Bitcoin Forum

 
hello everybody
       I hope you will accept my presence and interact with me and solve my problem
       But before I raise my issue, I have to explain the story to you from the beginning
       I am from Kuwait and in 2014 I met an American friend called John via Tinder and he told me that he would come to work in Kuwait for a year and I met him at the airport and he was a very polite person and because I live without a family I offered him to live with me and he welcomed that and he learned Arabic from me and we talked about Christianity and Islam and he was able to convinces me that Christianity is the correct religion and I converted to Christianity so I was the first one convert to a Christian from kuwait and John advised me to invest in bitcoin and I trust John so I borrowed $300,000 and bought over 600 BTC John helped me buy and save the data in my phone and he gave me a paper with all the data insideand he asked me to save this paper well And after one year the john come back to his country and I was trying to convince my community  to Christianity, but I was arrested for 5 years and my phone was also confiscated because Christianity is not welcome in my country and after I got out of prison I went to my house and i found it completely burnt because of racism and contempt for religions, from muslims,
 Then I went to the company where John was working, to look for his phone number but I couldn't find any data about him, and now the bank has filed a lawsuit against me before the court asking me to pay the loan in full after I lost my job and my house
       Sorry for the long post, my question is:
       i have created a new wallet Can I restore my old wallet data with the purchase reference number through my Visa Card ?

   Can anyone help me get my wallet back, because I am really in dire financial hardship and ostracized from my community and want to emigrate .     
    I knowing that all this is a test for me from my god

This is not a joke, please give me a solution
I'm really sorry if my English is not good

 

This story is too bizarre for me to believe it but for the 1% chance that this is actually true, you should know by now that you should lawyer up right?

As for recovering your wallet — while the answer is almost always "your bitcoin is gone, move on", you didn't even give us any information on what exchange and what wallet software you used.

Without the phone or the paper, your bitcoins are permanently lost. There is no other way to retrieve them.

So John gave you the paper, which means that he was the one who generated the wallet and wrote down the recovery seed or the private key. If that is what was on the paper. Or was it maybe login details to an exchange (a username and password). The only way to regain access to your coins is through the seed and private key.

Before your imprisonment, did you ever check that the coins are there?
You said you met him on Tinder, can't you find him there any longer?
What about his full name, you surely know that if you call him a friend. You shared a home with the guy. have you tried looking for him over social media? 

I've got a feeling that you never owned any bitcoin to begin with, considering you claim that you have met a completely random person on a "hookup app" and they created everything for you including your bitcoin wallet!
You may only had a watch-only address that contained some bitcoins that didn't belong to you (you didn't have the key to from the start).

You cannot get a solution from this community, whether or not your story is believed.
You did not provide adequate information for any sort of assistance and if seems like you do not have such information to begin with.

• How much did you learn about Bitcoin before taking out such a huge loan to invest in it, was it the said John who adviced you do that?
• What platform was the Bitcoin bought on, during the period of the year did you check out the Bitcoin or try using the "data" in the paper to access it?

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Your best bet now is to try and contact "John" and inquire more details if you do not have them.

This story is actually somehow even though magically worked out for John. He happens to find a friend with no family on Tinder which I don't think I know how all the parameters in there work and you also happen to offer him a place  ??? so nobody you know knows john so as it is right now, john is in the winds. I guess back in 2014 people didn't take saving their wallet access information seriously but with that kind of investment  :o without any proper wallet access info, I am afraid those Bitcoins are lost.

It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened. But let's say that John really purchased those coins for him, he didn't get scammed, and the whole story is true. His house burnt down destroying his backup. The best thing that can happen is if John has a copy of the seed/private keys and he managed to get hold of him. Doubtful. The second-best thing is if the coins are stored on a centralized exchange where OP underwent KYC and he can get back into his account by proving who he is and restoring the password through email.

When we are on the subject of KYC, did you have to do identity verification on the site where you bought the coins or did John maybe ask you for your personal documents?   

Op have met a random person from America through an application that is much used for dating. Somehow both turned to be friends which is agreeable. Further a person getting converted to Christianity or a person converting to Islam is possible. However it is hard to believe a person from America involved in this.

I can't believe a person investing $300k without making any research or study about the particular thing upon which he's making an investment. As per me if this is a true story, then it is his mistake not knowing about bitcoin and investing big. If he have learned, then he could've secured the recovery seed. Now there is no need of such a complication and financial hardship.

Try upload a picture of the purchase data, for us readers for some credibility, perhaps if true people can start a crowd funding operation for you ! =D

Was it possible to store bitcoin in the phone in 2014 and were there any applications for this at that time? Or was it meant to store information regarding bitcoin in the internal memory of the phone or memory card?

If this whole story is true, then without phone and paper, of course, BTC are lost forever and ever.

Before the community can know has to channel a means of rendering help for you, honestly you need to provide more information about the content of what was on the paper given to you by john, maybe is the keys to the wallets, the type of wallet, or maybe a link to where he backed up the wallet for you or possibly it might even be a home address to locate him whenever you want to access your wallet or have issues related, also if i may ask you have you made moves to sought for john in his contact address aside the work Address? Try a means to as well get your phone fixed if you still have it with you maybe you could get more direction or try locate john by all means, else you might have lost your coins completely.

Reading what you've said is unbelievable.

I don't think that this story can ever be true. But let us say that your story is for real, sorry to say that you don't have any backups and no matter how hard you ask for help, no one will do it.

And you've just met someone from Tinder who asked you to buy bitcoin with $300k? That's crazy, trusting a stranger and borrowing that amount.

Might be the best to start with the idea of identifying where you bought Bitcoin first. I'd assume since you used Visa, you'd be able to trace it down if you asked for support or something. Not that it's going to help in accessing the wallet itself but it might help you identify what the address of your wallet was and to check and see if it even has funds in the first place. Though that's just for peace of mind I guess, there's no way for you to access your wallet anymore if your key was lost.

I did not find solid evidence of all of your words, there is no proof of purchase, proof of transactions or anything else that corroborates the truth with your story, I don't think we are can to help or provide a solution for your loss (if your story is true) without any evidence, regarding your sentence, I am also concerned about what happened to you and I don't think you should invite someone to convert to a religion in a country that has a majority religion and that clearly violates the laws of that country.

1. If John gave you that paper, if he had a copy of that paper he could easily have access to the same wallet and transfer the funds out of it.
Since he seems to be a scammer with false identity, I find this very plausible. I've heard plenty of horror stories about nice persons met on Tinder.

2 . Without the original paper or the original wallet you cannot recover your funds, the Visa card info is useless here.
Even more, from the story about this John, I would not be surprised if the paper was containing only an address (hence you can only see the funds, but not spend) and your wallet was a watch-only wallet (again, see, but not spend).

All in all, with or without the prison time, I think that the chance is high that you've got scammed by this John character.
And even if you weren't, with the info you have it's not possible to access those Bitcoin.

Sorry...

This is a very painful story and I think what happened to the OP is a punishment from God, because a Muslim who converts to Islam is considered an apostate. Because it is tantamount to denying the previous religion.
Incidents like this happen in my area and apostates are apostates and there will be events that are detrimental even painful for the person, and what is even more torturous than the OP is that a person named John disappeared without a trace because there is a possibility that he kept a copy.

and your bitcoins will still be there but won't be able to use them permanently unless you have to find the phone and the paper.

I will consider that all you wrote above is jibberish unless you somehow manage to show use some proof with screenshot of conversations, bitcoin wallet addresses with transaction, that will prove anything from this fairytale really happened.
So you spent 5 years in prison because you became Christian convert and you used Visa card for spending $300,000  ::)
I don't even understand what do you want from us, but I have a feeling your next post is going to be about asking for donations.

This random person was so convincing that he made him change his religion and borrow $300,000 that he didn't have just to buy some magical internet money called Bitcoin.  :D
Funny thing that this guy name is John and last name is probably Doe...
 

I don't know if this OP's story is really a joke or not, but sadly I have to say that it makes a lot of sense. I don't want someone randomly fooling forum users with unreasonable claims about bitcoin holdings, sure it would be great if it were true and had solid evidence but sadly it's almost completely a joke.

But if that's true then there's no way that can really help the OP recover his wallet especially since he doesn't have a secure backup of his private key or seed. But it's hard to believe a foreigner would be brave enough to lend $300K to someone who doesn't understand bitcoin.

The main thing here is he poured out in mind and experience crypto can always be a win win deal while sine still suffer loses ..never give up on hope crypto can make or break

One main thing that boggles my mind too on which its impossible for someone to agree on getting some loan of 300k just because someone had  suggest him to buy bitcoin and also this man met on via
Tinder and he do even believed about religious matters which is really that impossible for someone to do give out much trust in a short  time.

We know that once you do lost the keys then there's no way you can retrieve it out and the only way that he could possibly able to access those is to find his foreigner friend
yet much sure he had the keys as well.

I'm afraid not because you are the only one holding your keys so the platform where you bought your bitcoins or even the wallet providers cannot help you out upon recovering your funds so better to remember your keys so that you can possibly recover what balances you supposed to lose. Also maybe try to move on since over thinking on things which is already loss in your hands is kinda stressful so if you think you don't have a chance to recover it better forget those things.

CP models way back in 2014 are capable enough to store data and I think Bitcoin mobile apps are already available in 2014.


Indeed, the community might have an idea but with the backup gone all of it seems impossible because this certain John is unreachable.  I hope for OP to find John and retrieve his lost Bitcoin.

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Sometimes unexpected things happen.  Just like how we stumble on this forum and start discussing topics like this.



Try to recall if you bought your BTC in a centralized exchange using your Visa Card as stated in an earlier reply, if you can't recall the exchange you can then try to trace your payment transaction, it might probably give you a clue and if you do bought it in a centralized exchange and never withdrawn it, the next thing is follow what Pmalek said.

I don't thing he is lying. He just guessed that he can retrieve his loss from the purchase reference number through his Visa Card. I think it's normal that someone would trust the one who introduced him to bitcoin especially at early stages when he was totally ignorant about how it is running meanwhile.

Call to VISA and your bank, they mast refund your sxam perchase.... I think

Which wallet do you use.? You should have kept the backup word or private key of the wallet safe. You can get your wallet back if you keep the private key in your wallet safe. That is why we must save the private key of our wallet safely to avoid such problems.

There are some recovery services which you can check online for bitcoin recovery but the fees would be high and your story is somehow not relevant for many of us.These online hook ups are in most cases a scam as far as i have seen and you have not presented any further information to seek help.If you don't have any keys in the first end then you don't any btc if you actually know this fact.

This is sad! Is there not freedom in KUWAIT? I went to Kuwait's official government website to see their stands against other religions and this is what I found:


Source: https://e.gov.kw/sites/kgoenglish/Pages/Visitors/AboutKuwait/CultureAndHeritageReligiousPractices.aspx

Kuwait is binded by Sharia but that doesn't stop others from practising other religions, did you try to force others into Christianity knowing Kuwait is a tough country that is core Islam by religion. There should be a law that will fight for you against this injustice and stupid act of imprisonment.

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Do you have your Tinder details, since you found him through that medium, it is possible that you can get a lead through there. About your bitcoin, the chances of having access to your bitcoins are very very very low, if you don't have that info that was written down on paper, you have zero hope my friend.

Do you know the name of the wallet app on your phone, is it related to Blockchaindotinfo?

As impossible as it is to recover your wallet without your wallet seed or recovery phrase, you should at least try to share some details of the wallet such as the wallet address to see if the funds are available in the wallet, then we try to see if it an exchange wallet since you bought the Bitcoin through the bank there is a possibility it an exchange wallet that way you can use your username and other details to gain access to the wallet.and also try to look out for your friend on social media may be he can help you with some information, but prepare your mind that their is almost zero chance of gaining your Bitcoin back because you dont have the private key to the wallet and there is this funny but factual phrase. (Not you key not your Bitcoin) Good luck.

Have you checked what paper John gave you? Does the paper contain the recovery password? If it contains a recovery key, you can still get all your BTC. Just in case your friend is still nowhere to be found, I think your friend still has a copy of the key.
However, judging by the story you tell, I'm not so sure you invested that much money. And also the origin of the money is a loan, without large collateral, banks or financial services are very difficult to provide loans of that size.

sorry about your loss, only way to get your bitcoin is if you can recover your seed pharse or wallets details or find your friend. how come you invested that huge amount in what you didnt take time to understand or make research ? also why did you have to borrow to invest? your story is not that clear but next time always make enough research before investing your penny into anything.

That's why I doubt the story, but we never know what goes on behind the scenes for the OP and his experience with bitcoin. Of course if the whole story is true then he has lost two things i.e. he has lost his bitcoins and also he has violated his beliefs about religion brought by his ancestors.

But one thing doesn't make sense, why he never asked the person who lent him the money or whoever made him the wallet because I'm sure he couldn't afford to do it himself for such a large amount of money.

Clearly its full bizarre, he bought 600 BTC for 300,000$ which means one BTC costs 500$ and that price was seen in 2016/17. If OP is aware of BTC from such a long time then he must also know that you have to backup the seed or private keys somewhere. There is no way to recover your BTC if they are stored in decentralized wallet like Electrum and you don't have the seed of recovery.

Looking at the whole story it looks like a scam story and it's a kinda difficult to believe.
But if that's true as you said the only way aside the paper and phone is  to look for John
because living with him for years even to the extent of getting converted by him means
that you should be having a lot of information about him , so continue to look for him
other than that everything is gone, Then focus on a new life.

What kinds of paper gave by John for you? that have phrase words with bitcoin wallet and ability to restored it, but I don't believe with last 5 years and right now bitcoin pump drastically still have your bitcoin fund. Except not respect with your friend John maybe he was sold your bitcoin fund because last 5 years bitcoin still have lower price. Better check again with paper gave by John and see there as phrase for access wallet or not, if there are phrase wallet data you can use to import and log in to check still have bitcoin there or not.

The answer is that no one can help you with this. You are the legal key holder, sole, and cannot be accessed by anyone. Because it was carelessness, I can't help but tell you to be honest.

One more thing, don't bring religion into the context of this conversation because it has nothing to do with Bitcoin. So I beg of you not as if there is a perspective of favoring one ideology over another. Your story is too annoying to relate to religion.

I do not think this is about religion and Bitcoin, OP is just sharing his experience and trust with the person who introduced Bitcoin to him.  He is establishing a sense of introduction of himself and the guy that has something to do with his lost Bitcoin. After all, OP is inquiring about our possible help to retrieve his lost Bitcoin.  Sadly we can't do anything about it.  Or probably it is weighing inside that he needs to spit it out in order to at least lessen the burden.

It’s sad that you lost your bitcoin. But there is no way you can get it back. You would have learnt an important lesson by now and will never believe anyone you meet on social media.

Of course this is very unfortunate if someone has to lose their bitcoin especially for beginners losing bitcoin is a form of their desperation in investing in the crypto world, for that we don't easily trust anyone in this investment, let alone some say they can multiply bitcoins or the hatching process for example like our passwords can be taken by irresponsible people, we really hope that this doesn't happen again to other miners.and also don't easily trust people we don't know, let alone they say they can multiply bitcoins by a very small amount reasonable

There have been many cases like this but I wonder why there are still so many people who believe in unreasonable offers. I even got the offer but that's all I ignored. In the online field I will not dare to transact with people I just know. Whatever he says I consider to be untrue, I prefer my assets to be safe rather than giving to people who offer greater profits.

Your story is very touching and I honestly feel for you, but this is if your story is truly true anyway.
In all honesty, the only one who can tell if there is still hope for you to get your bitcoins back or not is your friend, John.
Because from your story, it's clear you don't know if he helped you store the bitcoins in a wallet software (this means the piece of paper he gave you contains your wallet passphrase) or whether he left the bitcoins on an exchange (this means the piece of paper he gave you contains your login details to the exchange, that's probably email address and password).
And another imagination on my mind right now is, how certain are you that John has not withdrawn and spent your bitcoins in your absence? Did you in some way come across your wallet address to be sure the bitcoins are still in there?

I think you have to look for every means to contact john, I don't know why I have this feeling that John has probably spent your bitcoins in your back, you don't meet people from online and trust them like that.

I wish you all the best and really pray everything works out in your favour.

As mk4 said, impossible to believe, but for the benefit of doubt, if you're still reading this under the shitload of responses (I DM'd too), talk to a journalist from a big paper. Pitch the story properly, with points of detail and chronology. And get all your documentation ready.

Do all those latter steps anyway, cause it doesn't matter if you look for a recovery expert, journalist, lawyer, etc. All those documents prim and proper will help.

if you feel that you have lost your bitcoins, 100% of your bitcoins will not come back, it has been confirmed, so I don't think there is a solution that can be given, just lamenting about your fate. In the future, be more careful in transactions, don't trust new people.

Here you will find someone to help. You could not prove any documents here. If you can comment or give a skin short, then maybe someone can see and say something.And I would say that you can always regret that you lost everything because of your own mistakes.And I will tell everyone to learn from this and never make a mistake in life.

Its not been offered since the guy is just really someone who had been met online.Who would be the dumb one will really be entrusting their investing decisions just because someone had suggested it??

I dont really believe on this story actually because no one on their right mind on taking up some loan just because someone do say that you should invest with bitcoin.For sure
he is the one who do benefit out of those coins who had been bought and there's no way that you could contact him.

actually a matter of trust, I strongly believe that there is no difference, new people you know or people you have known for a long time. when it comes to "money", you always have to stay alert and don't easily believe in saying you want to help.
I am as sure as the friend above, if it has been confirmed, then you can be sure your bitcoin has been lost and will not be able to return it, even if in any way. every mistake that has been made in a bitcoin transaction is certain to be irreversible, so care must be taken not to make that mistake.

Very conflicted on this one as I think you either did not own bitcoins from the start and John scammed you pretty bad or this story is made up because what the hell, why would you trust a random person living far away from you to make a financial decision for you?

This might be trus, who knows. I think you can not get your Bitcoin back now that you don't have access to the private key and your phone had been burnt. If there is any way you can contact John that opened the account for you, then that will be fine if he has the private key to the account. This story is confusing but I think you need to move on with your life so you won't bother yourself on retrieving it  because it is impossible to gain access to the wallet without the private key. You need to think of another way to pay back your debt before the worse happens.

In short, you were totally scammed by John. The fact that he has convinced you to invest and let him do all those stuffs then you are giving him the full permission to scam you having you unaware. I don't think you can still retrieve whatever you have bitcoins your wallet, because as far as i know you don't really have real bitcoins from the start. Everything was well planned with John.

I have read your story and learned some details from here.But the mistake that can easily get your claim denied is to fail. You have to take the result for this.You do not have any documents here which is why you are getting any benefit.And those who have done this are a complete scandal.But the reason you cheated the most in life is because you changed your religion for it.You will have to pay compensation for the rest of your life.

You can not dis believe the story because you are not there. Will believe because some people trust people the way they trust them self. if some one want to scam you it will be in your house and scam you because of the trust you have for the person. I don't like to bring what i passed through the scammers to the public because some people will blame me of having direct trust to some body that i don't know well. People face many trouble of scam

OP, the answer is easy... but first get on this side of the community that reads you.

Data useless:
Kuwait...(*)
2014...(*)
American, name: John via Tinder... (*)
Christianity and Islam... (*)
I borrowed $300,000 and bought over 600 BTC...(*)

The above is what is called in these cases "straw" I don't know how that is translated in the jargon of other countries.

Here your answer, common sense you allowed a stranger to handle data of an investment of $300,000.00
"John helped me buy and save the data in my phone."(*)

So even if you had the necessary information to proceed accordingly there is nothing to do.
_______
"This is not a joke"(*): It was not necessary to deny you, nobody says otherwise.
(*) Quote OP.

do you make up stories? I'm not sure about your story, you save on the phone and now you create a new wallet it definitely won't help unless you keep the keys as long as the keys are not in hand then it's impossible for you to get your bitcoins back.

Since you lost all the data that could retrieve your wallet I think there's no chance that you could open that wallet again.
But if you could retrieve the phone that has been confiscated to you then you could try to search for the wallet keys on that phone to access the wallet.

Even if we somehow assume that this story is true there is no way to recover your coins, you need either the device to be in a good shape, your paper wallet or that you somehow remember your seed words or private keys, since neither of those scenarios is true no one can help you to recover those coins, now you need to be careful as I have no doubts that there will be some people out there that will tell you otherwise so they can scam you, and if you believe them then you will end up losing even more money.

Sadness with your story but you looks most trusted for every one are still new comer for your self, I think what ever business building never try to believe with new comer because they have indicate how to be scammer. I think your planning investing on bitcoin trough price still drop is good but better before investing on bitcoin learn early how to save assets and how risk when your public key know by the other. Maybe you can try contact your friend and better checking his document on your government to know his real scammer and run away your bitcoin fund or not.

A very complex story. Got confused a couple of times

As OP said it was John who helped OP store bitcoins on his phone and gave OP a piece of paper containing all the data, so only OP and John can access OP's wallet.
If your story is true, I dare say it was John who took your bitcoins.
Because you have lost all your wallet data, the only way you can get that bitcoin back is to find John but this seems impossible as it's been happening since 2014 and the bitcoin price has gone up thousands of times. I guess John could have sold off those bitcoins and is enjoying life.

The worst thing about bitcoins or any cryptocurrency is that once they are lost, they are lost forever. There’s no way you can retrieve them back but you can definitely take help from the law for the damage that has happened to your home.

It’s hard to accept that you have lost such a big amount but you should have been careful. I don’t understand why you didn’t keep your password safe when you knew that it’s a lot of money. There is no way you can get your money back now. It would just be a waste of time and money to try to recover the lost funds.

I call bullshit. Nobody with $300k to invest, borrowed or not, would go put it in a wallet they don't control based on the advice of some random stranger.

Only exception might be a senior citizen suffering from severe dementia who got conned but, in that case, they would have zero chance of ever posting anything on an internet forum. Guessing OP is trying to do some really poorly worded sympathy play hoping that some idiot will send him his "missing" Bitcoin. Given you can't even borrow 15 cents on the lending forum without 8 forms of collateral, guessing this one goes nowhere.