryptocurrency: too rushed to sell coins or tokens, at that time I was affected by fomo, even though a few weeks later the coin that I hold pump + 25%. But I have moved on, I always try to respect the decisions I make, this is my mental training, no problem not getting the highest price, as long as it does not lose.

My big lost was around 5 btc and never managee to recovered it  my binance account have been hacked and someone toke all my coin. Why do you say xrp is a shit coin? the 3th biggest project after btc and eth....

I guess every Bitcoin user who is involved with Bitcoin long enough has something to regret, so it's my case too.
About five years ago I had a portfolio of about 7 Bitcoins. I made some bad decisions and choice and I lost those Bitcoins. Now I know I should have done it different but that was a school for me and I learned a lot. But I regret I missed the opportunity to have some real nice profit. I never managed to get these 7 Bitcoins back and having in.mind current situation I don't think I ever will.

I thought i would never have the opportunity to talk about this but now I am glad I have this opportunity to share my thoughts. I would just get down to the biggest loss ever in my life. Well, I lost about 3 BTC in alts. I had a token called MiracleTele and the token rose quite high but I still held unto my coins not willing to sell, thinking that this coin will be great in the future.
Now, this token is worth nothing as the project seems dead now.

I'm sorry for your bad experience. That is the cryptocurrency with all things unpredictable. I also experienced the same thing but did not lose as much as you, I only lost around 400 $, after investing in a project that was quite popular at the time, but ended up like miracletele.

It's okay friends, many people experience things like this, do not regret it because it will increasingly make it difficult. Better to move on and make it a lesson.

Never really much of a hoarder, I actually only properly thought about saving a bit every now and then in 2017, and by the time it all blew up, I had a paltry sum to look at on. I guess I should feel some regret in that sense, but I actually don't, because everything only potential until you actually use it. I'm quite happy that I was part of what made it popular as a currency, even though I only came late (2016). I may not have as much as those who started later, but I enjoyed a lot of good food, good friends, good entertainment and good travel just by using Bitcoin. Met quite a few people also just happy to be part of this great big social experiment.

Lost coins? Never lost anything I guess, other than in ill-advised investments on them damned offerings. But hey, live and learn.

I lost around 0,2 BTC in a platform called Atlas Quantum, their high returns made me greedy enough to send that amount to them but after a while they started having problems and freezed all accounts. Not such a big loss but a big lesson.

I once lost a lot of money on altcoin so I know what it feels like, when ICO lending like pagarex and others became a trend I felt their project was legit but in reality when their ICO was over they ran off with investors money and until now I still regret the incident.

I can honestly say that I have never made a successful altcoin trade. The stuff I got for free I always sold just before it exploded. The little stuff I bought always plummeted the moment I bought in. Luckily I recognise how useless I am so massively limited my noodling.