Bitcoin Forum

Early 2011 most friends of mine are into cryptosystem and I barely know what it is about, I only hear the name bitcoin and one day a friend of mine said, I should provide N100k to buy bitcoin and I was like what if my money lost and he gave me assurance; no lost as long your wallet is intact and after much pressure I gave him the money, open a wallet for me and hand over everything but I was care free not minding that's a great investment then, one day I lost my device and that's how I lost the seed phase and the wallet. Am imagining if I could have recover my wallet today, I will be a big boy with fat wallet. Do you think another person have access to it?

No.
How many bitcoins did you have?
How did you lose your device?
Did someone take/stole it?
Was the wallet password protected?
Do you have the address or public key? (Lol my obsession with public keys.)

In 2011, you can backup the private keys, which is the first thing you should not joke about at all but do immediately. You can recover your wallet with the private keys.

Now, the first thing you have to do before you finish creating your wallet is to get papers and backup your seed phrase in two or three different locations. If you think your seed phrase is not safe, you can use passphrase to extend the seed phrase and have the backup in separate locations as well.

It depends, but I think no because you will likely password your phone and the person that have saw your phone and stole it will only care about selling or using the phone after he formatted it already.

I am a Nigerian and I know how Nigerians behave. And as at 2011, the value of N100k was very high that it could buy you a plot of land in some mini cities. There is no how you will invest N100k by then as a Nigerian and became care free about it.

By that time you mentioned, it is only a few people that could invest more than N10k in an online business they consider a ponzi scheme.  I am sorry, I do not believe your story.

Base on this calculation 100k naira was around 600$ in 2011 (1$=165 naira then) and based on the past bitcoin price I checked, in 2011 bitcoin started the year at a price of 0.3$ and ended it with 3$ to 1btc. So imagine you bought at 3$ you will have 200 btc then. Although I wouldn’t say it was careless but that was till a huge amount spent by you when bitcoin was still in the early days. And for you to turn your eyes off it was just something I can’t believe.

Base on the current price you will have $6million which is big but it is what is now.


That depends on how you created your wallet then, because I am not sure there was something like seed phrase then. The only thing I read was available was paper wallet which comprises private key and address so the best thing is where to find the address. If that your friend has access to it probably you shared the key with him but if not then nobody will have access to it

I was about to mention that also because the story looks like a made-up story because I also from the same region know the extent to which bitcoin adoption and awareness have gone in Nigeria for ops to have invested 100k into bitcoin as far back as 2011 when bitcoin was still trying to gain users attention and at a low price,  there is no possibility that the ops would invest such amount in bitcoin and entirely forget to preserve the private keys to that wallet.

Ops need to come up with a more clear statement unless he is just dealing with and living in an imaginary world,  and even at that,  the reality is that he will have to know that only the private keys to the wallet prove ownership of the funds in it.

 Sorry for your loss. Your friend that introduced you to bitcoin did not give you all the information you need to keep your bitcoin safe. And you were also ignorant because you would have carried out your research before investing such a high amount. As others have indicated, you have to back up your seed phrase immediately after you create a wallet. But I am glad you have learned from your past mistake.

I doubt if you know how everybody in Nigeria behaves. Investing in a particular area is by choice. So many people might not have an interest in real estate but prefer the crypto sector. Some people can also be stupidly carefree with important issues. It is true that many people even to date see bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme but I know few persons that took advantage of the opportunities the sector offers.

Op from what you said and the currency sign you used in the story/post, you are a core Nigerian and since you are a Nigeria and which I also grow up from there your story is fabricated because as of then, people who new cryptocurrency which is bitcoin were numbered that is they were few. Bitcoin was 3 years old in the ecosystem, so as of then it was only the name was heard very minimal in the country, though one to 3 persons had used it. And People fully participate on cryptocurrency in Nigeria from the year 2013, in 2015 to 2019 Seminars of cryptocurrencies were everywhere in the country. So for you saying, you gave your friend #100k as of then for cryptocurrency investment is a lie. Okay to clear our doubts, if you invest N100k in 2011 I believed in this year you are among the lucky ones in Nigeria. Can you prove me wrong? If you are not lieing.

True or just making up stories is your right, but for that case you can no longer hope that the assets you invest will return as long as you don't store the private key.
A lost device basically won't be a problem to regain access to the assets on that device if your private key, seed phrase is securely stored in a place where no one else can access it.

If at this time someone finds your lost device, they may not be able to unlock it if you create double security such as a strong password.

This dude didn't have shit for bitcoins; he's a noob to the forum and I'm guessing he's trying to rank up his account (somehow) because he's an account farmer or wants to join a bounty eventually.  No way in hell he's an OG bitcoiner from 2011, just based on geography alone.

Yep.  I wrote the above before I even read your post, so I'm glad someone else follows my logic. 

OP, you're full of shit.

Do you mean N100k equals 10k$? I'm not from Nigeria, and I don't know how big or small the amount is, but if what you explained is true. Yes, I don't want to offend, but I will call him a liar, and this story is fictitious. Although at the time, I didn't know if anyone had invested such a large amount in bitcoin, the fact that someone who knows nothing about bitcoin could risk investing such a large amount is fabricated. Moreover, how could he lose such a large amount of money so easily and without any safe storage method?

you have created a lot of thread to fish merit mate  , if you happened to know bitcoin since 2011 then you must not creating many thread that tackles like you know nothing about the difference of Mining and trading


for that 12 years of knowing crypto ,  I must believe that you already has knowledge of what you are asking here.

It is not waste; it is just that you are unlucky that your device got lost because of your carelessness. Just imagine that you are very cautious putting money on it and having second thoughts, but you are not having doubts about safeguarding it, like having backups, because that is your money, and for sure there will be a prompt saying that you should back up it on a piece of paper as you can't recover it. Also, if someone got your device, then for sure he just erased all the data there as well as your seed phrase, so for sure it is already gone.

The OP sounds like a liar, or he needs people's attention, because if the OP actually has that amount he mentioned in the year 2011 in Nigeria, he will never go towards Bitcoin investment because that is a very large amount of money at the time, and $1 was around 165Naira, so the 100k naira he claimed will be around $600, which can buy at least 127-128 or even up to 300BTC depending on the price, because Bitcoin peaked $30 in early 2011, declined to $2, and finished the year at $4.7. (https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/price/)
 
I doubt that someone holding such a large quantity of Bitcoin will lose the Bitcoin just because he lost his device; the OP did not even indicate the type of wallet he was using to store the Bitcoin. 

If the OP truly had that BTC, his first post in this forum would have been about his lost Bitcoin rather than pretending to be learning about Bitcoin for the first time. Look at the OP's first post in the forum; if the OP truly lost that amount of Bitcoin, he would have shared some testimonies, but instead this.

Yes you will have Bitcoin with thousands of percent higher value than the first time you bought it, because in that year the average price of Bitcoin was $10, and 100K Naira that was around $125 the current exchange rate does not known for sure the exchange rate in 2011 whether Naira is a currency that stable or what, but if the exchange rate is the same then you have at least around 10 Bitcoins and you can already enjoy what you invest, but I'm quite doubtful whether in that year there was already a mobile version of the wallet? unless you use an online wallet because that is enough to use but access via the website not the application. Is anyone able to access your wallet? if you keep everything on your smartphone it is certain that someone can access it if he knows about Bitcoin and again in that year Bitcoin was not as popular as it is today where you can find a lot of information so people will know how valuable the coin is, and I feel you are just telling lies.

Lolz!!! Op has contradicted his own self. In 2023 op wants to earn and learn bitcoin and in 2011 Op had learned and earn bitcoin but lost the bitcoin along the line and became novice to bitcoin again after the incident. A car crash accident that everything in the brain was formated and brain became new.  ;D
But one thing I noticed from the Op post, probably he mistake the date and if the op mistake the date he should quickly reedit the op and correct all that is necessary now that it still early, if not this post will affect it post history. Because the post is contradicting the first posts of the Op.
Op if you did mistake please go and edit now. Nobody is above mistake. That is my advice.

I hope you can earn more bitcoin by now, it is a good time to accumulate bitcoin. my advice for you and all people is please make sure to save such important information in form of digital and physical. I usually save such data in flash disk and in printed paper. the maximum amount of BTC is fixed, please no BTC lost anymore, although it can make btc price rise  but it should not keep happen. I hope this issue become a concern for the new bitcoin investor.

I was curious how much the N100K was worth, and I looked it up on the internet. N100k = 128USD. I don't know the numbers are big or not in Nigeria. But in 2011 there were still very few people who believed in bitcoin. So I think buying bitcoins with that kind of money will make him watch out for his wallet keys. In 2011 bitcoin had a price of around 0.3 - 3.06 USD, so he has quite a lot of btc


I agree with you. In 2011 I was still a child, he had to be the same. So 128 USD would have been a lot for those of us who were kids then. I'm quite doubtful about his story, maybe he's just lying. and is bitcoin already popular in nigeria in 2011?

But if he's not lying, he should have around 50 - 500 bitcoins. That's a huge amount for now. Maybe he will be rich with that many bitcoins

Carelessness due to lack of knowledge makes you feel that the value of Bitcoin at that time was worthless. Many cases are like this with the pretext that is not much different. But can it come back again? Since you don't have the phrase seed there is no way to access it. There's nothing you need to do today except to be a reflection so that in the future you always think that what is currently worthless can change everything in the future. Depends on the type itself. Because it's about Bitcoin that there's only one complete control, and when that control is lost it's all regret. Indirectly Bitcoin has taught you to always be careful, and respect the slightest ownership.

How did you lose your device? Is it stolen?. If it is stolen then if the one who steal it knows about crypto then it is possible that the thief may have access to the wallet. When you are pressured by your friend and told you that it will be okay if your wallet is safe and secured but you should have make another backup of the seed phrase in another device or written in a paper. Did your friend told you to keep it safe and make a back up?. If you did made a backup of your seed phrase online then there's a chance you can recover your btc if ever no one have access to your wallet. We all make mistakes and I hope this is a lesson for you. Better keep another backup of your seed phrase instead of having one copy.

What a silly mistake, were you not told to keep your keys safe that such is what you will beed to have access to your coins on the blockchain, if he didn't inform you about keys and how important they were as the fund itself then he has the little fault to receive blame but if he already told or warned you about it, then it's your fault and it will be good for you to always put that in mind that not your keys means not your coins


It's there on the blockchain, am imagining what amount it would have turned to by now, it's just like you holding the coins on your wallet, buy if it were to be that the fund was sent to a wrong address, the coins will be lost and distributed back across the bitcoin network.

1. Never, ever allow anyone to create a crypto wallet for you, he must have seen your recover seed, I am not saying your friend can't be trusted but he can be tempted too, what makes you believe that your Bitcoin is still sleeping in the wallet? It will be good for him that you don't remember the seed anymore and maybe he does.

I am talking from experience,  crypto wallet was not meant to be created by someone else even if they are family, it's private.

2. Never invest money in something you don't know, you are care free because you don't even understand what you are buying and that is one of the reasons why you lost your recovery seed, you don't believe in it and you still gave up 100k for it, how stupid of you? Maybe if you did your own research you would understand that Bitcoin could worth a lot in the future.

I guess there's nothing to recover back since as you said you trust your friend to create your own wallet so maybe try to check first the wallet used if the balance still intact inside since if not then maybe your friend take your money and might you cannot recover unless your friend will give a refund. 

Huge mistake that you let your friend do that so next time learn to create your own wallet and never tell anyone that you have money stored their.

Your post looks like something that was made up, if you think back to 2011 the Nigeria currency Naira had value unlike now, if you had #100,000 back then you would be considered as a very wealthy person and that amount of money is not something that one can invest with and still be careless about it. I'm not sure what the reason you decided to create a made up story, if it's to fish merits then you're not doing well. Next time don't forget that you're talking about an online investment and in 2011 most Nigerians just take it as a scam and investing such amount of money seems unreal.

FYI Op, as long as no one gets hold of your private key they won't be able to access your account and use it for anything and also you can't recover your wallet, if anyone should come to you claiming they have a powerful system that can be used to recover your wallet just know that they're more likely to be a scam.

Your friends just played you. If they were real friends, they will first give you some basic knowledge about bitcoin and show you how to open a wallet for yourself, not them opening a wallet for you and claiming to hand everything over to you when they can still access it anytime, they like. They knew better than you, that is why they were able to easily fool you into giving them money to buy bitcoins for themselves. Even at the time when they handed the wallet to you, It is possible that the worth of bitcoin they got for you was not even up to the money you gave them. It is good to have some knowledge about something before you invest in it.

Well, bitcoin at that time does not make valuable to other people not until you will see the current price today we regret right now that we sell in the lowest to the middle range of the bitcoin at that time, how much bitcoin did you accumulate? another thing is upon creation of the wallet there's a private keys provided to you that you need to keep, we have not your keys, not your coin, if you don't have the keys it's not in you anymore. Did you have an address left in you so you can check? It seems like they encourage you with the bitcoin but do not gives you the essentials to learn with the bitcoin.

When creating a wallet the first thing to do is to back up your seed phrase or private keys and keep it somewhere safe. Since you were new to crypto, your friend would have shown you how to do this... Sorry many things in your story don't add up and I find it hard to believe you.

The Op is no doubt a liar and I kind of wonder why he came up with this cook and bull story. As at that time, Bitcoin had not gained popularity and I doubt if there's anyone from this part of the world that would put N100k in a nascent technology like Bitcoin, when the money is more than enough to get you a plot of land at a choice location.

I think that its pretty obvious he made that bullshit story for the sole purpose of merit fishing. He though that members will feel sorry for him losing hundreds of bitcoins and that they will sen few merits his way to ease that pain.

Luckily, members got used to recognize bs stories in Beginners & Help section so such obvious merit farmers are not as successful as they used to be.

Well firstly I think you should try to convert N100k into a more familiar currency like the US dollar, I think the N in the 100k stands for naira. This would be about $130 with the current market rate, well since this is about Bitcoin in the year 2011 I think you would still be good for yourself.

Well I think you friend did not do a complete job in telling you about Bitcoin, I have always advice that when introducing Bitcoin to newbies always try to tell them more about Bitcoin, how to protect themselves, the advantages and disadvantages of Bitcoin.

If you don't have a seed phrase or private key, then you can't restore or access the wallet, and neither can anyone else. especially at that time in 2011, maybe the people who found it didn't care about the contents, they just sold it right away. And maybe if what happens next is that the device has been restarted to the initial factory settings and eliminated all applications. Try it, if you still have the wallet address, check whether the transfer of Bitcoin assets from the wallet.

Quite rightly one should never create a wallet by proxy, it is risky and stupid, but OP never created such a wallet, i wouldn't be surprised if they have never created a crypto wallet before or ever written down a seed phrase. It is as clear as daylight that this story is bullshit and it wouldn't be deleted as spam only because OP somehow manages to stay on-topic (which is quite easy to do). All of these fabricated stories are so unnecessary and isn't the right way for someone to learn about Bitcoin or to earn merits. OP, please lock this thread.

Lots of people have made similar mistake in the past, they bought bitcoin and they didn't properly secure their bitcoin, some of them didn't properly secure their private key after buying bitcoin, most people didn't know that bitcoin is going to be massive, some people invested in bitcoin after making little profit they decided to sell it off, if lots of people that invested in bitcoin in the past knows that bitcoin will get to this price, most of them will have still be holding bitcoin, and they will have properly secure their private key.

If someone have access to the phone and the person fix the phone, if the person knows about bitcoin, then maybe your bitcoin will have been sold, but if nobody have access to it, then your bitcoin will remain in your wallet.

How much was Bitcoin when you bought it? How many fraction of Bitcoin did you buy then?
When you not advised to key your seed phrase? What year was that? These are question I think you need to answer before you claim that you invested in Bitcoin and lose the seed phrase. Anybody can come here and write amusing stories about how they were once a Bitcoin investors and something happened that made them to lose the funds.

 If you were asked to invest in cryptocurrency when you have no idea about the decision you wee taking then, why don't you ask questions or use search engines to find out what steps you need to take to keep you safe. Because of many stories we had been seeing from random people, this making it look like one has to before a pro before investing in Bitcoin especially to the newbies.

N100k is not in any way close to $10k, $10k is much more higher. But as at 2011 that was mentioned in OP, N100k was very high and valuable. The value of N100k then should be about $1k in value for now.
I decided to burst the OP because their lie was so dumb and the choice of date mentioned in OP made it very obvious that the whole story was purely fabricated. Next time he should consider to say the truth because there’s no award for who made the most shity lying post.[/s]

A cheap attempt at merit fishing. The OP often passes off his fantasies as reality.
OP, get busy, or start writing fantastic books. For some, this forum really helps to solve their financial situation, at least a little. But such stupid attacks in the form of stupid topics can completely close the way for you here. Someone will leave a tag saying that you are a liar, and someone will simply start to ignore you.
Be serious, OP; don't take people for fools.

I don't think another person would have access to your seed phrase if the device holding it gets damaged and you cannot recover any data from it. If you had saved your seed phrase on a piece of paper at that time you would have been able to recover and use your money. However, it seems your mistake was not giving enough importance to the security of your bitcoin at that time which is kinda sad to be honest.

I'm just curious how much bitcoin did you have in your wallet back then? Do you have any public addresses as proof? I would recommend using a hardware wallet or even an air-gapped device from now on and make sure to store your backup seed phrase in a safe place.

Can you show us the address you used to top up the Bitcoin you bought with the amount of N100k.?
I am very curious about the contents in it. How could you be so careless as to lose access to open the wallet, logically N100k was huge at that time. Anyone will take good care of the seed phase especially if there are assets of high value in it. I don't know if your story is true or not, at least the people who read this thread will be more careful about saving the seed phase so that big losses don't happen like you experienced.

Such amount, 100k.
Like what they say, what you don't know is greater than you no matter how little it seem. A little knowledge of making sure on how to backup your private keys be it written down on a paper sheet keeping it safe somewhere private would have helped you today in regaining your bitcoins after these years.

When next to get such opportunity always ask questions, deep questions about what your money is going into for. A simple question about the importance of the use of the seed phrase given to you when you created your wallet would have sav d you from your loss. As long as nobody knows about your wallet password and seed phrase no one can have access to it, not even you op.

The whole thing is the year. The year is the one spoiled the story. If the op got that amount of money in the 2020 or 2021 at least the story would gotten some elements of truth but in this case, he took it far back in 2011  which was two years interval of bitcoin invention and op from the far continent of Africa got the information before the American and Europeans and invested in it and still lost the wallet, plus the name of the wallet, and that means the op brain was formated and the only thing he could remember was the $130 he used for the investment. Bravo for Op. He thought such post would motivate merit sources.

First and foremost, your Bitcoin is lost forever- that's if you ever had any as at the time you mentioned....and did you say 100k naira? Secondly, your story looks untrue as Nigerians barely had contact with Bitcoin operations, talk more of HODLing. Thirdly, you misplaced your device and you lost your seed phrase?? May I Aks what device are you actually referring to?
... about the case of "being a big boy with a fat wallet" - you never can tell. Alot of things happen in the long run; just like the way you lost 'em seed phrase, anything HAPPENS... So that wouldn't be guaranteed too.
Again, This story is not untrue.

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

This is part of learning process and it can be corrected by now since we learn a lot from the experiences we encounter from the pass and make sure that you grow a lot from those incident. Who knows? Maybe the guy you trusted with still have your keys so maybe try to check on blockchain explorer if your balance still in your wallet since when you check it and balance is gone then you already know who is the possible person who take it. Try to remember if you also save your keys on other area like offline since its really a big waste if your balance has totally gone and you can't recover your funds.

Though the story mostly looks like a made-up story like a lot of people already said, I would say that one can literally not be carefree after investing an amount that makes a difference in their life, and back in 2011, the value of money was way higher than it is right now, so you are pretending like you were either too rich at that time or you didn't really invest that much money in Bitcoin and then didn't make backups of your wallet, seed phrase, and private keys.

There is definitely no chance for you to recover your wallet if you don't have anything that takes you back to your wallet, you don't even have the public address, I assume, if you had really bought Bitcoins, they are now lost and there is no one who has access to them as they are encrypted.

OP's story is unbelievable for me. He/she told us that lost SEED phrase for the wallet created in early 2011 but, AFAIK, the concept of SEED was adopted by wallets far more later, after BIP39 standard has appeared. So, either OP misleads  us or he/she mixes SEED phrase with something else, with password for instance.

Anyway, I'm bind to ask if there was any less well-known wallet that might have implemented SEED phrase feature in 2011?

Life itself is a test you don't have to lose hope of losing your Bitcoin because it happens to many investors and they didn't give up if not they won't be where they are today we lost we go again we keep it up that who is called an investor so don't worry keep it up and don't get discouraged and about the wallet you can't retrieve it unless you have the phone and it hasn't been deleted you might then recover it

Almost maximum investors have faced this problem.  That's almost everyone's history when it comes to learning about Bitcoin. When someone tells us about Bitcoin and when we are interested in Bitcoin we try to do everything through him. Like how to make a wallet, how to deposit the token of the exchanger and how to buy-sell everything.This happens to many investors in the first time and people have to correct their mistakes. Therefore, when using Bitcoin, wallets should be kept secure and wallet seeds should not be shared with anyone.