Bitcoin Forum

A couple of months ago, almost all my BTC were stolen from my laptop. As I was really upset about it, I decided to distance myself from the forums and everything else, but now that I've decided to come back; I want answers.

The funds have ended up here; https://www.blockchain.com/es/btc/address/1JSmxSp4ULs7bYaQEkoHjQszFcfpFQs6gP, before being separated into 2 different addresses.

The bounty goes as follows: 10% of what I lost, to whoever is able to recover my money. I might be open to negotiations, but only once the money has been recovered

Kind regards

Why self-moderate this thread if you truly want advice and help from the public? You should leave it open to suggestions as you never can tell how the help you seek comes.

My humble take...

It's open to suggestions, even if my goal is that someone does the work, instead of me (reason for the bounty). I self moderated the topic because I'm used to doing so to avoid what I consider shitty comments/personal vendettas. I don't plan on deleting common sensed posts

Was the laptop hacked, or was it stolen or physically used to send the coin to another address?

I assume it was hacked, since no one on the room had knowledge of bitcoin at the time things happened, and besides, the for obvious reasons, didn't know my password.

I may add a few more details, since I think I've been a bit vague on the OP.

I was using Electrum as my wallet, not Multi-sig since I had had a bit of an emergency and didn't have enough time to use the 2FA. I was at a friends' house, and the moment I opened my wallet to add the 2FA, I saw an outgoing transaction that had been created less than 1 minute before I opened the wallet itself.

I won't erase this because it's the perfect example of what fits into the description of a shitty post on my last answer.

You are not providing anything useful to the discussion, and attacking me with your hurting words. Besides, it may be new for you but there is some people that are called white-hats for a reason; and that is what I'm looking for.

I already know I made a mistake by not activating the 2FA when creating the wallet, and I assume those BTC will never come back. But you never know

Can you sign a message from the electrum address that originated the transaction to prove it belongs to you?

Tough luck... and sorry to bear the bad news but I'm afraid it's impossible for anyone to retrieve the funds for you, if indeed it was stolen by an unknown hijacker. And don't fall for anyone who might be able to tell you otherwise, at least, not to pay anything upfront to get it back.

The best you can do, I'd say, is to try and identify the person who stole it (are you sure no one from your family or friends did this? You did, after all, sign in via your friend's network). It could be your device was simply used by someone who guessed your password to sign and broadcast from your own Electrum?

You could also try sending messages to those addresses... in the hope that the thief might respond or negotiate some kind of return. I believe this has actually worked in the past, as long as you appeal to their sense of ego. Some people wouldn't agree with me on this though, but hackers have a certain personality that sometimes makes this possible.

Hopefully, you've already swept your device clean?

Really sorry for your lose....
But how you expect anyone to help you in this ? If you really knows how BTC work you should know that no one on earth can help you retrieve your BTC back, unless  you trace your BTC to someone you know in real life, I do not thing there is any chance you get your BTC back .

That's the point, my idea is that maybe someone has seen the address where everything has ended up and knows who it belongs to; even if that might be being too lucky. Other option would be if someone was nice enough to hack the hacker :)


No way my friends did that, she doesn't even know how to connect her Nintendo DS to the internet. I don't think that they will ever answer, a lot of tima has passed ever since and I really doubt that. Computer was completely cleant after that. But the funny thing is that of the 3 wallets I had, only one was emptied


Sure I do

What I want to add is why wait till now to want to go after your funds as you are very much aware that the moment a transaction has one confirmation, it is already becoming impossible to get back now we are talking of transaction that have happened for months. I won't be surprised that even though you can trace the funds to the last known location, it might have changed hands severally from one person to another, to exchange sites, gambling sites, back to another individual who probably have more firewalls than you can ever think of. The best since you have been able to survived for the past months, I would advice that you move on and the bounty you are offering, I doubt if someone who is able to get through would want to hand over any thing back to you in addition to asking for upfront payment is surely an indication for you to part away with more.

Well, looking at the amount you have lost feels that it might be the biggest sad moment in your life but as we all are aware of the truth that bitcoin is atill anonymous, i think it is very unfeasible to recover lost crypto coins.
However you can keep the thread active, may be someone have got such a techniaue to find out scammer. Have a good luck

I'm glad that you came back .. by the way how many BTC were stolen ?

Can you recall the version of electrum you were using? Because I think that there was a vulnerability on old versions (patched on new ones edit:here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2702103.0)) especially if you didn't encrypt your wallet with a password (Please tell us if it's the case).I think it's just a coincidence if it happened in your friend's house,have you dowloaded something just before opening the wallet?
I think for now it's almost impossible to recover the funds but if you give enough details of what happened someone may able to determine how the funds were stolen and maybe track the thieft.

Electrum 3.0.5. I didn't have my browser open, since there had been one vulnerability with javascript or something at the time. No new downloads at the time

I found a kind of github list that contain the address your coins where sent to.And for some reasons all the addresses present there contain around 53BTC seems really sketchy though.
Here it is:https://raw.githubusercontent.com/userghost123/BTC-Address-6-7-18/master/README.md (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/userghost123/BTC-Address-6-7-18/master/README.md)
Edit:I know it doesn't lead us to anywhere,just trying.

Your Laptop was very likely not "hacked"

You were likely hacked.

Do some thought here... Where are your backups for the Electrum wallet stored? Is the password for that wallet similar to, or perhaps the same as any of your email accounts?

Did you store the backup file online ANYWHERE? Whether you emailed it to yourself, stuck it on Google Drive. Something like that.

Most hackers don't hack directly into your computer these days.

Most hackers are exceptional social engineers who use that to gain unauthorized access into accounts.



In my opinion, you must have had a backup to that wallet online somewhere.

It's either that, or quite obviously your "friend" stole your bitcoin dude. There is no other way around it. Sorry to say.


There was also a scam version of the Electrum wallet floating around... Perhaps you had that?

Does your friend have a shared internet connection?  Is there anybody in her neighborhood that uses her wifi?



If you provide a signature proving the wallet belongs to you I think people might be more willing to help.



I noticed that too, a google search for the last address in the string brings that up as one of the few results.  The repository belongs to Github user userghost123.

All backups were stored on a flash drive, so they were all offline. Neither did I store them online or on Drive/whatever. The funny fact, is taht the three walets had the same password (yeah, I know) but only one was emptied. I made sure they were different from online site ones

There could have been a chance that your computer had a spyware on it that couldve sent your wallet plus your passwords to another computer or server. If you do have anything left I would highly suggest sending those to a new wallet or maybe invest into a hardware wallet like trezor, keepkey, or an ledger.

Though it is kind of strange though. If you google the address where the 50+ BTC was sent too, that address appears in https://github.com/userghost123/BTC-Address-6-7-18/ . Not sure why this user has it there though but thats a start, though however there is a extremely low (even impossible) chance of getting any coins back without 100% proof of who did it and where they are located so you could take some type of action directly there. One of the purpose of btc (and most cryptocurrency) is to be irreversible. This can guard many against chargeback fraud that would usually happen normal p2p systems like paypal, square, etc, though the downside is that it would be near impossible to get your money back in the event of theft. Much like fiat currency in cash. Once its gone, its gone.

Well, at least now I have something more to rack my brains with than when I started the day. Thanks to all of you

Edit: turns out this guy, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=698349 has a quite similar name to the one posting the list on github. I've PM'd him to talk; let's see if this is a real lead.

On the meantime, bounty is still open

Well, First of all sorry for your loss.

Please, can you tell us more about how it gets hacked, Maybe someone asked the questions already like how they got hacked etc, but I cannot read all the comments? If you can just put all the questions and answers and required info to the OP would be great.

What was the amount you lost? 53 BTC?

If you lost your bitcoins why did you left the forum?

I hope you get it back, But I don't think it will be that easy I have not heard anyone getting the hacked bitcoins back.

Also, Can you tell us whether the bitcoins was stored online or offline?

I did not loose 53, but I'm not comfortable enough to be sharing the total ammount. If at any point I have a real need to proof it, don't doubt I will. But on the meantime....

And I left the forums out of anger. I had just lost a shitload of money, meaning I couldn't be able to do some stuff I wanted, and I wasn't really on the mood of getting back working to achieve that money again

Perhaps you blacked out and your alter ego played a mean joke on you? xD lol

Seriously though, did you ever confirm if you do or do not have the infected Electrum wallet that was going around a few months back?

Hmmmm, I always dowloaded the installer and updates from the oficial website and verified signature, but I never went any further

Inless than1minute time? Then you ought to have stop the transaction.

Nevertheless, it does matter if no one around have knowledge of bitcoin because alot of people have join cryptocurrency during the last high traffic, so in this kind of situation the only person who's clean is you cause you're the owner of the wallet. Therefore, I will ask if you're using updated antivirus, windows and wallet.

It's true that you could have stopped the transaction before it gets confirmed by double spending it.It surely happened in the past when a guy got his wallet hijacked;the address he wanted to send his bitcoins to got replaced by the hackers one and he didn't pay attention to it.

I thought about doing so, but the transaction had already 1 confirmation. I guess that the hacker thought about so :(

Which wallet were you using to store your bitcoins?

I think there is a possibility that your coins were swept and moved to a different address within your wallet and not neccessarily that you got hacked....if it were that coins we stolen the money would not have been dormant by now and coins would not have had a money trail as mixers are well know by crypto users.....

Try your luck and check your archieved wallets your coins might be hiding there.

Electrum wallet; you can check the thread to see the version. And no, I checked every address I have ever used and the bitcoins didn't magically transfer themselves. Apart from that, I wish I had 50 BTC hidden in some address of mine  8)

Well, I agree with your thinking that is ok that you are not sharing the amount.

Leaving the forum is not an option, the forum had nothing to do with your loss instead if you have shared this with the people here earlier you may have something better, now you have realized that the Forum can only help you right?

I really hope that you get it recovered soon, I know the feeling of losing.

Not a fan of being the bearer of bad news, but your coins are gone.
This thread is, if anything, is nothing more than a means of seeking the attention of others.
No one can help you retrieve your coins my friend, I'm very sorry.