Bitcoin Forum

The reason why i outline that security is one the most  important thing or objective that a beginner in cryptocurrency journey should know as one of the major key is that , my friend who bought a Bitcoin with the savings does not know that trust wallet seed phrase which some people called "private key" is very important, he bought a Bitcoin that worth two thousand dollars and he never knew that his seed phrase have to keep in secret and he wrote his seed phrase on paper and drop it on his table after two months he started looking for the paper were he wrote his seed phrase where he login his trust wallet and two thousand worth of Bitcoin in his wallet is  not to be found, its there i noticed that security is highly important in Bitcoin and right now im of very observant and careful with any that concerns security mostly cryptocurrencies.i am a newbie and i will like to tell my fellow newbies to be security conscious of things that relates with Bitcoin because its a decentralized currency.

I don't understand the story. Are you saying that he set up his wallet at home, left the phrase on his table and another family member found it, knew what it was and used it to steal his money?
Is 1k a lot of money to your friend, because the story suggests it isn't. I find $1k to e a decent amount of money, enough to buy a computer or 2 sets of tires for your car (summer and winter), or a pistol, if you're into guns... I wouldn't invest 1k in something that I don't understand.

Your friend's problem is not lack of security but negligence and carelessness. You don't need proper security to put your seed phrase in a "safe" place, like inside a book, or an encrypted file on your computer.
In my early days when my bitcoin wasn't worth a lot of money I used to keep my private keys in renamed txt files hidden somewhere on my computer. I'd take a normal text file, change the extension into something like "infinity.dll" and hide it somewhere. That's not proper security, but still many times better than some people, who store these on gmail accounts, cloud servers, or password managers.

There two things that could have happened to your friend, first is his wallet might have been compromised through phishing attacks or any attacker, this is achievable without the hacker having access to the offline seed phrase. If it is then the physical seed phrase that was used to get access to the wallet then I wouldn’t call your friend’s case a case of lack of knowledge but carelessness because when creating a wallet every wallet even trustwallet will tell you the importance of seed phrase and that you shouldn’t let anyone have access to it.

upon creating a wallet the app will remind the user how important the seed phrase is afaik. i think your friend knows how important it was so he wrote it. it however just flew out of his mind how to keep it out of someone else sight. when it comes to money, it shouldn't be left alone on top of his desk.

it took him 2 months to come looking for it.  a person who knows what a seed phrase looks like may try to import a wallet for himself to withdraw so he best be cautious about it.

if he is still logged on to his trust wallet, can't he see it from there to write it again?

Security is important in every cases, no matter what investment you make physical or virtual, if you don't have good knowledge about security or if you can't make your investment security, then there is a high possibility of facing loss. Did your friend really not know about the importance of seed phrase? If not, why would he write it on the paper? Anyway, if there is such indifference, then this kind of situation has to be faced again and again.
Moreover, I would like to say another thing that only seed phrases or private key protection does not mean that you have been able to fully protect your fund. Because there is another issue here is that your wallet gets hacked, many times new users keep their funds on the device they browse unsafely, in this case, they are victims of phishing. So, to fully secure your fund, you have to turn off unrestrained browsing. Moreover, it is always better to use cold wallet for holding. You can visit this topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5288971.0) if you want, And later you can suggest your friend.

Security is very important, but I will tell you that this story looks frictional because if he left his seed phase on the table and lost the seed phase and later found it again just to login to find out he lost his bitcoin, defiantly the bitcoin was stolen by one of his family members or his friends. This happens as a result of his carelessness. If not, how can you buy bitcoin worth two thousand dollars and keep your seed phase careless? So I will like to recommend and add to your post to say that instead of encouraging a beginner in bitcoin to know more about the security of his wallet and his private key, he will also not be too lazy to learn and perform educational research, and most importantly, he shouldn’t be as careless as your friend who misplaced his private key intentionally.

It is carelessness that your friend keeps the seed phrase anywhere even on a table that many people see while other people who know it might just be a waste paper and might just throw it away.
So where we have to be very important to store seed phrases safely and not be careless because this involves such a large asset, if your friend doesn't find his seed phrase then he will lose his assets forever.
About security we already know how to anticipate and keep well, there is even a thread where how to keep the seed phrase safely and well, again it goes back to them on how to do it.

Op I think you need to take your time to go through your story then consider how interesting it is because I find your stories to be very far from the truth,  I mean how will someone wake up and decide to buy Bitcoin that is worth $2k without knowing what seed phrase is all about? The most funny thing is that he don't know anything about seed phrase but he wrote it down and kept it on the table why did he keep it on the table and how does he know that the seed phrase needs to be written down since he has no idea what it is about. I think op needs to come up with something reasonable because I believe technology is everywhere now even a layman will understand the importance of seed phrase before getting a wallet.

Very expensive lessons to learn, although I could be playing devil advocate here and say that this story is hard to believed. I mean someone writes something, even if it is not a private key, then drop it like that?

In any case I would agree that definitely security is very important. Some of us really learn it the hard way like your friend as our wallets could have been hack because we might have backup our mnemonic phrase and private key in the cloud and online. One thing though is how your friends go and invest with that huge amount of money without learning what Bitcoin is?

Seems to me that there are more questions here.

Firstly, when it comes to online platforms that require most of our personal information or for business or invest purposes, it is good to observe even the basic security protocol, which could be just using passwords, authentication and other notifications.

For a BTC or cryptocurrency investor who has some funds in a wallet or intends to acquire some, using good wallets mostly offline wallets with key phrases, should be safely  kept secure from prying eyes and criminals.

Without a secure wallet or secure asset location, there won't be a need to want to keep up with an investment plan or even portfolio, because why bother when hackers or anyone close could easily have access and make away with the funds?

The beginner of the bitcoin have to know about the security features of the bitcoin,So he can save their money in the bitcoin without the knowledge of the other people like your friend did to yourself.The important thing in the bitcoin is the  trader of bitcoin should safeguard of their private key.So he won’t loss their saving bitcoin in the future,the better way to hold bitcoin will be holding in the reputed exchanges like binance.If you are going to buy bitcoin for more than 1k dollars,you should use the cold wallet to store the bitcoins and for the safety of the bitcoin.

The bitcoin wallet will have the phase and the private key,the trader should spend some time to save the both phase and private key of the wallet in separate sheet.It’s essential to keep many copy of that spreadsheet to your mail and to the personal computer backup hard disk.

FYI Private keys and seed phrase are not the same thing. 

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$2k worth of bitcoins lost due to negligence is disheartening. It’s even more sad that your spent his savings on bitcoins only to lose it all two months later. Two things I noticed from this tale;

First your friend isn’t very knowledgeable on bitcoin yet he spent his savings investing in bitcoin. Which makes me believe he didn’t follow the “invest only what you can afford to lose” rule.

Secondly, $2k is not a small amount of money and must mean a lot to your friend. Unfortunately he made the dire  mistake of not storing his seed phrase properly. I think he only wrote it down because the wallet required him to write it down and type it again when creating the wallet.

Well now that you have know that to secure ones private key is important through the experience of watching your friend, what were the practical steps you took to avoid the same mistakes. You should know that your friend is still at risk if he goes ahead to create another Trust Wallet account. I had expected you to write that you learned from your friend and read up on ways to store your seed phrase safely. That you read about wallet security, clipboard malware, and the other many security risks that poses a threat to the safety of our bitcoins.

What are we talking about here?  This person does not need a backup (seed) phrase to access his Trust wallet. Unless he somehow lost his passcode or his smartphone completely, and  that would be really stupid if he had deposited a significant amount of money into such wallet.  

Also, the backup phrase is not the same thing as a private key.  Those are two distinct terms that should not be used interchangeably.

Your friend has simply ignored the importance of security and allowed the money he has invested in bitcoin to be stolen as a result of his carelessness. Your friend may not have sufficient knowledge of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but he would have been warned while setting up the wallet that the seed phrase should not be shared with anyone.

He is a "I don't care friend," and this will teach him a lesson in the future. $2K is a significant sum of money that will be felt mentally when stolen; I am sorry for your friend, but his carelessness is to blame. He should get a new wallet and forget the old one this time, he should get a self custodian wallet like Electrum or Bluewallet to save money.

OP, you must understand that we are not talking about security when you leave your seed for the world to see.
It's like if you had a car and invested in GPS tracking and the best alarm system out there, but you'd leave it outside unlocked with keys in the ignition.
You could have the best hardware wallet and a security safe to keep it in and then leave a piece of paper with recovery seed outside the safe.
No security measures will work when you're stupid.

Sorry will be the name of any investor who trivializes their security either through carelessness, or ignorance.

 The careless and less security conscious individuals will have lots of regrets with bitcoins because of poor security practice that can result to loss and theft of investment. Knowing how to secure your bitcoins after buying is not lesser in importance than were to acquire it. There are many people who are not interested in using their own money to buy bitcoins, but looking for how and where to steal from.

Yes, it's $2k worth of investment, how can be someone as careful as the OP's friend? For us it's a huge amount of money already, and others it could be just a dream that we can invest that much and then protect it at all cost.

Although there's no one to blame but your friend because of his carelessness or probably he is ignorant. That's why we said that bitcoin investment is a BYOB (Be your Own Bank). So at least you should learn and know how to protect it. And talking about security, just search everything about it in this community and maybe you can give a piece of advice to your friend to not make the same mistakes if ever he will invest on bitcoin again.

How people jumping to other side without knowing what's in there. People could at least read even a little on how bitcoin works before buying it.

@OP securing your bitcoin won't just stop on keeping your seed phrase safe. No matter how secured your locker where your paper backup is, if your device is full of malware, unsecure and having bad practice of sending bitcoin. At the end of the day it will be the same.

Your friend is careless and he is careless as ihis habit. I don't need to know a seed phrase is important to keep it safe and in a secret place. I do this with my bank accounts and I am sure will do the same with other accounts that store my money.

If your friend does not know that a seed phrase is important, why he wrote it down, it is unnecessary step if seed phrase is useless.

Security checklist (https://chainsec.io/checklist/)
How to back up a seed phrase? (https://blog.lopp.net/how-to-back-up-a-seed-phrase/)
Wallet basics (https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information/recommended-wallets.html)

Negligence and ignorance could lead you down a hole you wouldn’t get out of very easily and not without some scares to tell your story.
The process of wallet creation does put these warnings to you but, without someone to fully emphasis on what is and what could be the case in various scenarios that could lead to the need of that seed phrase or private key and what it is capable of archiving in the wrong hands, it might as well be taken lightly as in OP.

The “not your key, not your coin” phrase isn’t always enough but, one needs to realize that, your capable of loosing everything without any chance of recovery of you ain’t got the keys.

Bitcoin is open source and verifiable by just anyone. Anyone could easily scan your wallet and know what it contains and for a fact, you’ve got to secure the key of that wallet in such a way that, it is of zero existence to everyone else except you!

So to reduce vulnerabilities and other malicious actions, do not publicize about your Bitcoin or crypto asset holdings to the public,
because it will be very dangerous and become a source where people start stalking you.

Many influencers implement good security, and even they are very skeptical of the security of their wallets.
But in the end they experienced a hack on wallets that had many assets with estimates of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It's not enough to just secure the keys to your wallet, it's also important not to be too arrogant about publishing what you have because it will be a lure for criminals who will stalk and attack you at any time.

Sometimes, too much you are worried about these centralized exchanges will screw your Bitcoin on their exchanges, the more risk your Bitcoin became.  I'm not telling that using own wallets is bad, but we just really need to be cautious and be aware of what we are doing because it will really screw us and will give us a problem.

Still confused with your story how possibility bitcoin not found in your friend trustwallet although have input with right seed phrase, I think beside save seed phrase don't forget to save your bitcoin address and tracking there easily if have any transaction. I doubt with wrong seed phrase and there are not found yet with bitcoin fund in trustwallet account. Regarding your friend secure seed phrase is very good technique and I doubt with bitcoin not fund yet in trustwallet but you need input carefully with seed phrase when have one words wrong will potential change the trustwallet account. To make it coherence you need the save with bitcoin address and check it the same with your friend bitcoin address or not.

In trustwallet not any security added like save bitcoin in the exchange account need to input 2FA code until email verification, actually if some one have access with your friend wallet and loss worth $2,000 better check bitcoin address explore are there have transaction of bitcoin or not?

The number one problem with your friend is that he invested in something right away even if he doesn't understand it yet. That's not uncommon especially when it comes to Bitcoin or crypto. There are so many newbies who are just attracted by the price growth that they immediately buy without even understanding the basics. This is the only reason I see. Otherwise, how can somebody who really knows Bitcoin doesn't know that a seed phrase is to be kept in secret? That's very basic. Those who are too eager to buy Bitcoin shouldn't miss it.

Is off no use by achieving it because I know quite well that achieving such is not important again because what we are looking at for the achievement is the two thousand dollars worth of bitcoin in the wallet, so it's very clear and very understanding that the bitcoin in that particular wallet has being used or transferred to another wallet and as the bitcoin is being transferred to another wallet they will swap it so that it will not be find anyway, so I think we have to understand that properly, actually what op said concerning security is very important mostly the new people in bitcoin doesn't know that seed phrase is very important

That's not about security, your friend is just fucking dumb since he publicize his own password.

Do you think it's clever to write your Bitcointalk username and password, then throw it away to everywhere you want?

This is why before try something, one should understand and learn what he do to prevent about this case may happen due to carelesss.

Careless
Dumb
Lucky

but it starts with his carelessness first.

How do you safely keep your recovery phrase written on paper? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5407326.0)

That careless person was lucky because his Mom found this, not a bad person not a stranger. It is one of worse practices to lose bitcoins.

Avoid these mistakes or lose your bitcoin (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/avoid-these-mistakes-or-lose-your-bitcoin)

• The laptop flew away
• The not-so-secret phrase
• The unlucky hard drive
• The fake give away
• The coffee shop arbitrage

If you are careful, read those common mistakes and avoid them. I made some mistakes too, such as storing my passwords online, in my Dropbox accounts, but after a few years in cryptocurrency, read many warnings and advice, I stopped doing this years ago too.

Online accounts on third party platforms should never be safe places to store a wallet, wallet seed phrase, private keys or passwords.

Do all of it offline!

I agree with you that publishing your bitcoins to everyone will provoke criminals to try to hack your wallet, that's the thing that most people avoid, at least keep it quiet and safe without anyone having to know, except for family, another thing is using 2FA security.  That's the most important thing, for example email, your cell phone, laptop and anything related to your assets on digital devices.

This is another example of those who learned in the bitter way, I wonder how we have to be careless about our money, particularly if the money is big enough like this in context. Your friend is to be blamed here, it's not the wallet, and it's not hacking, I guess he must have carelessly left the paper in a place where others with Bitcoin experience got to see it and make the sharp move against him. To make matters worse, he might have written the wallet (Trustwallet) that the seed phrases are meant for, which I will never advise anyone to do but to code it for people not to know what they are actually meant for.

Even the seedphrase, it's better that we code it well so that it will not be useful for anyone using it without our permission. This story is actually painful to me because money is not easy to come by, your friend should have been smarter than that. This is why I advise anyone trying to do something that involves money to know all it takes to be safe in it, and not rely on their usual understanding or belief. By this, it could be carelessly handled just like the other patterns of their lives in most cases.

Safety is important in every case. If you keep money in a bank, you will look for adequate security there, if you invest, look for an investment platform with more security, if you go somewhere, look for a good and safe hotel, that is, everywhere our security is given the most importance. If we are apathetic about security when it comes to investing in bitcoins, then we need to take maximum security then invest in bitcoins and try to hold on to that investment. Hardware wallets are considered as the most secure wallets and investors prefer to use such wallets. Exchange wallet is not safe now because this exchange has cheated us and money laundering cases are going on in the name of some exchange ie if for some reason exchanges cheat people again then the loss will be ours. Considering all these things we must be careful and take safety measures.

Although I have mentioned this story many times before, it seems that it will continue to be repeated as a misconception about investing for many people. It will be quite similar to a child learning to ride a bicycle, he must learn the most basic things to be proficient, and it will take a lot of time for him to be able to control the bike as he wants, and with the right tools. Smart people will make things happen faster.

Back to the problem, security is like a way to equip the owner with safety, but it does not mean safety is guaranteed. For newbies, they encounter many problems with asset management, and make more wrong judgments about investing. They are easily informed about opportunities to start without foreseeing the consequences, and the element of luck is attached when people refuse to accept learning. If it's just keeping the private key, seed phrase, etc., there are thousands of different ways, even if people intend to bury it with death. But remember, it's important to re-understand how it works and reconsider what you're looking for with what you have.

2FA will not help completely, even the security can be hacked easily by the Xenomorph Malware that was splashed a few months ago.
The most secure ones now use hardware wallets that are not connected to the internet.
https://www.threatfabric.com/blogs/xenomorph

The use of mobile wallets will be quite vulnerable because they are always connected to the internet, therefore do not use the main wallet on your mobile,
just store it in a hardware wallet and it will avoid malware and other dangers.

I don't know about you, but I have gotten the slight impression this thread as started by some kind of artificial intelligence or something.
Anyways, keeping that aside...
I believe that saying Bitcoin is about security or that security is important when comes to Bitcoin and Bitcoin holding is a huge understatement. This whole ecosystem is built on the fact people is supposed to take their personal and financial security on their own hands, and so, one is the sole responsible for their money.

If Security was not as important within this ecosystem, people would not even bother to invest money in buying hardware wallets or an additional Computer to be able to sign transactions in an airgspped environment, among other measures. Now even mention that one is not supposed to disclose one's holding to people one does not trust. The whole experience of holding Bitcoin could be taking as a lesson on financial, electronic and personal security/preservation.

Like many of us in the crypto world, your story hits close to home. People should always be very careful with their own safety in the world of Bitcoin. Now, as we move towards decentralised banking, we also move away from traditional safety netts. What if something goes wrong? There's no bank to call, right? In light of this, it is very important to understand the significance of a seed sentence. You might lose your wealth if you lose the key to your digital vault.

A friend of mine lost access to their Ethereum wallet because they forgot their seed phrase. Unfortunately, it was very sad, but it taught us a lot. Like the keys to our house, we need to be very careful with our computer keys. People who are new to crypto should think of it as their introduction: they will learn how to put security first. The duty that comes with being financially independent is more than just keeping your assets safe.

You both need to learn a lot about Bitcoin, I believe you are also lacking, because you should know that recovery seed is always available in the wallet even after you wrote it down, its not gone until he uninstalled the crypto wallet from his phone or PC.

If the phone is stolen or lost and he can't find where he wrote down the recovery seed then there is a big problem, tell him to go into trust wallet and find his recovery seed in there.

Tell him to go to settings inside trust wallet and click on wallets, there will be three dots by the right side of his smartphone and tell him to click on that he will get option to manually backup his recovery seed again, viola , he got his key back.

Security is key as regards crypto account for guide against theft but your friend was only negligent for losing paper he wrote his details on though I understand where you are coming from trying to emphasize more of securing crypto details for teaming newbies but newbies should first understand fundamentals of cryptocurrency before dabbling into it.

Did you bring your friend into Bitcoin or someone else? Unfortunately this is from where your friend learnt. I am sure that he/she wasn’t able to purchase the bitcoin all by themselves so that means someone helped them, and whoever it is has most of the blame to take because I think they didn’t emphasize well enough for him/her that private key and mnemonic phrase is the access to one’s wallet. Also, your friend is careless because your wrote it down, dropped it on the table (can even keep it carefully even if not with the fact he didn’t keep it secretly), and when it was time to login, he has to start looking for the paper. That’s sad. I hope you’ve taught your friend as much as you know. They can join this forum to learn even more from people with more experience.

Is there no one who reminds him of security and where he knows Bitcoin so that he can be this carelessly. That is why beginners are not recommended first to invest before he understands the basic things that need to be learned in Bitcoin, two thousand is not small money in my country and it is big enough for beginners to take the approach in Bitcoin. Personal seed/key phrase is important enough to be kept secret and stored because people can access our wallets if they know.

Hopefully it will be an important lesson for anyone at the beginning of entering the investment because carelessness or ignorance can have a negative impact on people who are negligent and anyone who is involved in Bitcoin must have knowledge and not force themselves as your friends do. No one can describe whether or not your whole story is true, but that is an important lesson that must be watched out by everyone.

A good way to keep the private key is through a text file and change the extension, but it is not the best way of course. In any case, it is not wise to talk about this method in public forums because you will draw the attention of hackers to try to find such files and examine them to obtain the private key.

It is also better to use an encryption program to encrypt the file so that hackers cannot open it even if they find it, or to use a Word file instead of a text file and encrypt it with a strong password and change the extension so that the file type is not known.

It's funny when you lose money because of your carelessness and negligence and you try to blame the person who introduced you to bitcoin. If you are truly passionate and responsible with your assets, then after being introduced to bitcoin you can learn more about bitcoin yourself right on the internet. Why don't you do that and just wait for others to remind you when it's your own money?
If they don't introduce bitcoin to you then you blame them for being selfish and greedy, and if you lose money or lose money because of your ignorance then you blame them for introducing bitcoin to you. We are all adults so we have to be responsible for what we do, don't blame others when we fail.

Not only secure storage in that sense but also online security. People are careless in what they do online, they click on links sent in phishy emails and don't have good data hygene when it comes to things like that. Most people don't really do much research also sadly which results in these lost funds etc. It is a shame, sorry for your friend but this is his own doing from sheer neglect.

It means that your friend are unfamiliar with the knowledge about bitcoin and he just buy it without realising that what is important for it to continue bitcoin investment. Just buying bitcoin does not mean that you become wealthy but if you keep it save longer then you can do what you want and without security one cannot keep his bitcoin save.
Another thing is your friend write private keys on a paper and leave it on a table which means that he was not serious about his money and one cannot get profit until he become serious about his money.

In such situations there is no fault of hacker but your friend is totally faulty because one who invest in bitcoin learn all the things about hackers, stealing of money and issue about forgetting keys but after learning such things if he did this then it is his big blunder.

After reading your post it seems like what your friend did was completely stupid as he did not protect the privacy of the wallet where he kept his invested bitcoins.I don't understand why he would write down his wallet key on paper when he could have it on his phone or PC or computer as a PDF.
There is a saying in cryptocurrency language that, Not your keys, Not your coins
Visit the link:
How to Back Up a Seed Phrase visit this link (https://blog.lopp.net/how-to-back-up-a-seed-phrase/)

Security is the most important thing of all things, if security is not applied then the thing will never be secure. In order to keep your bitcoins safe when you invest bitcoins, you must use a secure wallet. When you invest bitcoins and keep them in a wallet you must collect keys to keep that wallet safe. As long as you can keep those keys in a safe place then your money will be saved otherwise there will be fear and risk of losing money. The first thing you need to do is save the keys to your Bitcoin investment wallet and keep them in a safe place. If you lose this key, you will definitely risk money and the possibility of losing it, and if you lose your wallet, you will not be able to recover it later. That's why security is the most important thing before you invest, so keep your wallet keys in a safe place before you invest Bitcoin.

Yes, security is very important, and that is what everyone has to take so seriously first, especially in the cryptocurrency industry. I believe security is the first thing everyone should learn when it comes to the cryptocurrency industry. I will just say that Bitcoin is all about security because it really talks about someone's privacy, so I don't know why someone will just invest in Bitcoin without knowing much about security, but just after the profits,the person has gotten it wrong. Someone can be lucky to make thousands of dollars in profits, but if the person refuses to provide the fund with proper security, it will likely easily lose everything. So newbies like me should know that security should be the first thing they should not play with in the crypto industry.

Text file? Even if you change its extension, anyone could change it. It's very easy, not to brag, but if you work in IT or information technology, changing the extension of the text file or any file will not help because if someone gets that file, they can easily convert it and access it.

But using an encryption programme is the best option, as it's not easily hacked if they don't have the encryption key, and it will also encrypt not just the password but the content as well, so even if they can decode the password, they still can't read and use the contents. The best way to secure private keys is by memorising them if you can, because nothing can remain inside your mind. Well, it's impossible always because there's a limit for human minds, so I guess the safety of private keys will depend on how much we can secure them; it depends on us, the owners.

Well, whenever we talk about any valuable things we directly mention the security of that thing because we know that this is valuable and someone will try to steal this and for that, we make a safe in our house to keep it safe. The same is the case with Bitcoin, even if a child knows about the worth of Bitcoin then how you can be so careless about Bitcoin security? Security is not to save the thing from others but instead, security is to keep that thing under your observation. Writing the private key on a page and leaving it on a table What kind of security is this? I called this a big stupidity and careless person who even did not care about his assets. This is a lesson for him and the next time he will be more serious about the security.

Even people who are too skeptical about security prefer all security, but in the end they get stuck and suddenly all the security is useless and the wallet can be broken into by hackers.

Moreover, just writing on paper and ignoring it.
Maybe it's a simple offline method, but it will be easily damaged and won't last long.

There are many backup seeds made of stainless metal that can be purchased at a fairly affordable price.
Just need to choose which one is more suitable and safer.

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/12/15/Efoql.md.png (https://www.talkimg.com/image/Efoql)
https://thebitcoinhole.com/seed-backup

OP, I advise you to give your story a good narration and direction, it has been said severally that before some could think of investing in Bitcoin or crypto currency in general, such person should know the basics, which only you should be aware of your private keys or seed phrase as name may be, so if this is real, your friend failed to maintain the basics, he was reluctant, yes, Bitcoin is for everyone but mainly for careful minded people, Bitcoin is very sensitive, those wallet was created for the users to safeguard their coin which every user is aware of, in the case of your friend he has failed to abide by the rules, I know that mistake occurs no doubt but this is very expensive one.

We cannot blame other people for the mistakes we have made and we also have to be responsible for the assets we have and have to look after them well. It is important for everyone who invests to really study it well to be able to look after the assets they invest in and Don't let them blame other people when they experience failure in the investments they make.
I agree with what you say, we must be responsible about the investments we have made and if we don't really understand it, it would be better for us to learn about it first so that we don't experience failure in the investments we make.

Of course anyone can change the file extension, but the idea of changing the file extension is just to make it unattractive. Hackers usually look for text files, Word files, or files with the .dat extension, so you give the file an unattractive extension like (.dll, .sys) Or any extension for system files. Of course, there are thousands of these files in the computer, and the hacker will not try to convert the extension of all these files because it will take a very long time.

It is better, of course, as I mentioned, to change the extension and encrypt the file. Thus, until it is found, it will be difficult to open it. In any case, this method is not completely safe, but it may be useful temporarily until the seed or private key is saved correctly on a metal plate or something Similar.

The same way that someone will take all reasonable precautions to protect their assets, particularly physical ones, you should prioritize the security of your assets, especially if you have made significant investments. If additional security training is required, you should do so because if someone should find out that you own anything, they will target you. This is a very good lesson to learn if you are just starting out and need to add security and privacy to your classes. Even if anyone is after the profits then security should not be a problem then because no one will want to joke with their business.

People will continue to fall for these scams despite any advise you give, and if they learn from their testimony, others will too. Individuals who don't take security seriously are likened to someone who opens a gate to a robber.

We need to blame our own self for our mistakes. This is one of the reasons why we need to learn about the security of Bitcoin and how to keep our Bitcoin asset safe from getting mishandle which can make our loses everything if we are unfortunate. Cryptocurrency has both advantages and disadvantages but we must be ready to understand what could  lead to the disadvantages and the level of the gravity. There are many investors that had lost there Bitcoin because of carelessness in handling their coins. Learning safety precautions as an investor is important because this will safe us from carelessness that could result in a big lose.

It is not recommended to store your seed phrase in your phone or as a pdf, that is such as unsafe method of backing up your seed phrase and it is very easy for an attacker to compromise it and steal your funds. You should back up your seed phrase on paper, but you must also have good opsec to store it in a place where nobody can find it. You can also add extra layers of security like a passphrase or setting up a multisig wallet, this will give you better security of your funds.

Well, your friend had the right Ideas but wasn't security careful. After writing out your sensitive information like private key, seed phrase, the next step would be to secure that information very well so it doesn't get into a third party hands. Another thing you friend did wrong was using a closed source wallet. Alot of users are getting introduced to the industry wrongly because of the huge presence of centralized service providers like Exchange, and wallet owned by this CEX.

Trust wallet although it's comfortably to used, isn't the most recommended wallet to use as the affair of the wallet isn't fully decentralized. Bitcoin gives the power of your finances into your hands and not having an intermediate as we do with our local fiats so you're responsible for your money. With this responsibility you should take the security of your money very serious. We have to ensure there are multiple security measures to the protection of our Bitcoin and one of the ways of ensuring hackers don't get access to them is to use a non constodial wallet and store our information off the net.

Using a hardware wallet is the most recommended way of storing Bitcoin but that doesn't mean you can't use a good recommended online wallets on an air gapped device. What matters most is how good you store your seed phrase and keep your device clean off viruses and malwares.

Actually, the discussion about wallet security has been discussed very often and indeed in the end we always come to the same point by saying that this is something very important.
For me, this is the basic thing or if this is compared to a building then this is the basic foundation in order to strengthen the building that we will occupy.
Security keys are very important and we should not mess with this, because indeed if in the end the foundation we build is not strong then do not expect the building to stand well as well as here when we are negligent and underestimate your security key or seed then indeed do not expect more with the portopolio that you store in your wallet.

What is difficult to understand is why people keep treating their coins in this way? Why it is so difficult for so many people to just write their seed words and keep them safe? After all it is not as if this is something they have never done, as there are many documents, money and other valuables that we have to secure and we can do it without a problem, so why when it comes to their seed words people fail so miserably when they know very well that without those seed words they could lose access to whatever money is in that wallet.

He bought on an exchange and there's no private keys in exchanges because that's normal as they are custodial wallets as well.
But not having the idea of having a private key while creating a wallet is such a negligence on that person's end.
You invest money, the hard earned you have made and you never did any research what these are for. It is understandable but a mistake that's going to teach an expensive lesson for everyone who miss it out.

He can just charge it as an expensive lesson that he will always remember by.
Sometimes we all need to experience something awful in life just to stick a life lesson that you will keep to yourself in a lifetime.
And do note that in this market, even if we did our part, research and all, we still can't guarantee that we won't suffer any kind of loss.
This is the risk part of going into any market, you can only diminish its impact if you will use your extra funds.

If you cannot take care of your security in Bitcoin then forget about investing here , remember that there is only one bridge from you and your coin and that is the private key in which needed most of the security so if your key cannot be protected then what is the sense being here?
I once have lost protection of my key that brings me to losing fund so will never let this happen again and will make sure to have my keys secure all the time .

That of your friend is so careless and negligence to things that matters. But I believe that has thought him and others who had heard of Such some lessions. However, I feel sorry for him and hope he and others have learnt their lessions out of such. Next time when relying his phrase hardware savings he should always have it stored in more than two locations and must be kept secretive.
He can also store his phrase keys in a software where there is no probabilities of forgetting its password or any form of electronic devices where he can also store his phrases and get reach to it easily.

It should be as much as possible to protect both, from securing the seed phrase and the device in possession (PC) but this is clearly the carelessness of his friend who stored the seed phrase carelessly, if not found then did not have access to the wallet.

Yes not only where to store lockers as a backup but we must also be able to avoid malware viruses on our computers, usually avoid downloading unclear sources and always check always from a definite source if you want to install from our device.

At its core we must be able to store properly and not be careless.

That's how things goes, you have to experienced it before you learned from it, it's very effective, the same time too expensive lesson.
Although it's way better if you take others experience as a lesson to avoid such things.
I never have such experience here in this space, although i have different past experiences to get some lessons too.

Some people don't bother to read instructions or manuals, they go straight to business and download, they're only concerned about memorizing and safekeeping their passwords. If it's the case with OP's friend, then he's is a matter of negligence, because if he had taken the time to read through details while opening the new wallet, definitely he'd have known the importance of seed phrase in wallets. I guess he has learned the hard way because $2000k is a lot of money to lose because of ignorance, let it be a lesson to newbies to be security conscious when opening wallets and when transacting cryptocurrencies.

These things doesn’t just affect only bitcoin but whatever that has to do with money ought to be kept and handle with extra caution and what happened to your friend is a bad one and these should also serve as a wake up call to everyone as to the importance of safeguarding our seedphrase as no one will be held responsible in cases like this.
I’m so about the case with your friend but there are several other ways we could secure our seedphrase which even includes backing it up.

very unfortunate for your friend. The story seems strange to me because the first thing we understand is to keep our phrase in a safe place. Surely someone must have told him when he was buying BTC that you have to keep the phrase first. I think the reason for this is not ignorance but carelessness. From this story, I concluded that he watched a YouTuber's video because an experienced crypto mentor will never suggest Trustwallet for storing bitcoin. Electrum is the best choice for BTC when using a hot wallet.

By the way, security is the first thing. Keeping the phrase in a safe place , keeping the wallet device safe from malware are some initial steps for any holder, regardless of whether they are a newbie or an experienced crypto user.

Experience will teach us a lesson but I hope that it's not that expensive for the majority of the newbies that are trying to learn and get familiar with the market.

Extra funds or not, as long as you're willing to lose them. That's the phrase that we use to say because it's not for those who likes assurance because this market is volatile so as bitcoin.

The private key or seed is the key to accessing the wallet - if you don't have the key then it's not your bitcoin.
Everyone should keep it a secret from everyone – even from your own family. Dropping it accidentally is an undesirable mistake - but when your friend puts it down on paper then I'm sure he cares about the safety of his assets. The problem here is not Bitcoin's iffy security, but rather pure user negligence.

Excuse but did your friend have any idea about what he was doing? How could someone even think about leaving the seed phrase written on a piece of paper (first big mistake) and then leave it on a table? This story doesn't make any sense, either you're making this up or, sorry to say this, your friend is extremely stupid and careless. Would you ever leave your credit card or bank account details on a table? I don't think so.

If not reading this from you now that you have lost your pass to your Bitcoin once, I found it hard to believe when I read it online. Because as adults, I believe there should be some sort of seriousness in our dealings, not that we do things anyhow to the extent that we lose the pass to our asset's room, that's the height of it as far as I'm concerned. Besides, it's good to know how Bitcoin privacy and security work and the distinctions between the custodial and non-custodial wallets should have made anyone know how to go about their wallet securities. For custodial arrangements, one can still be careless with it and still get to recover their funds with the help of the company involved, which is the main advantage of custodial arrangements.

But those who are using the self-custody arrangement should know better, they must know that they are the banks of themselves, so they should not have been careless about it. I heard some stories of how people misplaced their millions of dollars through the self-custody arrangement but it still baffled me if it's really true as it shows how careless some people could be, as most think that everything informal should be careless about. No wonder they pay bitterly for it.

It is not recommended to store your seed phrase electronically, and anything stored online is prone to hacking. When storing your seed phrase, what should be at the back of your mind isn't convenience and ease of reach, but your security. Large amounts of BTC should be stored in a hardware wallet or in an airgapped device, and the seed phrase should be backed up on paper and stored safely in more than one location.

For me not just in Bitcoin but everything that would involve our money, banks, online wallets and even exchanges or trading sites.
Without security we are just risking our money by putting it on to their system, we need to secure our asset or money.
It is hard for me to trust some online wallet specially if their system has already been breached before that cost their customers to lost their money, but we should also be responsible to secure our accounts.

as fictional as this may sound, their is a whole lot of thing to learn from this story. Some of us are always too casual with important things and are used to keeping things that are of valuable anyhow and whenever we are in a situation that requires usbto use it urgently, that's when we start searching everywhere and when we run out of luck sometimes, we start blaming it on people staying with us.

Your private key is as valuable as any amount of bitcoin you've accumulated in your wallet and as much as you see your accumulated bitcoin as a big deal, you should see you private key as same.

I think their was a suggestion someone gave under a thread that it's better we write our private key into a number of copies and save it at different location we visit very often so in the event that we loose access to one, we can easily go to the next location to retrieve it. I find this very wise because apart from misplacing your private key, incident could happen like wire outbreak that can burn down your property and your key might be among things burnt down, you don't want to be a victim do you?

It's surprising how careless some people can be with their money. I mean, how in the world would you not know that something private, which you are asked to keep safe and secure when creating an account, can be kept in the open that too in a public place or a place where people come and go, even if it's a private room or something, one shouldn't be this careless with their money, earning money is a difficult thing, at least for most people. Some people make mistakes that make you wonder how reckless they are.

Not only Bitcoin, but finances and money are not for people who can't safely store and manage them well. You can't keep your debit or credit card along with its pin somewhere public and then expect that it won't be taken and no one would take the money out, of course, they will, you have offered it to them.

If the device you are using to store the seed phrase is never connected online then it's not necessarily a bad thing. Of course there is the problem that it could breakdown and in that case you either have a backup or you need to hope that you can somehow recover the information. Probably a mix of electronically and physical backup is the best choice. But I repeat, never connect to internet the device.

This is the height of carelessness and stupidity. What was he thinking? Even if he was leaving alone, what will it cost him to hide the seed phrase somewhere out of the reach of preying eyes. If your story is true, then a friend who has knowledge about cryptocurrency must have seen it and stolen the Bitcoin. The second golden rule is never make the same mistake twice, so next time, he's going to learn from his mistake and be very careful with his seed phrase.

Wallets right now are more user/beginner friendly, in which they can also have that notice on how important it is to secure our seed phrases before we create our wallet. So, I don't believe your friend when he says that he don't know that seed phrases are very important.

After your friend dropped the paper which contains a seed phrase to his wallet, it's possible that someone that has a knowledge on crypto found it and stole the coins inside it. Did you asked him on which place he dropped it? Was it on their house only? Office, or somewhere? 2 months is long.

So, maybe the coins were already spent. I guess the best thing that he can do is just move on and take this as an expensive lesson. 

2000USD in my country is quite a large amount. So if someone tries to invest with that amount then I am quite sure the people here will first study and make basic research. About wallets and also about how to secure them. So I am so surprised by your friend who is careless in terms of security. But I hope he learns a lesson from this incident and becomes more careful. And hopefully beginners here will also take lessons from this story. Because sometimes these basic things are the most important to learn and be reminded of. In fact, currently there are Hot Wallets that can allow users to immediately create a wallet without having to backup frase seed first. So beginners who are really beginners are prone to losing their own crypto wallet when they accidentally delete the hot wallet application.

Issues like this won’t happen in a centralized exchange but regardless being conscious is the best thing you can do when investing in cryptocurrency. Try to keep your phrase in safe place next time. If you’re using a cold wallet because of the tokens needed, you can still opt in for Bitget exchange, there is an integration of decentralized system through the Bitget swap feature, but if you’re very much interested in cold wallet you can choose to use Bitget wallet.

Bitcoin works on a decentralized trustless network. This is why security is paramount in the Bitcoin world. Bitcoin's core strength lies in its blockchain technology, which records all transactions across the network through a single computer. Blockchain technology uses cryptographic techniques for security. Such as digital signatures and hashing that protect transaction integrity and blockchain immutability. Moreover, if you use a hardware wallet instead of paying more attention to the virtual wallet, then the security will definitely be stronger. If your friend had used a hardware wallet instead of a virtual wallet, he might not have suffered the loss.

Your bitcoin blunder is a classic case of "HODL my beer, I'm gonna dive into crypto headfirst!" Jumping into the crypto pool without a life jacket, a map, or even a basic understanding of the water hazards is like driving blindfolded on a highway – sure, you might get lucky, but the odds ain't exactly in your favor.

Just throwing your money at bitcoin and hoping for a magical money tree to sprout overnight is a recipe for disappointment. It's like planting a seed in the desert and expecting a jungle to bloom. Building wealth, crypto or otherwise, takes time, effort, and a healthy dose of knowledge. You wouldn't open a bakery without learning how to bake, right? So why jump into crypto without knowing the difference between a blockchain and a block of cheese?

Right. Navigating the crypto waters without understanding the currents can indeed lead to an unfortunate journey. Investing wisely requires more than just blind faith, it's about informed decisions and a strategic approach. Learning the ropes before diving in is a solid recipe for success.