Bitcoin Forum

Based on a recent incident I came across on X, I have realized that a lot of us don't actually practice what we preach when it comes to the safest way to hold bitcoins securely.

Many of us, the Bitcoin OGs are quick to advice newbies to get a hardware wallet, that it is the best way to hold bitcoin and other supported crypto assets securely, but coming back to ourselves, many of us don't do the same, probably out of over confidence in ourselves that our wallet can never be hacked due to our already vast knowledge in crypto.

I am making this thread to let us all know that nobody is safe, be you an OG or newbie, you need to get yourself a hardware wallet if you must hold your bitcoins and other crypto assets with rest of mind.

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I came across a post from this dude on twitter whose bitcoin wallet was hacked, and all BTC25+ held since 2012 he said belonged to him and his father were all stolen, this is one lost that will be very hard to get over, holding 25+ bitcoins since 2012 and just one day, in a twinkle of an eye, it's all gone.

Anyways, in a 5 minutes video he posted on X which i will share below, he did mention always advising people to get a hardware wallet and store their bitcoins on it, meanwhile he himself doesn't own or use one, due to his confidence that he could never be hacked, but unfortunately, it happened, he got hacked.

This is something for us all to learn from, nobody is an expert when it comes to online security of your bitcoin and your funds, get a hardware wallet today to significantly increase the safety of your funds.

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Here the link to tweet on X - https://x.com/RMessitt/status/1723141037856596175?s=20 (https://x.com/RMessitt/status/1723141037856596175?s=20)

Click the shot to watch his 5 minutes video also on X..

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/12/zHAyv.jpeg (https://x.com/RMessitt/status/1723468245716369428?s=20)

I think the right advice should be get yourself a cold wallet, hardware wallet isn’t the only cold or offline wallet. You can safely set up an offline wallet on airgapped device and it will work same as an hardware wallet.

Also hardware wallet or probably all cold wallet isn’t just the problem but also how we back up our seed phrase or keys. Even with hardware wallet if you don’t store your seeds properly it will still be needless.

That's sad and he's been so long holding and yet he never taken a hardware wallet for himself? You're right that everyone should practice what we're preaching if we tell people to hardware wallet and then we don't even have it, you're helping others but not yourself.

But if a newbie just known that hardware wallets are good way to store our Bitcoin and he advises that while having no hardware wallet yet, I think that's fine as it's just sharing knowledge and soon that person might own one then.

Aside from advising to own hardware wallets, we must also check out how we are browsing the web. With our activities, it is the mainly reason how we become vulnerable.

This is what I was thinking as well, a hardware wallet without a doubt is a practical device for those that do not really know how to secure their computers and coins on their own, but if you have an old laptop lying around and you install Linux in it, keep it updated, keep it offline and you only use it when you want to make a transaction then you can get the same functionality than a hardware wallet, however if a person does not really think they can do all of that then they could go through the hardware wallet route and keep their coins secure that way.

Yeah, seeing that video was definitely disturbing! It is crazy how we can start feeling invincible in crypto until someone we think is an expert gets hacked.  Goes to show that we all gotta stay vigilant no matter how long we have been in the game.  Probably good for me to brush up on keeping my holdings secure.  Cant get lazy...  The world is full of bandits ready to snatch your goods!

Thanks for the nudge, OP, to make sure my wallet is locked up tight.  Better paranoid than sorry when it comes to protecting my investment.

not the first time..
luke Jr lost some last christmas..

I feel sorry for this guy. You can see he's been crying and not getting too much sleep. If he's making this up he should become an actor because he's great at this.
Anyway, I don't get why he'd store seed phrases in a password manager. It's just a step more secure than holding it in your email or on google drive.
I don't use a hardware wallet at the moment, but I've always had an airgapped machine that holds all my .dat files and I don't even have seeds for these wallets, just good old password protected files stored on a computer that gets powered up once or twice a year and is small enough for me to carry out of the building in case of flood or fire. I also have a spare backup drive in case something happened with the main computer and that one is well hidden, so it's theft-proof. For small transactions I have my desktop wallet that's online all the time and stores coins I get from signature campaigns. It's a risk, but a risk I'm willing to take for the sake of convenience.

I can't blame him. When btc wants to get away from you, it does. I somehow know the feeling. It sucks to lose 25btc but it is not the end of the world. If he keeps being sorry about it, some health problems will follow and that's when he'll realize he shouldn't have given too many fucks about it. Many people despise legacy banking and financial markets but bitcoin etf's (or trust funds or whichever is available nowadays) like grayscale come handy in these situations.

People should indeed own their private keys/seed words but not everybody has to. Especially If you are only interested in the price of bitcoin, there is no need to hold too many coins in your hard/paper/soft/cold/whatever wallet. Funds like GBTC will take care of it and you can never lose your coins that way.

I can tell you with a loud voice that out of 100% bitcoin holders 40% of us do not own a reliable storage where our bitcoin can not be touched or hacked by anyone untill it happens to any one of us before we could know that we need to buy one and store in our funds.

I can recall a friend of mine then I was telling him to moved out his fund from exchange though he is a trader and he only moves his funds from exchange to exchange he doesn't own a none custodial wallet and when I told him he said he doesn't have time to store his asset in a wallet. He was saying it's additional fee moving funds around wallet instead he prefers sending to exchange where he do have new signal to trade but unfortunately he was among the FTX scandal and I knew he learnt in a hard way.

You have point out an important things. It's actually a reality that most people suggest using hardware wallets to stay secure even though most of them don't use hardware wallets. However, there may be valid reasons such as many not importing hardware wallets simply because cryptocurrency and all its related devices are illegal in their country. This reality is happening to me. But since I haven't been able to use it currently I wouldn't suggest it to people as it just doesn't look right to me, I have and will continue to suggest others use the hardware to make those investment more secure.

Indeed,,,,, I myself was a victim of phishing last year which hacked cryptocurrency from some of my hot wallets. And I also think that it is not only the hot wallet holders who will be victims of this kind of hacking.  Those who use hardware wallets should also be aware of this because the environment that the hardware wallet will be connected to must be free of malware, otherwise it may become vulnerable later on.

Your friend is a trader and I bet he is trading those funds stashed in an exchange.  He was not hacked but rather got defraud by the company he trusted.  He has not lost his holdings if the company he trusted did not scam him.

And that is the main problem of a trader, since the fund is actively trading, it is actually an extra expenses and time that might cause the trader a delay and may lost a possible profit from a trade if he put his fund in a cold storage then send it to exchange when the trading get crazy.  I have such kind of experience when I am holding Bitcoin and the altcoin I am watching gets a momentary dump, so I send BTC to the exchange but the moment it confirms, the momentary dump were taken advantage by other people whose fund is already on the exchange.

On the other hand holding is different.  The fund is idle so there is actually no reason to stash it on exchanges.  The idle fund should be securely stash in an offline wallet, and yes much better if it is on an air-gapped device especially if we plan to hold it for decades.

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About the incident, I feel sorry for the person but he should be the first one using a hardware wallet when he is preaching newbies to use one.  His experience is a good lesson for us to learn something.  It is a message that no matter how confident we are on securing out wallet if it is connected on the internet, there is no assurance that it is safe forever.  Lesson learned that keeping Bitcoin in an offline storage or using a hardware wallet while keeping the back up in a safe place that is water and fire proof is much better.

Op, thanks for this information and it is good that we are not hypocrites in our words and do the opposite. The dunny thing is that a hardware wallet is hard to see in my country and I don't think that I will be able to buy one. I still believe that it is very easy to get an old computer and use it as a cold storage wallet and generate your seed on offline and never connect that computer to the internet, since it still serve the same purpose of a hardware wallet.

Since bitcoin gave is the opportunity to be our own bank then our wallet security lies in our hands, and this is why one must take wallet safety very serious to avoid the loss of your bitcoin. A word is enough for a wise because nobody is safe, but when you are careful and do the right thing, you can be safe from these hackers.

Welp. You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.

Pretty sure everyone who preaches about getting their hardware wallets, or at the very least dividing your assets among different unconnected wallets do that to a T, so I don’t think you need to question the validity of that statement on our part. And while it must suck for this guy considering that’s money he’s been keeping for more than a decade, it must’ve crossed his mind to buy cold wallets in the past, ultimately not answering to it of course, which lead to repercussions.

Hopefully he learns something from this, it sucks to lose your money willy-nilly but at the same time, this could’ve been avoided for 30 bucks at least,

LOL, like it is for real and it doesn't want to be owned by someone who really don't give the care and security that it deserves.

Yeah, not the end of his world but he'll surely be having hard time of getting up and starting to pull everything together. Resiliency of a person depends on how optimistic he is and if he's not like that, he'll dwell on this situation of being sorry and regret for a long time. I guess a week or even a month of sorrow is just fine and enough but if it takes longer, he does need to seek some professional help or not even from the professionals but to get and ask support from his immediate family.

And that percentage of people including the institutions admitting that they're trusting more the exchanges. I have read an article about that admission but I can't find it anymore.

There are many different ways to keep your bitcoin safe. We have the  hardware wallets, cold storage, and multi-sig. While software wallet is good there is a strong caution given against leaving funds on software wallets on phones or computers due to security vulnerabilities. Hardware wallets are recommended as the only secure option for self-custody.

Right, as I have said that even you have the hardware wallet it gives some strength and security but if you are careless just like this guy
~

Fake Ledger Live app in Microsoft Store steals $768,000 in crypto (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fake-ledger-live-app-in-microsoft-store-steals-768-000-in-crypto/)

That doesn't make sense for you to own one when you don't know where you should download the outright app for your hardware wallet.

Yes, and so it's more on the OP side here, maybe he was just overconfident that he doesn't need a hardware wallet although he has preached it. I think majority here, maybe because we really don't hold that much bitcoin or we have a hard time acquiring it, we seldom uses hardware wallet.

But in any case, security should be the priority here. Maybe we can start with Electrum only wallet and then gradually learn the best securities out there, like air gapped PC, muti-sig or hardware wallet. And then back up all the seed and private key. And again, we should just keep quiet about our bitcoin because we are also not safe by criminals that might attack us physically in real world.

Poor guy, such a loss after 11 years of hodling! But yeah, if we think about it, there are some many ways to lose your coins, probably hundreds. Hardware wallet is a good solution for the safety of your coins, you could also use an air-gapped pc for this purpose. No storage is completely safe, you should always be careful in any case not to fall for phishing or some social engineering hacks.   

I don't use hardware wallet because I use cold storage setup with my ancient PC that runs live Linux and is not used for anything else and is never connected to the Internet. I transfer transaction in via USB stick and out by scanning a QR code on watch-only wallet. It's very unlikely that there is a malware that can bypass all these obstacles and that I will encounter this malware somehow.

If you actually think people like Snowden practice perfect Security every single minute of their life 24 out of 7 for 365 days in a continuous loop you are very wrong.  It is so easy to preach and give advice but practice gets difficult.  Perfect Bitcoin Security means more than just owning a Hardware Wallet.

You have got to take care of how you store your Seed.  Secure enough to avoid theft AND eventual disasters.  You have got to take care of the devices you use.  Even if Ledger praises their Hardware Wallets as impossible to penetrate even in the most virused up computer, this does not mean you can have a fully virused computer laying around and plugging your Ledger into it with no care.

You have got to take care of Cryptocurrency affecting viruses too.  The infamous Clipboard virus.  The fake Electrum version virus.  And so on.  Still got to check that Address fully to make sure it is going to the correct Address.  Check the sum two times at least to make sure they are right.

Reality is different.  Most Bitcoiners only check first and last few characters of an Address plus the middle ones.  Most Bitcoiners hold more than they would risk in a Hot Wallet.  Most Bitcoiners probably have their Seed written down on a piece of paper that is erasable, can ignite, can be destroyed by water and ripped by a dog.  Many Bitcoiners do have a Hardware Wallet but do not manage their funds in a way close to perfection.

It is hard to practice what you preach.  And you are always hit very strong by guilt when you realize being lazy was a big mistake.

Hope this guy is well.  I would be more afraid of his thoughts and mental health than about his loss.

I disagree that hardware wallets are the only secure wallet for set custody as you have said. Hardware wallets are just cold storage because they are setup not to get in touch with the internet only and to safely transfer bitcoin. The software wallets you mentioned if setup properly can still do just the same work. It is to be used on a device that has never came online and will never come online (airgapped device). And just like hardware wallets you transfer your funds and monitor the incoming transactions using watch only wallet on another device that is connected to the internet. This watch only wallet create the unsigned transaction and then send it to the offline wallet which is then signed there and return back again and then the transaction is broadcasted.

There are people that even trust this self created airgapped wallet than hardware wallets because some hardware wallets sometimes changes policy in future that could affect the back up of the wallet keys or seeds, example is the new ledger wallet policies. The only problem with this airgapped wallet is it requires someone experienced or tech savvy to actually set it up, a newbie can easily make mistake and therefor should just go for hardware wallets

I feel sorry for this man and his father not only because they lost almost a million dollar worth of Bitcoin but also because they had been holding it for more than 10 years. They were solid hodlers. They should have been abundantly rewarded for believing in Bitcoin all those years. It wasn't easy for sure having went through all the bears in the past decade.

This is a very expensive lesson they will learn. We will also be learning from this. Cold storage has always been the advice. But we still hear news of stolen funds from hot wallets every now and then.

It was his fault, hardware wallet was never wrong in terms of securing your coins.

Actually using and holding Bitcoin isn't that hard since we're already familiar about using mobile banking or digital fiat, so we should've understand about the basic digital security.

Using something that you're not completely understand is really bad, you can't just throw your money with closed eyes.

This is not a church or a sect that someone preaches here, this is a forum where Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies and some other things are discussed. You may be speaking for yourself, but anyone who understands what Bitcoin actually is has long understood what "not your keys, not your coins" means.



Do you think you helped someone with advice that has already been written several thousand times on this forum? Do you think that private keys on every hardware wallet are absolutely safe? What about those who don't know what clipboard malware is, or those who have no idea how to properly store their seed - or those who will share the same seed with various companies so that they can store it for them?

The hardware wallet is just a step in the right direction, but nowhere near what you imagine.

That attitude cuts across. An OG here who's always advising members to invest only in Bitcoin once opened up to me when I chatted him privately and wanted to know why he was investing only in Bitcoin while he could add some credible alts in his investment. Dude shocked me by telling me he was also investing in alts. He was merely fronting in the forum and wanted everyone to see him as a maximalist. Such habit, just like that of the victim in your post is pretentious and deceitful.

Exactly the same disposition I've concerning this hardware wallet thing. The way many talk about it like it's infallible. Security and safety of our funds depend largely on us than on any device.

Lolz.
Read in-between the lines and understand what I meant by what I said, the phrase "not practice of what we preach" is more like an idiomatic expression, which simply means, to not do for ourselves, what we advice others to do, am I supposed to even explain what this means to you?
I thought you should know, but anyways, let that be.


Do you think you helped someone with advice that has already been written several thousand times on this forum?
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Since the current users of this forum will not be the only users forever, YES, I helped someone, even though every user on this forum already know this, someday, some one who is not here yet, would maybe through a search engine stumble into this thread, and will learn the importance of cold storage wallet, or hardware wallet, which ever anybody chose to call it.

And how can they learn or know about things like this  if we that know don't constantly talk or discuss about thing like this? We all know how busy this forum is, we need to make sure that important things like this are discussed from time to time so that new members will learn as well.

I agree. Someone who wants to start needs to understand how to use wallets coming from desktops and the importance of how to keep it.

There have been various incidents that when a crypto person didn't shut his mouth and they were targeted by the criminals that have been monitoring them for so long.

Because of them being vocal, they were already made planned by these cons.

This is very hard for all traders because it's additional expenses to move funds around but the security aspect of moving out fund from exchange to store in an external wallet is for the safety of hack or exchange collapse, let's say if the exchange didn't collapse there wouldn't have been a way to lose his entire funds but if he was taking out profit or taking out capital and traded with his profits this would have been a different case but all this same we should always act smart and play safe with our funds to avoid stories that touches.

I love your set up and I can imagine it, hoping that I can replicate the action in a Virtual Machine but my problem is that wouldn't this be a dangerous thing that you're sharing your set up to other people and how it all interconnects because you're giving away a vital information about your bitcoin and your wallet so I just hope you know that there's a possibility that this sharing of your set up can backfire to you someday. Plus your way of saying that no one will be able to bypass your set up will just make malicious people try harder, I mean a dox will definitely be your weakest point.

Virtual machine is not a replacement for a dedicated device, it's likely better than just running a hot wallet on an online machine, but still it's quite vulnerable.

I'm not afraid that telling about my setup will make it easier for any attackers to hack me, because this is a very common setup, I read a guide about it many years ago, and it was a common advice back then.

And I doubt that anything of what I said will make someone try harder - hackers actually prefer to go for soft targets instead of wasting their time on low success chance attempts.

Such a sad irony. But am I the only one wondering how someone had up to 25 BTC and still took security for granted? Having half a Bitcoin is more than enough for you to get a cold wallet, let alone a whopping amount of 25 BTC! That’s almost a million dollar and a cold wallet is nothing compared to that. Well, for me, I take my own advices. Whatever I advice people to do in this space, I already do it or would do it if I was in the position to.

Cold wallet. Not necessarily hardware wallet. I don't preach hardware wallet cuz I don't use a hardware wallet. I preach cold wallet because I use a cold wallet. No need to get a hardware wallet if you don't want to. Plenty more ways to do cold wallets other than just hardware wallets.

I think he is a liar.

Or stupid as fuck. If you have only 25 btc and store it the way he did he deserves to lose out for being that stupid.

To not have five coins in five different accounts is an act of arrogance that deserves the punishment he got.

Or he is lying.

In the video he says so himself, that he is being accused of being a liar, a swindler, etc. Although it may be a strategy.


I completely agree, it's almost $1M at current prices. To have it all in the same basket and stored like that is retarded.


Although he sounds honest in the video, I don't rule it out, really. Some people have an art for deception.

He may be accused of being a liar, or anything. But the question is, what can he get for lying in this situation?

If ever the story he shared is real, he really is. Being an old-time investor, you should know the things needed to fully secure your wallet and that includes using different wallet or a hardware wallet.

We never know if this is real or not. But I have this question in mind, what and why will he do that, maybe for sympathy.

I don't need to read between the lines to understand what you are talking about, but if you use some words like "preach" then you are implying that we are doing exactly that here, and Bitcoin is a technological invention, not some religious community where someone preaches anything. In addition, I have already written that such stories are completely pointless considering that Bitcoin does not exist since yesterday and what you wrote has been written countless times, only with the difference that you are building a story around a character who does not seem too convincing with his story.

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It wouldn't be the first time that such things come to people's minds, and then someone sympathizes with them and sends them a nice donation. If something like that happened to me, I certainly wouldn't record a video and post it on social networks, because I wouldn't want people to recognize me on the street as an incompetent fool who lost millions of dollars.

In addition, he may not even be aware that he is harming himself in the long term, because today's employers check their future employees online, and such things do not bring anything positive in the eyes of most employers.

I don't agree with the claim that holding with a "hardware wallet" is better. Unless by "hardware", you mean paper and pen that you write with your own hands and don't let any electronic devices see, particularly in this case, a camera.

In fact, some of those gadgets can actually increase the vectors of attack, as was seen in exploits of certain devices.

Write your seed words by hand, do another copy by hand, secure each paper in a different physical location. That's the best cold wallet. You can get creative in how the words are stored/obfuscated/stenographed, but remember, no electronics.

And if you are going to trust your seed words to a password manager, you better trust that encryption algo and not use a weak password. 12chars is the bare min, but more is better. This is the guy that did 6? forget it.

Also do all your money stuff in a more secure OS, like Linux. Leave the rest for games or stuff that can be lost/stolen.The Internet does not run on windows server for a reason...

A lot of scam and hacking happen everyday and it's not new that most people who claim to be bitcoin security advisers still end up not following the right security strategy in saving their keys. What matters is following the right instruction ushered by these people. Whether the influencer practice it doesn't matter anymore. It's a sad experience to have meddled with that of his dad's investment too. Many people behave this way, until they become the victim of hackers. What would you say about those who still have millions stored on exchanges, despite all the alarms spreading in the market concerning not saving funds on exchanges.  It only describes how these people show less care about their privacy. And still believe they're safe. It only worries me to hear such situations as these. Isn't it awkward that he must have bragged about the amount of bitcoin he possess elsewhere. Maybe in a social club or forum. Since he's telling the world about his loss, that means he's been taking his bitcoin holdings publicly too. So, I wouldn't blame those who still doubt if he's saying the truth or not.  Because he looks like a person seeking attention or finding traffic. Why did his coin get lost exactly 11 years since holding. If he's been saving such an amount using an online wallet or a less secure technique, then he must have experienced such a set back long ago. However, it's bad to kick a fallen man. He still gets my benefit of doubt. I'd say that people should take custody of their decision. No one should be blamed for saying what they don't practice. It could be their decision. A lot of people still promote what they do not use.

This makes me feel somewhat ill....I have felt the feeling of being hacked so I know exactly what it is like, but to lose 25 BTC at this period of time in the world could be a potentially life changing outcome. This will stay with him for life.

One thing I am in complete agreement about is the use of cold storage vs. hardware. I'm not sure why this guy had not just set up a paper wallet or an encrypted drive with the pk in it, and protected it as well as a backup. After all, it is over a million dollars.

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I'm going to take yet another opportunity to campaign for the need for a cyber security & privacy board to help members of our community learn and protect from these kinds of scenarios.

No cybersecurity measures = increased vulnerability to being hacked/theft
No privacy = increased vulnerability to targeting

These topics are directly relevant to Bitcoin, if you think these topics should be on a board in this forum:
Discuss here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5434404) | Vote here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5462155)

Some people looks for sympathy to get moral support or for donation, only the person knows the reason behind his action.  About people looking for sympathy in order to get some financial support from their listener, it happens everywhere. We have seen people do that, not only online but in the street as well.  Others are even knocking on every person's door to ask for help while presenting that they are in distress and in need but I am sure most of them are just modus operandi to trick people.

I don't say that this person do this stunt to get money from its viewer but if there is a donation address posted on it, then it is clearly the case but it seems the person story is real since he is not asking for any donations or whatever that will benefit him financially.

I believe he is sharing the story in good faith, that people will learn from his experience and learn to secure their financial account properly that hacking incident will have a very slim chance of happening.