Bitcoin Forum

I purchased several Binary Bulls last year and gave them out as gifts. One particular coin, I loaded with extra Bitcoin to total 0.015 BTC and gave it to a family member. I just noticed it was swept on Feb 20th, and replaced with 0.001 BTC about 5 minutes later in a separate transaction.

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1Lh975rtt1RwDJ1SHGX8mn1iHwe7kaVfMQ

I asked them to send me a picture today that the coin is indeed not peeled and I verified the address as matching. I also just peeled both my personal Binary Bull and Binary Eagle coins and there are no private keys underneath the holograms. I peeled my personal Eagle and Bull coins. Very hard to peel, I swept the Eagle coin fine, but the Bull coin's private key is not in any known format that I can convert to WIF.

Gifted coin: https://imgur.com/sQnA0YO

Please post picture of the most current newspaper that display a date, along with the coin in question showing the intact hologram.

Can you provide a photo of the gifted coin (with the public address 1Lh975rtt1RwDJ1SHGX8mn1iHwe7kaVfMQ) next to a piece of paper with your user name and a recent block number and hash?  Without that it is impossible to know the coin was not peeled and private key revealed.

Also, where did you buy these coins?

They don't get the paper. I'm going to go pick up the coin soon, but they're over an hour away. I offered to replace it with something else since this is a crappy deal.

Here is a photo of my Eagle and Bull peeled. Nothing under those holograms but sticker residue: https://i.imgur.com/sHtdv5W

Edit: The holograms do peel as intended, but Bull has what appears to be a fake private key.

My Binary Eagle I bought in Nov 2017 from an eBay seller. I bought a Binary Bull in October on eBay from powercoin_it as a pre-order and it was shipped in Nov 2019. I bought 2 more Binary Bulls from Lesbian Cow on the forum here on Nov 2019.

Can you share the public address for both of those coins that you claim only have sticker residue?
Sorry, don’t mean to overload you but just trying to get to the bottom of this!

here is the Bull: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/13NgxJBSk2bwWd2W4cr4XQqNNQTmyoCM4a (Invalid private key, unable to sweep)

Edit: Both of these came in the leatherette boxes with COAs.

i keep saying... the safest thing to do is to buy all the coins/cold wallets from a trustworthy user here in forum.
and there are a lot of them

we all learn from our mistakes

One of these two was purchased from a trusted member, and l would buy from that member again in a heartbeat. This is a scam from the creator and no blame lies on this forum.

Unfortunately snarfbag, I have a touch of bad news.... the Sol Noctis holograms are just terrible.  They are a sticker first off with the private key printed on it and the hologram is the top part of the sticker.  Hence, you have overpeeled.  If you still have the stickers you took off in one piece, you should be able to carefully separate them.

This is the hologram peeled away from the sticker:

https://i.imgur.com/7sMWgjA.jpg





This is the unfortunate overpeel:

https://i.imgur.com/OQG8Ooj.jpg


I can't make a statement on the missing funds until I see the hologram in tact on that specific coin.

Hopefully this helps in some way.  Interested to see the coin you are picking up.

I have the holograms for mine still so I will see if they do separate further. I don't know if I can get the gifted coin today, but I trust my father that it's not peeled.

Edit: Thanks to anonymousminer, the holograms do in fact just suck. Eagle private key is standard mini format, and I'm not sure what format the Bull is using yet. I'll update again when I get my hands on the gifted Bull coin.

And I was jewishly expecting to see those coins for cheap now, even if scam they do look great and should of still been silver, lol. Glad to see it was just a mistake :).

Satori coin is one of the most trusted collectibles out there by far and they/Moto never stepped foot in here. It’s more so do you know who’s behind the project, their name and roughly their location. If they are a registered business are they registered in the British Virgin Islands and domiciled in Dubai or are they established legitimately.  Plenty of scammers have come and gone from here.

Microsoul is a great example. Everybody thought gravitate was a trusted user at some point. Now look where he/Microsoul is at :|.

following the chain back, a lot of their 0.001 deposits (edit: at least 20 I checked) are untouched.

Of course none of those coins had extra BTC loaded.

Have you been able to physically verify the unpeeled hologram yet snarfbag.

I am not sure Gravitate planned to scam from the beginning.
Mainly because he very early published is own dox.

However, makers like ALITIN COINS was planning this from the beginning, this was a constructed scam, slowly building trust, then they they just sailed away into the horizont with all the corns.

I'm having the coin shipped to me since I can't go pick it up any time sooner. I did peel my Bull coin and the private is not in a format that makes any sense to be able to convert to WIF. It's 44 characters and does not match Base64 so I have not been able to find any method of sweeping it. By comparison, the Eagle coin was a simple mini format and I was able to convert to WIF and sweep it no problem.

I received the coin in the mail yesterday and took some pictures a few moments ago. I don't receive newspapers, but let me know what other hoops I can jump through to prove this Bull coin is a scam.

https://i.imgur.com/11wRUNU.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/h7M6wr7.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/lanLrXL.jpg[/img[img]https://i.imgur.com/lanLrXL.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/bxCvY2d.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/hJeO3JE.jpg

well fuck. Photo looks legit to me.

Hi snarfbag,

Lesbian Cow on my mobile account (view trust of this account to confirm)  If you bought this coin from me I would like to buy it back for whatever you paid me plus shipping costs to me. If you did not buy it from me I still want to buy it from you as I want to get to the bottom of this situation.  Please pm me on this account if you will sell it to me.

Cheers.  

I really loved the look of these coins, I hope the holo doesn't mean too much after someone get's to this.

I wonder if the maker purposely sweeps any overages sent to their coin’s addresses in order to keep the denomination value accurate. That would be disturbing on a few levels, but maybe it’s in the fine print somewhere. Has anyone else ever tried adding BTC to theirs? Any attempt at getting an answer from the maker?

1Lh975rtt1RwDJ1SHGX8mn1iHwe7kaVfMQ (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1Lh975rtt1RwDJ1SHGX8mn1iHwe7kaVfMQ)

Do you know with 100% CERTAINTY that your friend didn't sweep / replace the original .001 funds? Did anyone other than your friend have access to the peeled coin and its private key? (I'm simply trying to play the devil's advocate before we jump to the most obvious conclusion.)

Regards,
Chris

I bought 3 Bull coins total from two different sellers so I can't say for certain who sold me this particular one. I'm fine with selling it back; funds will go towards a replacement coin type for the original giftee. In the meantime, I'll take some more photos / videos of it to document its state.

I can also post the private key here for my peeled Bull coin. I'll be curious to see if anyone can sweep it. If you can, great, please keep it and post here how it was done:

public key: 13NgxJBSk2bwWd2W4cr4XQqNNQTmyoCM4a
private key under hologram: EdLEZieDbChBMHJp858568iYuhcKWQNBWbBKeQMuckc9

I kept the hologram so I can take a picture of the key as well if needed.

The coin is in my possession. Please see the photos I posted earlier; they are likely on part 1 of this now 2 part thread. The coin was sitting in a drawer since Christmas and the hologram is intact.

Here's the transactions.
https://i.imgur.com/UWOlz5s.png

This is weird af. I'm pretty sure it means the maker retained the private keys and somehow thought nobody would notice...

I trust OP and his photo looks legit. The only way that photo was faked is if he post-dated it with today's date, peeled it in February, and then waited until today to release the photo which would be a lot of effort to go through for nothing to gain  ;)

Someone else shared a sol noctis private key with me and it's 44 digits which isn't a private key format I'm familiar with. I tried a few things (no, it's not 2 mini keys) and it's not missing a bunch of trailing zeroes.

I'm leaning towards this is a scam. But it's weird because the coin is real silver.

I posted my Bull coin private key above. It's garbage.

I bid 0.0001 btc more than transvestite lamb because I collect scam memorabilia.

Looking at the price you can get quite a bunch of silver for the price of a single one of these, and any worthy scam would surely use true silver to keep going for longer.

Maybe sol noctis doesnt realized things can be verified on the chain  :D

Disappointingly watching  :-\

My first thoughts was that someone had a script running to sweep anything over the load amount and if swept by said script, reload with proper face value. This would be for if somebody fucked up and overloaded a coin while manufacturing.. but the fact that this "script" is still possibly running and private keys not destroyed is alarming.

Makes sense.  These were some of my favorite coins.... so sad!

According to TWC no private keys are stored:


I think it would be best to contact them directly and ask for clarification.

This is really a shame. I emailed them at info@topworldcoins.com
And linked this thread. Will see what they respond with.

I sent 0.001 BTC to my own 2019 Sol Noctis Binary Bull to see if behavior snarfbag encountered is replicated.  TX ID- 8cc1f8138c9234cfa76c9481ed6f76ba70d3f0978e9a47ca20c6e5b4f98e697d

Man that is some BULL, I hope this isn't true somehow.

Yeah for some reason I am not convinced it's the eagles... or the bulls (yet) for that matter. Time will tell.

The bulls certainly have an issue.... nobody has been able to sweep one.  The private key is some 44 character garbage.

Doesn't a 44 character private key correspond to a private key Base64?

please give it a shot:

public key: 13NgxJBSk2bwWd2W4cr4XQqNNQTmyoCM4a
private key under hologram: EdLEZieDbChBMHJp858568iYuhcKWQNBWbBKeQMuckc9

Here's the actual peeled key from my Bull:

https://i.imgur.com/KCAWSOZ.jpg

EdLEZieDbChBMHJp858568iYuhcKWQNBWbBKeQMuckc9 is represented as ca76964390a3d7b99f0451a0a95a55a2098f9700cf6b0a2369a76b311d60427a in hex, and this is the private key for 13NgxJBSk2bwWd2W4cr4XQqNNQTmyoCM4a.

It looks like Sol Noctis took a private key in hex format and converted it to base58 without any of the necessary preprocessing to generate a WIF-encoded key. The 0x80 mainnet flag is not prepended, nor is the 0x01 flag to denote a compressed public key appended. Lastly the checksum is missing.

Some quick/dirty code follows to generate a proper WIF-encoded key from what you received:


I've swept the key, please provide an address to which you'd like to receive your funds.

Jinkies, hes cracked it!

Good work cwil.

One mystery solved. Great work cwil. Hopefully this code is easy enough for someone to host somewhere and we can have our own sol noctis bull redeemer page.

Thank you cwil ! great work, really appreciated!  :)

Please keep it, it's yours! That is some good work to crack their code. I would not have figured that out. Sweeping my Eagle coin was so simple in comparison.

Has this mystery been solved yet?

It looks like the corrupted private keys have found a solution (congrats ciwil).

And I was talking to @yogg over the phone and he will also code a script to convert the private key back to the normal format (with the covid19 he is some extra free time on his hand  ;D )

I completed the purchase of this coin from snarfbag just today due to my travels and it should be on its way to me shortly.  Once I have it I will look to Top World Coins for some answers.  I will update on this thread as I have more information.

Response from topworldcoins...after i linked this thread and explained issue...so the last email.

Hello,

We are responsible for the coins we sell to our buyers and issues with our coins. For others, we can't help, because we don't know how it was purchased.

Kind regards,
Helen

Not a very good PR

imagine the following answer from Ford :
"we are only responsible for the car we sell directly to our clients. For Ford car owners that didn't purchase brand new from us we can't help (even if we fucker up as a car manufacturer) because we don't know how it was purchased"

just my 2 cents

Good analogy guigui. Takata comes to mind. this was my email/response on the 16th:

Hello,
Please, let us know your order number that we can find it on our website.
Kind regards,
Helen

    Hi,
    Please respond to this thread on bitcointalk.org
    https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5231305.0
    It is becoming apparent there may be issues with the key generation of the Binary Bulls
    Specifically how to sweep this key.
    public key: 13NgxJBSk2bwWd2W4cr4XQqNNQTmyoCM4a
    private key under hologram: EdLEZieDbChBMHJp858568iYuhcKWQNBWbBKeQMuckc9
    Any explanation will help put the collecting community at ease.

    Thanks.

Seeing these posts reminds me why I love physical bitcoins and its community.

Bump,
Any update ?

Hey guys, what happened to the overage that was sent to that coin? did i miss the explanation? Where did the extra btc go that he sent to that coin?

The coin was shipped to Lesbian Cow and arrived per the tracking number. I haven't heard anything else.


The extra funds are still sitting in an address the coin creator swept them into on 2/20/20 and haven't moved since.

Hello all,

I have the coin in question and have contacted Top World Coins which is where I originally purchased quite a few of them.  Due to travel and real life business issues occupying my time I did not contact TWC until this weekend just past.  That said, I woke up this morning with a reply from them.  They seem genuinely concerned and are looking into their key generation/funding process.  I have checked all the Sol Nocti I have and they remain funded, I would appreciate it if anyone with a Sol Noctis could check their funding and report back to me.

I will update here when I have more information from TWC.

Cheers!

Any further information on this?

Everyone has been silent as far as I can tell.
The funding on mine is fine, sorry for not reporting. And I assume the code that cwil posted above will work if I ever have to clam it.

With that being said, this is why I have posted a few times about the issues with loaded coins.

Stay safe.

-Dave

I appreciate this cwil.

Hello everyone,

My update is not much of an update. 

I have had several emails with my contact at Top World Coins which, like the previous Sol Noctis Binary Bull, was the company/distributor that commissioned the coins and distributed them.   They have assured me they are looking into how the coin in question was compromised. 

I learned that the hologram and assembly was done by "another firm" but that is all I know. 

My last reply from TWC was on 07 April. 

I will update here when I hear more from them. 

Thanks for doing this, LC.

Regards,
Chris

Any updates on this?

Hello Everyone,

As mentioned in my previous update, I have been communicating with TWC regarding what appears to be a compromised private key on a Sol Noctis Binary Bull.  TWC believes all private keys were destroyed and that the only way this can have occurred is thru tampering with the hologram.  I have examined the hologram and see no signs of tampering.  TWC understandably would like to examine the coin as well and have asked I send the coin back to them.  I was not too keen on this however after much thought I have come to the conclusion that without sending the coin to them it is impossible to move any further.  Below are several photos and a video of the hologram taken today prior to shipment of the coin.  

My thoughts are as follows:

1)  Assume private keys are compromised.  Do not over fund the coins

2)  If there was a significant amount of funding on these coins I would suggest immediately peeling and sweeping the private key but given the approximate 9 usd in funded value I am not so sure that is wise.

3)  If you purchased a Sol Noctis Binary Bull FROM ME and your 0.001 btc in funding is swept with the hologram in tact I will refund you the 0.001 btc.  

4)  I have more than 10 and less than 100 Bulls left and have suspend sales most likely indefinitely.  I currently have no plans to peel the coins left in my possession.

Public address of compromised coin:  https://www.smartbit.com.au/address/1Lh975rtt1RwDJ1SHGX8mn1iHwe7kaVfMQ

Video of compromised coin hologram:  https://youtu.be/uLEK2mppJt0

Photos Below:

https://i.imgur.com/Tr73jYO.jpg?1

https://i.imgur.com/57R4vwA.jpg?1

https://i.imgur.com/75dfwAZ.jpg?1

https://i.imgur.com/mUKFxBj.jpg?1

https://i.imgur.com/DlIOi6N.jpg?1

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but this could be a case of a mistake by coin maker where they put the wrong private keys under the hologram. So maybe 2 coin's private keys were swapped. I would be interested to find out what private key is behind this hologram.

That has not been pointed out and is a possibility however the fact that someone then put the original 0.001 btc back on the coin would still be hard to explain.

This is an interesting point Satoshi Lite.  Still, shows a lack of proper key generation.


Lesbian Cow-  Thanks for all your work on this!  I know you've spent a lot of time working on all this, and it is much appreciated!  At this point, there really isn't anything positive that could be said from TWC.  If anything they get the coin and try and claim it's tampered ( I wish LC hadn't needed to send the coin back to them but there was no other way to move forward with this).  

Sol Noctis coins are compromised, and they sadly belong firmly in Krogo's  Scam Coin Maker thread at this point.  I am personally disgusted by TWC's response to this.  They recently ( 2 weeks ago I believe ) held a raffle for a Sol Noctis Bull on their Instagram Account.  I was tagged by a friend on the post and wrote  "All things considered, I think it's pretty messed up they are even hosting this raffle".  My post and my buddies reply were deleted. I believe they then deleted the post after my buddy called them out for it ( shady behavior !!).  I think a legit company would suspend sales and notify all 3rd party vendors at minimum until this is all cleared up.  

Just my 2 satoshis.

Added Sol Noctis to the thread of scammers...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3315347.0

I'm still not convinced myself. I mean one coin so far?

I would be hard-pressed to say the Eagles were a scam coin, as noone has ever seen any issues there.

The other thing I was thinking about - These coins are really awesome looking but are fairly low-denom. That probably means less get peeled by people, but then again, without lists of addresses, there would be no way to tell en masse.

Personally, I'm not going to worry or care much about losing .001 on the Bulls if indeed they are a scam, as I only own about 5 of them lol.... Either way, they remain one of my favorite coin designs/holograms out there. ;)

Cheers

But- How many Casascius or Lealana coins have moved under a hologram? I’m not necessarily calling them a scam, as I am “compromised” (SORTA like Microsoul). Eagles and Bulls both funded by same outlet apparently.

Do we have an address list? Who made the keys? Why did they make the redemption process like they did?  Will TWC share this info with us?

I think we have to let this play out further. They’ve done nothing to prove the coins aren’t compromised at this point. Let’s see how they respond when they receive the coin.  With such low funding, who’s to say they (or key maker, if actually not one in the same)) aren’t waiting for BTC to hit much higher numbers then bam one day all coins have moved.  ( I agree 🦉, gorgeous and very unique coins. One of my favorite. Not highly funded. But, still, compromised).

I would only consider the Bulls compromised. 

I would not consider the Eagles compromised unless proven otherwise. 

I'd think the Polish Mint, who only made the Eagles, would have been careful in this process. 

Now Mint 21, the place that made the Bulls, I have ZERO faith in. 

The holograms are different on the Eagles and the Bulls.  The Eagle's holograms are much higher quality. 

The private keys are standard on the Eagles.  They are cocked up on the Bulls.  ( thanks cwil for the work around ;) )

My 2 bits on the matter.

I do not believe the mints had anything to do with funding.  I was told both eagles and bulls keys were made by same person/company.

I do not believe this is accurate unless proof is provided.  Different mints, different holograms and different private keys. 

Thank you for sharing LC and trying to clarify all this, I have thought about this collection, but if those responsible do not clarify what happened ...
for me it is not safe  :-\

    Yes…Sol Noctis is one of the most beautiful coins one can get for their collection and I was amongst the many that were excited when I was able to buy some directly from the manufacturer.

     And yes the amount loaded on these coins is only 0.001 BTC which by far is not much.

    Yet, we as physical coin collectors place a great deal of trust on the maker of physical coins and the process on which the paper wallets are made and how they are handled. We can never be 100% sure if any coin maker has ever held onto the private keys or not and only the passage of time will tell us if this is so or not. There is always the risk that coins can be swept. The only way with 0% risk is if you make your own.

    In the case of Sol Noctis, this one coin incident that we know of so far, has ruined their reputation as far as I am concerned. I really do not care if the maker made a mistake or not, my trust in them as a physical bitcoin coin maker is over as far as I am concerned. No matter what the maker says or does afterwards it is over…period.

   Will I hodl onto my Sol Noctis coins? Yes and I will not sweep any btc on them or check as I will treat them the way I treat my one loaded microsoul coin, not loaded.

 

Definitely compromised, they need to be on that list.

On another note, why would anyone want to add extra BTC to a loaded coin? That is a big no no.

First off, your loaded amount will not reflect the value of the face of the coin.

Last but not least you are taking chances your coins will be lost like this gentleman did with Sol Noctis.

I had a fellow collector tell me he loaded an infinitum coin with 1BTC!  He swept the coin off right away once I made him aware of the risk.

If you want to hodl onto your precious coins, use a hardware wallet such as trezor or create your own paper wallet.

Never ever attempt to store or buy any btc on a loaded coin that you are not willing to risk on losing.

You want to send friend or family btc, buy them a Trezor, set it up for them and once they have it, send them the btc.

If it’s a minute amount,say $10 worth of btc, send it to their hot wallet such as Mycellium.

Not your keys not your coin is a saying so true.

The new saying we should use is, not your self made keys, someday possibly not your coins anymore!

Almost two months later, do we have more information regarding the Sol Noctis ?
I understand that the loaded amounbt is just about $10, but still it would be great to know what happened.
@Lesbian Cow any news ?

Not really.  As mentioned in my previous post, I shipped the questionable coin to TWC for them to inspect.  I sent 2 packages to Europe that day, they both left NY customs on 25 May.  The other package scanned for the first time in Europe late last week, this one has not yet scanned.  Back in May US parcels to Europe were getting loaded on ships and sitting around on both ends.  I am hoping it shows up in Poland shortly.  I am so sick of the Vids.

I will update when I have an update.

Cheers all!

I'll address a a couple points because I feel this is patronizing. My father is elderly and was the recipient of the compromised coin. This was a quick way to load up a little extra in a way that he could not easily lose, or have to deal with technology like a Trezor.


So what? It was a gift meant for him to eventually peel. Not everyone is a collector in the sense of trading back and forth and trying to keep the coin pure. I get that it is important to you, but not to him or me.


What if all the Bull coins were swept later if the price were to rise to $100k or more? By your rationale no one should be holding any coins of any significant value. By loading the extra Bitcoin and proving someone still holds the keys I'd call that a favor that may save some headaches years down the road. Loading the extra did not make me lose it since it may have been stolen later anyway. The way you're wording this sentence makes it sound like I had this coming--like the coin being swept is somehow my fault. That worry should not exist with legitimate coin makers.

Quick update, suspect coin arrived at TWC in Poland yesterday, 14 July.  Will update again after TWC has inspected the hologram.

Cheers all!

Did we get any update on this coin?

What a rollercoaster of events. I sit with anticipation from news from LC.

Bump,
Did we get any update on this coin ?

The most recent email I received from TWC on this matter was 08 December 2020.  I had emailed "Were you ever able to determine how the funds from this coin were swept?"

They replied:

"My colleagues checked each address we received from clients and dealers, and all of them are OK. So we are still looking for the answer from the supplier how it happened. I'll keep you updated."

LC, is the chain of custody for this coin confirmed to be  Maker -> LC -> Snarf -> Dad?

Or is the coin in question from the ebay seller? The thread doesn't really confirm it came from you. Also, I could not find ebay seller that OP posted, powercoin_it.  However, powercoin_italy does exist and sells many coins...




SatoshiLite brought up an interesting point with the possibility of mismatched/swapped keys & holos by accident by the manufacturer. However, if that were in fact the case, then why send back the original load amount? If you peel a coin and find extra sats that aren't supposed to be there do you send anything back to that address? Me thinking no. ESPECIALLY if the address you just swept DOES NOT MATCH what is printed on your coin!! This is a severe red flag and cannot be understated.

The theory could obviously be tested by peeling the coin that LC sent back to maker and sweeping that key to see what comes of it. Still doesn't explain why the original load amount was sent back tho.

If the chain of custody is confirmed, then there are only two possibilities imo. 1. Op is lying for some odd/no reason/sabotage. For the record I do not think this is the case. But I am curious to hear how Snarf came to learn the coin was swept a few weeks earlier?

2. Manufacturing process is flawed. In which case, they are all compromised. Otherwise it would be quite the coincidence that the one coin that was compromised was also the one coin that had additional btc loaded onto it. Unlikley. I also find it rather convenient that compromised keys came equipped with a private key puzzle that needed solving, making it harder to redeem by normies like myself. (awesome work cwil). Is it possible to find out why the keys were generated as such?

Btw, the swept funds have still not moved... https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/16HvqDCxg3QxYHuugHGJ7jwqCScxfnVTgS

I ordered 1 Bull coin from powercoin_italy (www.powercoin.it) on eBay and 2 from Lesbian Cow. The eBay coin shipped out of the Netherlands. I did not keep track of which coin is which when they arrived and I kept all 3 together. I gifted one to my dad for Christmas and I loaded the extra BTC. Later on, I was talking to him about how he could put more on it when I checked the address and saw it was swept. I keep all my coin addresses in a spreadsheet with this Bull coin included.

I'd like to know how I'm lying considering the hologram is intact. Are you saying I am the first person in the world to somehow successfully forge a physical crypto hologram, and that it is so good that the original coin maker can't tell the difference? Or are you saying I got my hand on blanks and holograms during the manufacturing process even though I live in the US and have zero ties to European coin makers? I'll kindly ask you take off your conspiracy hat and think rationally about who made these private keys, and how easy would it be to keep them all in a digital wallet "just in case".

I don't keep track of the public keys of the coins after I sell them nor who I sent what.

I cannot imagine a scenario where snarfbag is trying to pull a ruse here.   I believe their description of the events on their side.

I have not heard of any other cases of funds moving from these coins.  SatoshiLite's suggestion of the private key being mistakenly placed under the hologram of a different coin would make a lot of sense if it wasn't for the funds being returned.

If someone on the maker's side had retained all the private keys I don't understand why they would just redeem one coin and not do them all.  Why risk getting exposed to sweep one coin with a few extra bucks on it?

Very confusing scenario and difficult to figure out what possibly happened.

I still have around 15 of these, checked recently and all still funded with original funding. 

Swept funds and the subsequent returned funded amounts have now both been moved. Within days of each other.

Original address: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1Lh975rtt1RwDJ1SHGX8mn1iHwe7kaVfMQ

Swept funds: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/16HvqDCxg3QxYHuugHGJ7jwqCScxfnVTgS



LC, Can Sol Notis confirm this was in fact their funding Address?: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/15CaqvrWhxaAgYRM2y2wRwTTtrbf5rqY84

Is it possible they could be fakes, similar to the these...

https://i.imgur.com/Nu4Vyfw.jpg

I’m confused at what you’re saying..you have coins where the funds where also swept? No they could not be fakes like those as fakes don’t actually have a hologram/ keys.

No. What I'm saying is, is it possible that his coin could have been a really good fake, with the added hologram of course.

I'm having a difficult time figuring out why someone could not purchase a loaded coin, peel it, clean it, and apply a new forged hologram with a fake private key. If done well, it would look like the fault of the coin creator, and I think that conclusion is likely where most of us in this thread are leaning.

I'm just trying to think this through, but if I were to want to steal the bitcoin value from loaded physicals, first I think I'd choose a common but high value coin. Something like the brass 1 BTC Casascius might be a good starting point. I could probably imitate the hologram design maybe with a high resolution scan or commission someone to do this. Custom security holograms seem to be readily available on various websites. I would not sweep the private keys, but rather provide incorrect keys for empty wallets in case someone does peel.

This topic is a bit uncomfortable for me as I don't want my holdings devalued in case it becomes apparent that forgeries are more common than we think. It's probably uncomfortable for a lot of us. I can't really think of a great way to deal with this, other than maybe one of the experts starting an authentication service. Escrow services probably wouldn't catch this assuming the holograms are high quality and applied well. I'm not sure grading companies would be able to catch this either, and they don't guarantee loaded value anyway.

At the moment I think this is a risk with which I am personally comfortable, but it has its limits. I would seriously consider peeling some of my multiple bitcoin coins if we start approaching $100k.

Lesbian Cow on mobile here, the coin is not with me, it was shipped back to TWC some time ago.

Hi, I’m having the same issue with my binary bull coin.
Have you found out how to redeem it?

Solved, Please You can try solved by cwil :

*Note : Please never share your private key, or please ignore those people have PM you for solve that.

Omg! Very appreciated!
I’m very new to the crypto but I was able to sweep it now! This whole process is amazing 🤩

Sats asked this before and I'm wondering the same....why would they make the keys this way? I don't understand a lick of any of this stuff cwil posted, but it seems very odd.. is there anything shady with this setup, or just a lazy/dumb way of doing it?  If it confused a Mr Robot like Ghost, then I imagine those who don't know where to ask these questions may never redeem these things.  I wonder if people have been reaching out to TWC asking for help, and what type of help is being provided.  

TWC not providing a response still to this day about any of this is shady and is a piss poor way to service a serious issue with your customers.  I wouldn't buy a dollar for a penny from these guys and hope no one else here gives them any business after all of this.  I wrote this earlier in the thread but will again..TWC was running raffles on instagram at one point for these..I commented something like "why are you still running these with the compromised key issue ongoing".  Deleted my comment..didn't respond or message me with even a simple  "we understand your concerns but".  Then a buddy commented and they removed the post. Shady!

I would consider these bulls sitting ducks.  Maybe the key generation was made the way it was to confuse people to a point where they hoped to prevent as few sweeps as possible..as the average buyer of these who would try to redeem are likely people who know dick about btc/collectibles and wont have a clue what to do or who to ask and likely just give up or say "i'll deal with it later, it's not that much btc atm anyhow" ( kinda like how CryptoScratchCards and HyperionGold did ) while they make sure they sell all of their inventory and then they pull the rug?  We've seen this kinda shit before, and if the company who generated the keys for the bulls is different than the eagles..then there is certainly no track record of trust..nor do we have a clue who generated them right?  TWC is also NOT liable for any of the coins they don't sell directly let's not forget...and if you run a quick google search for the coin, there was a lot of retailers..

FYI.. I posed the question about why they might have generated the keys the way they did in the Bitcoin Technical Support board- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5354705.0

Hi,

Im owning one of those Bulls too. Watching that Thread for a long time, was there any reaction from TWC yet?

With several thousand of these coins out there. I think any issues with compromised or swept coins is small and an isolated incident. But this is what happens when a corporation tries to capitalize on the popularity of bitcoin without fully understanding how to do it. Thats why their new coin it is only funded with 42 cents. Too bad because the eagle and bull are some of the best looking coins out there. If they could figure out the funding they could of had a great business. No issues with my coins, still funded, no issues as of now.

Anybody have any with holograms intact for sale?? Man those are beautiful coins and holos. Looking for a bull and an eagle -  not too worried about the load value myself or being able to redeem it as the value is small... I just love the design

Can someone help.. I have 3 of these and do not know how to run this code.
Please PM me if you can help :)

I sent MJ a PM about this but since he asked I figure others might need it too.
I don't have a Sol Noctis Bull to test / check so I am using the information from the post about it.

THERE MAY BE SECURITY RISKS HERE SO MOVE YOUR COINS ASAP.

Step 1: Open up a web browser and 2 private tabs.

Step 1a: In tab #1 go to https://appdevtools.com/base58-encoder-decoder
Step 1b: In tab #2 to https://www.bitaddress.org

Step 2: DISCONNECT FROM THE INTERNET

Step 3: Verify that you are offline

Step 4: Verify offline again. Or not, it's your money.

Step 5: On the https://appdevtools.com/base58-encoder-decoder tab click on decode and treat output as HEX and put in the info from the coin
You can see it gives the same info as MJ quoted above. (Converts EdLEZieDbChBMHJp858568iYuhcKWQNBWbBKeQMuckc9 to ca76964390a3d7b99f0451a0a95a55a2098f9700cf6b0a2369a76b311d60427a)

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/06/23/HecQ8.png

Step 6: Go to the bitaddress.org tab and click on Wallet Details and put in the output HEX (ca76964390a3d7b99f0451a0a95a55a2098f9700cf6b0a2369a76b311d60427a) where it says enter private key and then click view details. You should get the same info and the private key for 13NgxJBSk2bwWd2W4cr4XQqNNQTmyoCM4a

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/06/23/HeoKw.png

NOTE I DID NOT TEST THIS WITH ANYTHING OTHER THEN WHAT WAS PRESENTED BY cwil BACK IN 2020
So if the info he gave was wrong then I just followed and got the same wrong answer. If anyone can verify that it works for them then others would have a somewhat simple way of getting their funds off of these things.

-Dave

Thanks DaveF :D

Worked for all 3 coins.

FYI: All 3 were the Sol Noctis EAGLE 0.01 coins. So this does apply to both the Eagle coins and Bull coins

Can i get a 5th grade explanation for whats happening here?

Some, possibly all, of these coins have had their keys compromised.
The key that comes with the coins is not in a standard private key format. So, if you want to peel the coin and redeem the BTC you have to do a couple of other steps.
A few years ago cwil posted a way of converting what they give you to a standard private key, but it required some programming knowledge. I posted a simpler way.

As to why they used a non standard format, who knows.

-Dave

Compromised is not correct term.... that would indicate something happened such as the sweeping of funds.

They were "improperly formated"

Yes, improperly formatted is a better then compromised. Had a brain freeze this AM and was trying to come up a one or two word way of saying:
They did not create or print the keys in any of the standard ways that people use for giving us BTC addresses for use in collectables.

Side comment, after the yogg thing and the other issues with collectables, makes you wonder if we do go to some hardware way of securing them if things like this are going to be an issue. So a decade later (yes I know this was only a few years) instead of jumping though some software hoops we are searching on ebay for a obsolete NFC reader or something.

-Dave

Thanks to you both for sharing this method of converting to "normal" private keys.
I was also confused regarding *compromised* - so glad to hear they are not (yet  ::) )  - not sure if I do remember correctly, though, some of the newer ones (the 0.001 denominated bulls) had issues with the private keys readablility when peeled. Can anyone confirm / negate this?

I checked this code out on chatGPT and it gave me the following so if you have VS 2022 you should be able to get it working:

https://chat.openai.com/share/d2134341-25da-4437-a2f1-db9d26d8175d

Note I have not tried it yet, as I have no interest in peeling coins right now, but it should work, I just did not have time to test as I had to repair my VS2022 install for whatever stupid MS reason lol.

So if I understood correctly, at the time it was considered a scam because people couldn't redeem?

Or are the keys at risk of being compromised (even if they haven't as of yet)?

There have been a couple of issues.

1) You needed to jump thought hoops to redeem some coins.
2) If you read this entire thread something funky DID happen with at least 1 coin.

So make your own conclusions from there.
I think it is just sloppy work in general from them and not the worlds best customer service attitude.

-Dave

The breakdown -

Someone came here and said something to the effect of “holy shit my Sol Noctis Bull coin had btc funds moved off of it and I never peeled”. Coin was sent to LesbianCow who , and I’m a little fussy here but , basically confirmed that in fact the coin was truly never peeled. What’s craziest of all is the coins were moved them shortly after (not sure on exact length, maybe few days at most I believe) were sent back. LesbianCow spoke with the sellers/creators (PowerCoin I believe) who asked he send the coin to them. He did so. PC essentially brushed it under the rug and provided no legitimate response to the whole situation, ever.

So, yea, Sol Noctis Bull Coins, should be considered compromised. Someone obviously stored the keys, or at the very least one private key, which we all know one is all it takes for trust.

Apparently for coin one, the owl, they used someone else for key generation. Imo they should not be trusted either, as the seller is incompetent or part of the issue/compromise/potential future rug pull.

I refuse to buy any product for them as they were super shady about that whole thing. I remember they posted one of the Bull coins for either auction or raffle on instagram. I chimed in about the situation and my comment was deleted, later the post was.

This is all from memory, I will double check for story inaccuracies which I know for a fact if any are minimal and this is indeed exactly what transpired.

My opinion- having done a lot of scam researching in this space, I believe the absolutely ridiculous redemption process was done so on purpose. Why? I think they don’t want people redeeming them. There were SEVERAL Mr Robots around here who couldn’t figure out how to redeem these coins (Yogg and satoshighost I believe had tried but were also confused), and while one of these two is a scammer themselves (Yogg, of course), they are both highly technical programmers. This last part again, is my opinion.

Edit - “ top world coin” NOT power coin. My apologies.

Thanks for the info, ChiBi.
Sucks to hear it but the more people know about it the better. If LC and you confirm this incident Sol Noctis coins can be considered compromised indeed. - For that reason would appreciate if you can check the story and report back here then.
In any case, enjoy a great Sunday evening!

Do you have the links to this. Did a bit of searching and my Monday AM google powers seem to be lacking. And I did not see them in the Breached / Scam makers list:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3315347.0

---

Back to this, the other issue beyond all of these things is that with the larger places you don't always know who is involved.
When Yogg went evil, we knew who it was and what happened.
When Gravitate went evil we knew who it was and what happened.

With things like this, since it was a larger organization, they might have had the best intentions but 1 bad employee messed it up for everyone.
Not saying that the company is not at fault, it's their coin and their problem, just that the more people involved the more likely it's going to be a problem.

It's even happened to people here who had others help them, they knew what they were doing but the partner did not and bad things happened.

-Dave

     Dave....yes they are on the list...look at the OP below the Hyperion Coin scam and above the SHITKEY scam and you will see they have been posted there all along.

   Its a shame as I liked these coin designs....but it is what it is....they are scammers!

     

     Yes it has....and that's why as a coin maker I was the only one making private keys and I will be held fully responsible should the ever come where anything is breached...not that it will by the way.

      I  have been offered to make coins with others but have turned down the opportunity as I don't want to have two people involved with generating any keys.

I 100% misread what he posted I thought top world coin was another scammer not the makers of these coins.
<sigh>
Kind of sad that when you see something you don't immediately recognize you go looking for 'what scam was that' instead of actually looking.
Guess we are all kind of waiting to see who goes evil next.

-Dave

Has anyone redeemed a Sol Noctis Eagle before, and if so, is the redemption process the same as the Bull? (Basically I’m asking if it’s as insane of a “process” as the Bull is).

Any and all help/knowledge is appreciated!

Yes, my post from earlier in the thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5231305.msg62449495#msg62449495
Was about that. I helped a customer redeem 3x Sol Noctis Eagle coin: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5231305.msg62450290#msg62450290
The process was the same as redeeming the Bulls

Hello,

I have held my sol noctis eagle since my original purchase or pre order in November 2014. (Loaded 2015 and still there I believe as I checked earlier in the year) I have since purchased 2 more and given one of those away. The interesting part of this is that the 3rd one I bought was loaded in 2020 and I contacted TWC on eBay and they said it’s newly minted when I bought it off them. (I do have screenshots of that communication)

I also own 10 binary bulls, some of which are still in there plastic bags and cardboard box etc I wonder if anymore information will come out from TWC about that crazy sweeping and then reloading.

The bottom line for me when I bought these coins is because I liked the look the design and idea, I have no intention of redeeming these even if BTC were to reach 1-10 million USD. The fascinating point of most of these collectibles is the stories that come with them so even if mine are sweeped one day at least I still have the physical coins to maybe have my young one show and tell one day.

floorspeed

P.S happy Xmas

  This thread is slightly misleading. No sol noctis coins have ever been swept. There was a couple issues early on with some loading issues on a couple coins. One coin had no funds in the secondary market. I believe these coins are safe from TWC. They are great coins and collectables.