Bitcoin Forum

Hello friends. Has anyone ever lost bitcoin? I am curious to listen to your stories. My purspose is to educate ourselves of possible scams, or rookie mistakes that we may do, that can lead to our BTC being stolen or lost.

Edit: Back in Feb 2020, I gave my seed phrase to someone on twitter. The convinced me the seed phrase was equal to my address and that they needed it to send me bitcoin. Don't ask me why I was so stupid... I lost approx. 1M sats and I had to start accumulating again. I bought a Trezor and I started reading...

Never give your seed phrase or private key to anyone that you do not know, it is your coin. I hope that will never happen again.

I have not be scammed before in anything related to bitcoin and crypto generally, I was lucky to know all those scam and I avoided it. The one I can remember are two, which are airdrop scam and cloud mining scam. It was super easy for me to avoid both.

Well I understand the cloud mining scam, but what about the airdrop? how could they scam you buy airdroping something to an address ?

It was someone I saw on a forum, not bitcointalk forum, that introduced me to a telegram channel, it always give new airdrops links. I try one link and I was asked to pay fee so that I will be able to be one of the first people they would be given the airdrop coins too. If you pay any money, no airdrop coin and the money you pay is lost.

Another that I know but did not happen to me because I do not do KYC airdrop at that time. It is the use of your information by scammers for phishing attack against you.

Somewhere around 2014, before I was active on this forum, I got scammed by a user in another forum trying to buy Bitcoin. I was under 18 back then and couldn't acquire cryptocurrencies through exchanges. It wasn't a significant amount, but it managed to piss me off. Another small amount of Bitcoin was lost on my Xapo wallet, which I couldn't regain access to, and their useless support basically claimed that I had no balance on my account even though I had emails providing the opposite.

Some other smaller amounts were also lost for years on Blockchain.com wallets but were fortunately recovered a few years ago.

lost before in a corrupted virtual machine. Luckily knew a crazy developer by then who where able to troubleshoot, access and control the coins again.

Moral, don't trust virtual machines.

You know, some of these scammers could make a very good sales rep. They practice the job quite well and somehow, they waste there skill in some unlawful act or criminal enterprise. Basically, the job of a sales rep is to convince some other individual to key into a product/package and this is just what the scam schemes are about with a key difference, its all centered on a phony.

Well bitcoin ain't no tangible item that we could misplace or throw away in some place but then, there are acts that could lead to us actually loosing access to our coins. I think the only way we could lose our coins is to scammers or haven't sent it to an unknown or uncontrolled address other than that, we apparently lose the access to our coin as it thus stays put on an address.

This means, you actually could lose your seed phrase or private key but, not the coin per say. Its why, the seed phrase or private key remains the most secured.

Maybe not everyone lost some coins but like you I also have some coins that I left in wallet that I have no idea how to take back because of a wallet that I have no key and forgot its password anymore.

Losing coins because people convince you that seed is same as the wallet address seem a very newbie mistake. its a small amount during that time though so i guess you can just shrug it.


Some of those airdrop ask you to deposit to unlock them and to able to send those tokens. Not sure if anyone were already convinced to deposit but I remember there were airdrops like this.

I didn't even know Xapo wallet, nor did I know that blockchain.com made wallets.


Two years ago, believe it or not, I didn't even know what a private key was. Now, I know... fortunately.


Ofc it was a newbie mistake. However, I am not ashamed. I made a mistake, that I will never make again. Furthermore, I have been educating myself for the past 3 years, non-stop. Literally.

Hearing your story, actually giving your sheed phrase to someone else is the same as giving your bitcoin to the person you gave it to that person, because they definitely have full access to your wallet. The most important thing is never to give sheed phrases to other people, not even your own family.
I have never lost bitcoin before. Maybe some time ago I tried to make a transaction with a coin that suddenly entered my wallet, we can be sure it was a coin that was sent to me by scammer. I'm trying to put some $ in BNB in order to see if they are interested in a small amount or not. And sure enough the next day some $ in my wallet was gone.  :D

Yeah of course. To be honest, with other "coins" I have never been involved. However it seems to me that, with ETH for example, anyone could deploy any shitty code they wanted and share a smart contract with you. It is much easier to be scammed this way, I guess.

Sorry to hear that you lost some bitcoin, that's really unfortunate. I haven't personally lost any bitcoin, but I have heard some horror stories.

I've heard of people falling victim to phishing scams, where they click on a link that looks like a legitimate website, but it's actually a fake site designed to steal their login information. Another common scam is the "tech support" scam, where scammers pose as customer support for a cryptocurrency exchange or wallet and convince people to give them access to their accounts.

That's why it's important to never give out your login information or other personal details to anyone, even if they seem trustworthy. It's also a good idea to stay up to date on the latest scams and security best practices by following reputable news sources and forums. Knowledge is power when it comes to protecting your bitcoin.

This thread will be quite educating and funny. The best means of learning is from people's experiences or stories. This will indeed help others not to make the same mistakes. I have never lost any Bitcoin and I was just fortunate. But I have heard stories of people that have lost money due to carelessness and lack of knowledge. One of my friends downloaded a wallet and failed to copy and save the seed phrase. After he has bought some bitcoin, he lost his phone a few months after and couldn't retrieve his coins because he doesn't have the keys.      


I am glad I located this forum because I don't think I can be a victim of such cheap scam. This forum is a goldmine of information about bitcoin and other issues like security and privacy. If you fall victim to scams after joining this forum it might be because you are not learning or you are greedy. I am glad you learned your lessons, but you learned it the hard way.  

The stories associated with the loss of bitcoin always excite the minds of readers. Reading them, it seems that how is it possible to be stupid and lose for one reason or another. Until you experience it yourself.

Often this is due to the loss of seed phrases, as in your case. You could have avoided this if you had sufficient knowledge and the attackers could not fool you. The conclusion is simple: it is necessary to carefully and as quickly as possible study the basic principles of the work of bitcoin in order not to fall into such unpleasant stories. I won't say you were stupid. You were little technically aware of bitcoin and paid the price for that. Let your negative experience serve as an example for other beginners and it will encourage them not to delay the moment they start learning about the technical aspects of bitcoin.

I 'd say the most common reason must be the loss of the seed backup. I was totally unaware. To me, everything back then, was just "my bitcoin". I was clueless, I had no idea how anything worked.

The phrase that I got in bold in your answer, is exactly the reason why I made this thread.


Indeed, this forum is full of intelligent and educated people.


Yeah. A friend of mine sent 0.04ETH to a scammer who pretended to initiate and NFT collection. Luckily enough, I have only been interested in Bitcoin.

I don't blame you for giving out your seed phrase to those scammers, you had an investment that you don't understand how to secure it. Those scammers will test you and when they see that you don't have an idea of it,then you will become their victim. You seed phrase is your coin,if anybody has access to it,your coin is lost.

I haven't been scammed before,since I started my bitcoin journey from this forum. This makes me more carefully about my bitcoin. Apart from scammers another way that one can loss his bitcoin is when he didn't back up his seed phrase and forget his password. You will have no access to your coin. One can mistakenly send his coin to a wrong address.

How did you know about Bitcoin in the first place? I've seen many users do more or less the same thing, just buy Bitcoin and then never learn more about it, which results in a loss of coins or something similar. Personally, after hearing about bitcoin for the first time, what I did was learning stuff like how to store it, which device can I use, etc. It is really surprising to me that you just buy and assume it will work out in the end.

Is he still around? What led you to know them/interact with them through Twitter? 2020 is around the last bear market, I'm surprised you got scammed through Twitter instead of Telegram. IIRC, Telegram scammers are more active at that time if my memory serves me correctly.

Good question. I don't kknow if he/she/they are still around. Once I sent them my seed phrase in DM, they blocked me 10 minutes later. I thought they were just late, but apparently they just needed 10 minutes to empty my wallet.

I don't have a personal history has to bitcoin loss but I have read many threads about this, just help yourself by typing it on the forum and you will get more information on this than you bargain for.

Well, you learn from mistakes, I think you now have more awareness, that is to keep your private keys and not give them to anyone and a few less satoshis.

Yeah, I have reached a level where I feel confident having set up a 2-3 multisig wallet. In the beginning I didn't even know what a private key was. But, thanks to certain people and websites, I have educated myself well. Still lots to learn of course.

I am very sorry to hear that you had such a very unpleasant experience. It is important to remember that the seed phrase is very important and confidential, as it is the key to accessing your bitcoin wallet. Giving someone else a seed phrase gives full access to your bitcoin wallet and can result in the loss of bitcoins stored in it.

I highly recommend continuing to read and learn about bitcoin safety, so that you can take the appropriate actions to protect your investment and ensure that an incident like this does not happen again in the future. Always be careful and don't be easily swayed by unreasonable offers or suspicious requests, as these could be signs of fraud. Hopefully this experience can be a valuable lesson for you and can help you secure your bitcoin investment in the future.

Until now, I myself have never experienced anything like yours, thankfully I have known from the beginning the importance of maintaining seed phrases.

Maybe as a newbie before years ago many have experienced of being a victim of HYIP and that's the first ever lost of bitcoin that anyone can. It's different now because scammers are making it look like that they're hackers through direct asking for someone's seed.

Good on you, we learn from our mistakes and that's why it's important to be aware of these details whether they're just small or big information that can save lives, yes, life savings and crypto assets.

Thank you guys. I appreciate both of your answers.

Losing an amount of money causes very strong feelings. I got into a mindset where I was blaming my stupid mind for being scammed like this.

However, this mistake taught me the importance of being more suspicious and of course more well educated. Then, I started blaming the thief and not myself. Finally, I got the opportunity to learn more about bitcoin. And the more I have learnt, the more I have liked it.

Today, I am much better. But still, I try to learn more and more, absorbing knowledge from daily events. That's why I made this post.

I don't think I've ever lost any significant amount of Bitcoin. From the start, I've made an effort to avoid scams by educating myself on the various types of scams and hacks that exist. Before getting involved with Bitcoin, it's important to educate oneself on the topic. Otherwise, one could end up like you, who lost access to their Bitcoin due to a compromised seed phrase or private keys. However, you've learned a valuable lesson about the potential risks of scams. I hope that no one else falls victim to these scammers or hackers.

You're welcome.

And that's nice to hear to you're better than before. We become better when we learn the lesson from our experiences and it may be really that bad at all but look at the brighter side.

Because you can no longer reverse the situation and what's done is done, you just need to learn from it so it won't happen again in the future.

We all have the same purpose and that's to keep on learning while we're here.

Bitcoin doubler for me when I was still inexperienced, way back in 2017. I thought that I can double it right away, the scam was good, they give me my first payout and so I reinvest it again, roll my bitcoin on that site. Then suddenly it goes offline and when I search about it, maybe have been bitching that they have lost big amount. Luckily for me, it's just small as I just want to test that scheme or shall I shall now "scam".

As for the seed phrase or private key, no I haven't go to that extend to give someone that information because right away I knew that it is very important to us. It's good that we have learn this kind of lessons when we are a newbie, it's a wake up call to us to really be vigilant and learn safety practices before hand as not to fall for this trick again.

It is sad that you lost your bitcoin that way. I have been compromised a few times, but not by me purposefully giving out my seed phrase to the hackers. After connecting my wallet to claim some airdrop tokens, at first nothing happened; I successfully claimed the tokens, but later all my other assets were gone, and the airdrop tokens have not been listed on any exchange till now. It was just an unforseen incident, and I have learned my lesson. I try to always make it a warning to my crypto friends not to connect their asset wallet to any site online.

It is sad when it comes to the fact that they have lost Bitcoin or something like that,because it is something that is impossible to recover, but it is also beneficial because the more bitcoin they have lost and without access, the more valuable it is Placed, it is something that they like even though someone did not do very well,that is something that is noticeable in the market, it is as if they had access again and they sell a large amount of bitcoin because it makes the price go down, and what they want is for the bitcoin to go up ,and I'm happy when bitcoin goes up.

IMO, all the wallets should replace "seed phrase" with "secret phrase, don't share". That way newbies won't confuse it with a normal bitcoin address.

There are hundreds like you who were victim for such scam. Especially to newbies in this space who doesn't know how important your wallet seed. That's why people needs to read first. When you're getting your seed or opening any wallet, there is a warning that you should not share those words to anyone. But unfortunately, people still get fooled.

Fortunately, i never experienced losing bitcoin on such scam for sharing information etc. I was scammed when lending twice for a "friend" here, that was years ago. Afyer that never ever tried again lending and having a trust issue when it comes to lending money to anyone even irl.

I've never had the loss of any Bitcoin I've had since I earned it. This is probably because I very rarely believe in any seduction of people who ask for my wallet and private key details, besides that I have also seen several cases of losing Bitcoins to other people who on average they were scammed by their own close friends and other people. whom he had trusted so much at that time. So I took that as an example and applied it to myself where I can only trust myself for wallets and private keys.

You have bought the right wallet and it is an excellent wallet to store your Bitcoin assets. But I can't imagine what happened to you in the past by losing 1M satoshi from your wallet in the past, even though I really understand your stupidity at that time because with that, of course you are now much more careful in entrusting something to someone else of course.

You made a bad mistake and lost 1M sats or 0.01 BTC, a big lesson.

Sometimes I don't know how people can be scammed in bank transfer. They only need to give their bank account ID for person who has a transfer deal with them. They gave more information by request like account password. Does it smell wrong at beginning?

If you want to send me a letter, what do you need? It is my house address and it's all you need. You don't need my house lock ID or key to get in my house.

Same with Bitcoin, you need to give them a public address, not your private key, not your mnemonic seed.

And trading in Twitter messages, it's bad practice. Twitter does not protect user privacy. You trade on Twitter in personal message but not private message.

This is an investment case, and when it comes to investing, there are different ways to lose bitcoins. I also joined many bitcoin doubler sites when I was new to the market and can say at the time, there were countless such sites, doubling bitcoin weekly, daily, and even hourly...I lost quite a bit at that point, but it was a pleasant experience I don't regret. I only lose when investing with greed and lack of knowledge, I have never lost or hacked in my bitcoin storage.

If we are talking about this now we would really say that it is stupid move and why the hel you give to them ? Its because we learned a lot right now and before we are just clueless on those seed phrase and for sure we think that we can get it back lol. It was really funny before like you used to invest to ponzi and lost your investment (i dont call it investment right now) . The only dumb thing that ive done that lost my bitcoin is those pyramiding scam or HYIP which pretty common before and we got easily baited on it

All of those who lost bitcoin make one more common mistake that is sharing of private information. A person should not share any type of personal and private data with others because now there are so many scammers who pretend that they are your best wisher but instead they just collect information from you and then stole your money.

Once I have saved my token in my wallet then after some days there were no tokens in that wallet I don't understand that time that whether my wallet has been hacked or overall computing data but then I completely changed who computing system through software.

So it's very easy to lose your token through scamming but a person should have active mind and should never share data which is private.

Stay away from any custodial crypto wallet

Years ago I lost a huge amount of Bitcoin to Xapo wallet and FreeWallet, these two companies require email and a password to log in, I don't know the difference between a wallet that asks for log in and another that gives you private keys or recovery seed, at the time I preferred Xapo and Freewallet, because you don't need to write anything down, just straight log in using my email address.

A few months later they denied my account, I couldn't log into my FreeWallet account and when I asked from the support they claim the error is from my end and I reset my password, maybe it was really from my end, I said, but after I successfully reset the password and log in the account was empty.

Till today I can't log into my xapo wallet either and the support team are not helping at all, I've sent them emails but they don't reply back, I just decided to leave them and move on with my life, I read many complains online about Freewallet and Xapo wallet, that's when I knew I was not the only one, these two companies are scam.

Scammers are always good at their work. As time passes, they are ahead of it and thinking of means to scamming people of their hard earned resources with their new tricks and those who are not knowledgeable enough to pick when a scammer approaches them easily fall victim. I have come to realize that it is mostly new bies that fall victim for these scammers and their scams. They take advantage of the fact that one knows nothing much about the system and they stylishly convince them to do their bidding on getting them they block all means of communication.
I noticed that most new bies here always come with the same complaints upon getting registered here with this platform.

It's really sad that even after hard earned money, there is no end to the misery if you have to face such a danger.  As a newbie I would like to suggest you what maintenance can be done to avoid such danger

To those who are seniors, I want to know how to avoid such damage?  If he told me, I would have benefited a lot.  As I am a new user please help me seniors with your valuable feedback

To avoid this you have to educate yourself about bitcoin. You can only give away your PUBLIC address to strangers. Do not give your private key, seed or anything else, since if you give other stuff away you are at risk of loosing your bitcoin. You can store your bitcoin on a paper wallet for longterm storage or on a hardware wallet for more secure storage. Software wallets are also good, but not as secure.

Because they have learned a lot from the experience of predecessors or anyone who has experienced loss, they will always be careful in protecting anything that can make their Bitcoin disappear.
Because joining the forum in 2022, one of them we must be able to keep the seed phrase safe from the reach of viruses and others as we often read in every discussion.

As a newbie, mistakes are inevitable, I don't lose bitcoins by giving my private keys to someone, but I also lose a lot of bitcoins because of investing in scam projects like HYIP or Ponzi...The important thing is that we have learned from the experience and not let it happen again in the future.

I have never had to lose large sums of bitcoins, but I have had experience with storing seed phrases incorrectly. As a beginner, I experimented with wallets, choosing the most convenient for me. I made a bunch of wallets, and one day I got some money, just a few dollars, in one of the wallets. But since I was not careful with the storage and kept everything on my laptop, at one unpleasant moment my system crashed, and I lost all passwords and all phrases.
Losing a few bucks taught me to be careful; the amount is not big, but at one time it made me very upset. I can say that I belong to that group of people who learn from their mistakes. I was so confident in myself that I thought I was doing everything right. But life shows us the truth, which recommends learning from other people's problems in order not to get our own problems in the future.

I had been an early investor in cryptocurrency and had amassed a significant amount of bitcoin over the years. I was proud of my investment and had been eagerly watching the market as the price of bitcoin soared higher and higher.

One day, I decided to transfer some of my bitcoin to a new wallet, so I could keep it more secure. I carefully copied the wallet address and double-checked everything before hitting the "send" button.

But when I checked my new wallet, the bitcoin was nowhere to be found. I panicked, wondering where my hard-earned cryptocurrency had gone. I frantically checked the transaction record, only to realize that I had accidentally copied the wrong wallet address.

I felt sick to my stomach. The bitcoin I had worked so hard to accumulate was now gone forever. I tried to reach out to the person who owned the wallet I had mistakenly sent the bitcoin to, but they never responded.

Days turned into weeks, and I couldn't shake the feeling of regret and frustration. I had lost a significant portion of my wealth in just a few clicks, all because of a simple mistake.

From that day forward, I became even more vigilant with my cryptocurrency investments. I triple-checked every transaction and made sure to always copy and paste wallet addresses with extreme caution. But the memory of my lost bitcoin never left me, a constant reminder to always be careful with my investments.

Actually there are many bitter experiences that we experience in the crypto world, losing assets that we already have is certainly a thing that is difficult for us to forget, and I have experienced this when sending Bitcoin to the wrong wallet address, and until now all these events have become very valuable experiences and always careful in making transactions, Moreover, as you did give the phrase seed there is a very fatal thing for our assets.

I have never come across a bitcoin scam.  Ever since I started investing in Bitcoin, the number of scammers in cryptocurrency has been very low.But nowadays the number of scammers is increasing day by day.  But I lost some bitcoins due to my own mistakes.  Back in 2017 when the price of bitcoin was $12k I held some bitcoins, but later I lost some bitcoins due to a transaction to a wrong address.But the most important thing in cryptocurrency is to secure full access to your seed phrase and wallet.These accesses should never be shared with anyone, as sharing them is tantamount to giving away your bitcoins to that person.  And while adding different tokens to the wallet should be well justified because there are many scam coins in the market.

Oh, friends, hearing your story, you must be very annoyed with yourself, because losing you is a carelessness that should have been avoided. How not, sending bitcoins to the wrong address is clearly carelessness. Actually talking about the loss may not be because of fraudsters, but also occurs due to carelessness yourself, for example not double-checking the address when we make a transaction, or we connect our wallet to an unclear site. All of these experiences will definitely make us more careful in the future, and for beginners this is valuable learning for them because they can minimize the risk of seeing and hearing from the experiences of bitcoin holders who are older than them.

I ve never heard of this before... the bitcoin doublers.


I have never had this kind of temptation to buy something for quick money. However, I understand what you say and it is unfortunately very common.


 :( :( :( :(


yeap. And there is also a misconception between passhphrase and passwords. The passphrase in BIP39 is extending your seed phrase and therefore in order to recover the wallet you need 12 + passphrase and you can recover it in any device that utilizes BIP39. If you lose your passphrase everything is lost. Some wallets also allow you to add a password which is tied to the specific device that you use and you can simply recover the wallet using your 12 words. If you forget your password you can just factory reset the device and import the 12 words later.

In the early days of Bitcoin ^{(I am talking about 2015-2019 when rookies barely get the needed information that will help their Bitcoin journey)} a lot of people (I am one of them) have been the victim of crypto scam but now I believe any rookie that's a victim of a crypto scam is either greed or don't care about building her knowledge before diving into the crypto space because most scams of these days are still using the same strategy what they do is refine the strategy to make it look genuine.

A few years ago I found a link on this forum to a site where people were talking about how they lost their bitcoins. Since then I've been trying to find that link, and it was with a search engine that I came across this topic. Maybe someone will find this link?

Thankfully, I haven't lost any BTC along the way. But I did lose some Ethereum early on. I kept my BTC safer than ETH back then, and it was a time when not many places supported Ethereum (unless it's an exchange). So I knew that it's best not to keep ETH on an exchange, but I didn't know the difference between custodial and non-custodial wallets. I kept Ethereum in an online custodial wallet that was very popular back then, until one day I had a zero balance and a notification that the wallet company suffered allegedly from a hackers' attack. They offered 40% reimbursement to those who filed the requests early on, and I got 40% of my ETH back, which then gave me a nice profit over my initial investment because Ethereum has soon skyrocketed, but still, it's a loss and a lesson I remember. The lesson is simple: Not your keys, not your coins. Don't trust a centralized service, even if it seems popular and reliable.

No I have never lost bitcoins. But many scammers like you have sent me messages like this. But I never heeded their message. But I have often heard and seen cases like yours. If you can save yourself a little here, you will not fall into such problems. One thing you should always remember is that you will not get anything for free here. Of course you have to earn by working hard. Therefore, no matter how many such messages come, if you avoid them, you will definitely be saved a lot. I don't blame you because many newbies make mistakes like this. You made a mistake here you lost money and you are now one of the highest cautions.

I’ve never lost any bitcoin but I have spent some whilst the price was very low in 2015 & 2016. Luckily I didn’t sell most of my stash but I did sell some very low to buy dumb stuff back in the day. I think it is character building though, early adopters have all made some silly mistakes earlier on but it makes you appreciate the bitcoin that you do have more.

There are numerous ways to lose your Bitcoin that are not only due to scams, as a simple mistake made by you can cause you to lose all of your Bitcoin in a matter of seconds, particularly if you make a mistake in the wallet address you are about to send the Bitcoin to; if you make a mistake in the wallet address, you will automatically send Bitcoin to an unknown wallet and your Bitcoin will be lost forever.

Because of these types of errors, it is always advisable to obtain some basic knowledge about Bitcoin, keys and addresses, and blockchain technology before beginning your Bitcoin investment, so that you do not fall for such scams, because if you know you would know that there is a difference between wallet address and seed phrase.

Well, Bitcoin needs to be spent to make its economy active.  So there shouldn't be any remorse on that.  Bitcoin had achieved its status now because of the help of people who are eager to buy, spend, and sell their Bitcoin.  This makes the Bitcoin market lively and adoption to proliferate.

Anyway, I never lost my BTC because I gave my private key to anybody else but I lost my holdings due to an account hack on one of the exchanges I used to trade/store my BTC.  It was a lesson learned that one should not make exchanges as a stash and always enable 2fa for more security.

Had my own fair share with virtual mining machine scam from a certain site like that. It's been almost three years now I can really recollect the site address but it was introduced to me by a childhood friend and what certainly convinced me was that fact that he had just made his first withdrawal from the mining stuff which raised up his optimism about the whole stuff by deciding to put in money 3x the initial amount he first invested and I did same too after much explanation from him.

To cut long story short, few days to our expected withdrawal we got locked out of the site till date. Immediately I knew I have been scammed through a gullible bro. Not until I got to know about bitcointalk community and with all informations I have gathered from mind blowing members in the community about crypto and Bitcoin in particular it's easier now for me to discern a scam scheme or trick when I see one from afar.

if all are thinking of holding and not selling, i don't think we will see this market as active as now. we need movement in any market so the supply demand will also be prominent. it will be a stagnant market if no one is selling, and don't know if the price will reach to this level. and as much as possible, the use case such as being in the payment sector should be in active mode to assess its actual value in the market. without use case, you can't determine the value of a certain currency.

It's true if all people don't want to sell their coins, the market will not active. But the market will not be stagnant because people who want to buy Bitcoin will place order buy with higher price in order to attract people to sell their coins, this will increase Bitcoin price because people willing to buy Bitcoin with a premium price.

I think that's what happen during bull market, many people want to buy Bitcoin with premium price.

If you look at the market, the traders are much more than the holders. Holders like us are only a fraction of the market. So there is no way the market will stand still without any buy or sell orders. But whether you are a holder or a trader, the goal is still profit, so just pump bitcoin up to a high price, and people sell bitcoins massively, no one can hold it forever.

What a risk by giving out your seed phase, which is easier access to your account been compromised, and that has been a big lesson someone no need to happen in second time, because seeds phase and private key, has not to be shared with someone, to avoid stories that touch the heart. I learned my lesson when i connect my wallet to fishing link in the name of claiming airdrop, that make me lost someone of alt-coin in that particular wallet, which the wallet has been compromised.

I think that every second crypto enthusiast either stole cryptocurrencies, or they unknowingly gave their key phrases to restore the wallet.

I've had about $600 stolen from my Jaxx wallet for several years. Unfortunately, I didn't know then that it was a scam wallet.
But I don't have a single lost Satoshi, I've already reviewed all my wallets and exchanges for a long time and collected the crypt in one place from everywhere.
I also have a Ledger.

What you don't know about is indeed bigger than you. Many newbies have one way or the other lost their coins to scammers just because they are naive to it.

Due to my exposure to and familiarity with bitcoin in this community, I don't believe I will ever fall for a crypto scam or reveal my seed phrase to anyone, irrespective of how tempting the offer may seem. Although I have received numerous private messages on Telegram from various users urging me to connect my wallet to their website in exchange for $60 worth of bitcoin, I do decline their offer because I am aware of their intentions if I should do so.

You made a big mistake and learned a big lesson from it. Maybe you won't make any more mistakes like this in the future. The seed phrase is your account key. If you give this key to someone else for any reason, you will be responsible for it. The job of scammers is to take control of this key from others at any cost. But the crypto community is now very aware that they will not make such mistakes now. Not only that any kind of link that others ask to enter should be avoided. Scammers have come up with more sophisticated methods these days so it's best to aware before doing anything.

Aside from giving your seed phrase to someone being the way to access your wallet, there are other means my which scammers also gain access or take control of your wallet which is, by connecting your wallet to a layer 2 platform such as the app.


Because once you grant access and connect your wallet to a third-party platform, the scammers at the backend will get access to you wallet and carry out transactions without any restrictions, this has happened to many people before and so now that you mentioned airdrop you must note that some of those airdrop team will require you to connect your wallet to claim your airdrop reward but all are attempts to take control of your wallet.

It's not a common mistake but OP was just too naive that time or perhaps he didn't know what was the purpose of having a seed in our wallet.  

If I want to answer that question of OP, maybe leaving your crypto in exchanges will be counted as a lost Bitcoin due to hacking incident. But I can name most common problem of losing Bitcoin and those are:

 –leaving your coins in the exchange
 –giving/showing your own private key/seed to others(just like what happened to OP)
 –investing in a HYIP/pyramid scheme/doubler etc
 –sending your coins to the wrong address
 –forgetting the seed key to your wallet or you misplaced those keys or possibly gone etc

I can see that op is so eager to write different stories about the lose of individual Bitcoin which can be very sad because of the trauma and emotions that can be attached to it. It is very good for us to be careful and know what we are doing so that with all these stories we keep reading everyday about other people's misfortune, that will not be our portion. I had made mistake too then and I am more wiser now because of my past experience that made me so angered losing my most precious coin due to ignorance of what scammers is capable of doing to me.

Expensive way to learn from things but a simple reminder that we should all invest tume to know things where we would be engaging ourselves with. Just think of cautious investors knowing the risk but have still suffered from concerns of the like. We are using online technology meaning, this technology is also prone to negative tendencies of keeping an asset. So better prepare onself before starting; dedication, orderliness, and other positive characterists should be met before investing. Having a strong foundation won't put you in trouble.

And with regards to these listed possibilities or causes, there are more for sure. And to add; malwares on devices such as phising sites could also put your assets at risk. Then, if there are many risk involved why are people still continuing their investment, is probably and more likely because of profit potential; high risk and high reward. Also, these possible causes could be aided by being fully aware of  what you are actually doing.

There are several stories of people who lost their Bitcoins, accumulated on the early years of cryptocurrency. Since BTC was cheap back then, they didn't give much importance or attention to their wallets and consequently lost what on those days represented few bucks of dollars, but ended becoming millions of dollars in our present days.

Man has two more chances before $232 million is lost forever (https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/man-has-two-more-chances-before-232-million-is-lost-forever-222045101.html)

Man who threw away €150m in bitcoin hopes AI and robot dogs will get it back (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/02/man-hopes-ai-and-robot-dogs-will-help-recover-150m-in-bitcoin-from-landfill)

Man Searches Through Landfill For 8 Years For $350 Million Lost Bitcoin Wallet (https://www.iflscience.com/man-searches-through-landfill-for-8-years-for-350-million-lost-bitcoin-wallet-61952)

Now these people are desperate to recover what was lost and regretful for their negligent, careless behavior. If they had believed Bitcoin's potential since the beginning, they would have acted in a different manner, without any doubts. The lesson I take from this is to never be a scornful person.

Oh damn you have made a big error OP, that’s what happens when you start working on something without knowledge and education. Well, it is certain that cryptocurrency field is a source of money in case you have the ability and competence to practice it. In addition to that, it is essential to save your private key and seed phrase in a safe place such us a flash disk and never share it to anyone. The scammers are regrettable widespread in the whole internet specifically in crypto area. Be aware of them and trust nobody. In fact, you have made a right decision when you bough a hardware wallet ( Trezor ) , it is more safe and secure than centralized exchange such us Binance and Coinbase, Your money is controlled by you, that’s the most important feature of hardware wallets.

Losing Bitcoin is something that is very bad. But many people have this experience. Many people lost Bitcoin because of scams, lost seed phrases or other important data for accessing the wallets, or evem lost BTC because of a wrong transfer. These can be unforgettable experiences for lessons. With the bad experiences, we expect to avoid the same ways and choose safer ways.

Because, recently there was a member here in the forum who had his electrum wallet hacked, and his shortcoming was that he was too complacent at that time.

      it seems that the scraped bitcoin from his balance is more than 1k$, and the reason why it was hacked is because he did not update his electrum wallet immediately, which was the reason why the hacker entered his electrum account.

That was a big mistake but at least you learned something from it and as a consequence you got a hardware wallet which are very secure, in my case I have lost some bitcoin over the years, not much but it still bothers me, it happened to me when I was making a backup of a wallet and by accident I safely deleted both the original and the backup, and since that was a wallet that I had created just some minutes prior I had yet to write the seed words on a piece of paper, it was not a lot of money just 50 dollars or something like that, but since then I have changed my habits when backing up my wallets and this has never happened to me again.

When I was using coinbase for a time someone did hack into my account. From that point on i've never kept anything on an exchange for long periods of time at all, I just get in and get out and accomplish whatever I set out to do exchanging one coin for another or something of the likes of that. I definitely am a lot more careful now after that experience using VPNs and looking for more ways to be more anonymous with my private information.

I will not blame you before according to a saying that ignorant is disease. But me I didn't see ignorant in that aspect but I see ignorant as an illiterate. If you have known, you would not give you seed phrase to someone whom you have not even seen and you know the important of seed phrase. Even in your household, if you don't trust anyone you don't have to give out your seed phrase to anyone instead give them your public address number, if they want to send coins to you.

I am always careful with the seed phrase and the public address, so I have not lost any coin. And one thing you have to do is to avoid clicking of links that people send to you of claiming to give you BTC or other gifts

I heard a story of a guy who lost BTC due to a different thing. He bought a dozen of BTC when it cost several cents, and then he forgot everything about it. And when the price flew up high, he had to smash all the house interior in search of the wallet data. And he succeeded, some people say...

That is a big mistake but u learn something  in that small and due to this you got a hardware wallet and in my section i loss lot of bitcoins and there is no lot but that disturbing me and i have changed my plan and backing up the my wallets and this have a value of just a 50 dollars  or like that money not have a more and not happen in my life again .

Ouch, sounds like you should have done a little more studying of bitcoin before actually using it, but I guess any hard lesson learned is a lesson learned if he take from it. 

I think the only time that I lost bitcoin was also in my early days, probably 2015ish rang.  I sent bitcoin to the incorrect address from the company I was trying to purchase physical goods from.  It wasn't a lot of money at the time, but it's added up over the years.  Lost to the "abyss".  Happens.

I've lost bitcoin out of greed. The mistake is completely on me, and took place many years back. If I've kept hold of those bitcoin, now it could've turned more valuable. Came across a multiplier scheme in which we need to download a software and run it, sending the bitcoin to specific address and it gets multiplied. Never thought it to be a scam and lost big money around 0.05BTCwhich in today's market is very big.

Every person has moments when they are truly pensive. During this distraction, we can't even carefully do the things we need to do. In such a situation, I came back from a few mistakes about bitcoin transfer. Sometimes I forget to look at the address when I want to send money to my account. Sometimes after making the network selection, I question whether I have chosen the right one. These are not scams, just carelessness, but I still experience them sometimes.

Sometimes even when you think you are paying attention to everything there may be things you miss. If you are new to the world of cryptocurrencies, you need to be aware of the risks. Hackers and cybercriminals are constantly thinking of new creative ways to steal your Bitcoins and other crypto assets. If you are making good investments and profits in cryptocurrency, scams can be the worst thing that can happen to you.

For example fake websites and phishing attempts are the most common form of fraud in the cryptocurrency world. Sometimes we want to do our work in a hurry and we do our transactions quickly without checking the website at that moment, then when we look at our account balance, we see that it has been emptied. Scammers often issue a security alert to redirect you to a fake website and warn you to enter your account information for security. This gives them access to your Bitcoin or cryptocurrency account. Scammers have become quite skilled at recreating websites and making them look real. They play every role to steal people's personal data. I personally did not lose Bitcoin but four or five years ago i was a victim of a fake website and suffered a small loss of altcoins. It wasn't a huge amount but this small loss taught me a huge lesson. Be sure to pay attention to everything and everything while making your crypto transactions. There is no room for distraction in this market.

I think everyone has faced this problem for the first time in cryptocurrency.  I have never been scammed before in anything related to bitcoin and crypto, but I have lost many bitcoins due to my mistakes.Now a day's it is seen that people fall victim to phishing scams, the number of scammers in cryptocurrency world is very high now.  They try to get the other's wallet seed using different methods.You should never give your seed phrase or private key to a stranger.  This mistake can be noticed among users who have made many cryptocurrencies.We need to be aware of the risks, because cryptocurrency cyber attacks are high. They always come up with new creative ways to steal bitcoins and other crypto assets and steal money to get various traps.

That is a really unlucky one you've sent to another address. That is why I always double and triple check my address to make sure that is where my bitcoin is going. We know that it is our fault if it was sent to the wrong address. The moral lesson really is to make sure we learn from our mistakes because it is still useless to commit those mistakes over and over and not learn from them. Though the biggest mistake that happened to me was investing in ponzi schemes before, I did learn a lesson from it.

Wow... Shit happens. Some of us here have our own sad story about our bitcoin or crypto journey but I would say this is the height of them all and it doesn't really matter the amount of bitcoin involved. But OP haven't you heard never to share or disclose your seed phrase or private keys to anyone? What possible lies could the scammer had sold to you to make you send your seed phrase? Well... Sorry for your loss and It's a pity you learnt the hard way. Your story is indeed an eye opener for other newbies to learn from.

many scammers make their mode to scam people like OP. being perhaps not very experienced, he was easily influenced by giving him the seed of his wallet. it was a valuable experience for him, as well as a difficult experience. but now he must have learned a valuable lesson and one he will not repeat. Likewise with anyone who reads his story, now everyone is getting a lesson.

This is quite an eye opening thread, I have learned a lot from many of the victims as well as many of you honorable members that are keying in your bits of pros and cons for safe sailing in Bitcoin and cryptospace.

In 2018, I fell victim of BTC scam also, I lost over 0.2 BTC after joining a Ponzi scheme that I cannot even remember it name, I was merge to pay somebody and in return I was promised my capital + 50% interest after 30 days. I never got a single Satoshi back, that was the last of it kind I've ever joined.

This is just the way it goes. Lots of people fall victim to losing their Bitcoin, it's a learning experience.

I, for one, was the idiot who wrote a private key on a torn piece of envelope paper and left it on his nightstand, completely forgetting about it. 4 days later, I came to find out that my wife had mistaken it for trash and thrown it away. Upon realizing this, I instantly ran outside to the dumpster only to see it was empty. Pffft, no way I'm going to dig up a landfill, so I let it be. An experience in 2019 I learned from early on that brought me where I am today, The creator of the First Seed phrase notebook, The Shieldfolio stonebook.

Lol, so glad she threw that private key away.

They never stop trying and finding new ways. They covet the investments they have made with the money they have earned with the labor of others. I hope they never have a chance.

It is necessary to learn from our own mistakes or the mistakes of others. There are different scams every day and we need to know about them and protect ourselves.

We must be careful when taking any action. In some matters we should not trust anyone. In order to do this, we must have knowledge.

I've stored my recovery seed in a Gmail account I created years ago and someone somehow gets my password and stole all my Bitcoin, at the time I lack some knowledge about keeping recovery seed and that old Gmail had a weak password too, I also don't use or activate 2Fa authentication too, after I lost the Bitcoin I started researching on where I did things wrong and I learnt that recovery seed are not to be kept online, they are safer offline.

Not even any cloud storage are safe for your recovery seeds, there are some stories of peole losing their Bitcoin when few cloud storage platforms got hacked, for example 4shared and others.

You can not trust third parties to save your password, wallet private keys, wallet seed phrase, backup files. Even those companies don't know what will happen with their data bases so if you trust them, put your money into their data bases, you have very bad decision.

Some tables in Are your passwords in the green? (https://www.hivesystems.io/blog/are-your-passwords-in-the-green) will help you to set up your strong passwords.

When you keep them offline, it is better practice but you must keep your backups very safely from water, fire, steal. You have to secure your backups individually.

Create some backups, don't create only one backup. One is unusable, you will have others to use.

Even though the website is very secure, let's say Google, hackers can still penetrate a person that has a weak password like you, which means it is our fault, but no matter if it is our fault that has a weak password, it is still better to make it offline because the tendency of making it online is that all accounts would be compromised, no matter how cautious we are, so it is better to prevent them by not putting it online so that you are now more focused on your offline security measures like putting it in a paper, engraving it, or buying a hardware wallet for better protection.

As long as I have known Bitcoin, I know the safest storage using wallet hardware. Although logically there is still room to lose, but I think hard wallets are the option with the least risk. But some time ago I was stupid because I unknowingly pressed and sent the prifat key to my office mate.  Luckily he doesn't understand prifatkey and cryptocurrency.
So when you're multitasking, you have to be meticulous with what you receive and deliver. Make sure you are really careful not to do stupid things like me.

Unfortunately i suffered from same case at the start and lost my fund. I stored all my wallets phrase in the draft folder of Gmail account and didn't wrote any where on hard copy. The hacker got access to my mail and stole my money. At first I didn't know how he stole it but after second hack attempt he erase all my draft key and then i founded the real reason behind my phrase leaked. Till now i never used any account information cloudly and i wroted all my phrase in notebook.


Hardware wallet is much safer and you have to choose open source hardware to kept your btc safe. you are lucky that your office mate was unaware of it otherwise you could lose your btc. Even it is hardware or hot wallet we have to do every safety task before storing btc.

Both of this (Lost and Stolen) happened to me. Actually at the beginning it's common to make a mistake but if it happens several times like me than it's a worst thing.

My purpose to share my stories so that newbies can learn from it and never do like this. First I have lost some of my Bitcoin by sending it to a wrong wallet address. I sent in a hurry and lost it because the destination address was wrong. Then I also sent my BTC to another Blockchain but all the mistakes I have done all are in a hurry. So my advice is that " Never be Hurry when you are making any transection and always recheck your wallet address and the Blockchain

And I have been scammed by a person when I didn't use an escrow and sent it first. They as usually he blocked me though he was much trusted to me but a unknown person. So Always use an escrow if you want to deal with someone you don't know perfectly.

I never lose my bitcoins by forgetting to back up. But I used to experience losses due to being deceived by the ponzi system and such. I experienced a lot of losses at that time which made me in the most difficult life for me personally. but I've learned a lesson from it. And I am now a more careful person in everything. But I've heard a lot of stories about someone who lost a Seed Phrase because they forgot to save it or something. And I think it hurts a lot more. So I always back up my Seed Phrase wallet not in one place but I store it in several forms. but I never save it in file form. I prefer to write it on paper or spread it in my favorite book.

Or he was only act dumb because he don't want to let anyone know if he's own a lot Bitcoin, also he just want to become a good guy for not stealing someone's money.

Who's in the hell someone want to share his seed phrase to a stranger? during you want to create a new wallet, there's always a warning message if you must not share your seed phrase and write down in a piece of paper, which is more or less seed phrase is the most important part.

Even you have trust someone, there's a chance he could backstabbed you.

I have really not had that experience of one scamming me of my hard earned resources not to talk of deceiving me to give them my login details or my seed phrase. I joined this platform with my eyes wide open to learning more about bitcoin and detecting scams and scammers was very easy for me because I took my time to read posts and comments to know more about them.

The only thing was that I lost access to my wallet as a result of my phone crash then which I could not recall were I kept the seed phrase to that wallet and that was my weekly pay wallet I had then. It was very painful to me because I don't take such for granted but it took me unawares and I had nothing to do to gain access to it till this very moment.

It certainly shows that you weren't in the habit of cleaning up after yourself. Maybe today you not only put your private keys in a safe place, but you don't let your wife pick up your garbage. At least that would be a beneficial mishap for both of you...

I didn't personally lose much at all, at least not enough worthy of mentioning. However a friend of mine who used to use the silk road to buy weed and Addy in college had a created a ton of burner emails each time he went to make a purchase and he always made random names for passwords, stuff they he just simply can't remember. He said he had at least 20 or 30 coins in limbo. That just sucks lol. I check in on him from time to time.

All personal information related to Bitcoin is never to be shared with anyone. I have been careful about these things so far I have managed to keep my bitcoins safe and my bitcoins have not gone into anyone else's hands so far. Always try to keep your personal information to yourself. But people learn from mistakes as you have made a mistake once and because of that mistake you have suffered a lot, hope you learn from this mistake. And be careful not to make these mistakes in the future. Because BTC is a very valuable commodity, it's natural to feel bad for such stupidity if it ends up in someone else's hands.

That is a really big regret, for sure, but again, we can't learn something if we haven't experienced it. I hope he has already moved on from it, as that is really difficult to know, as we know that he just made some random password, and we know that we get lazy sometimes to think of good passwords. I am just as lucky that I was able to recover mine too; my case was in the exchange, and I just submitted KYC.

Weak password in the year 2023 is a bit of a trouble to be fair, I mean you shouldn't have a weak password anymore because you could literally save your passwords as well, which means that it is not going to be possible for you to "forget" them since it is stored somewhere for you, somewhere safe. You can use google, browsers, password companies and many more for it as well.

I have been fine about it so far because I am not a rich or famous person, nobody even attempts to hack into my accounts anywhere. Because they would gain absolutely zero from it and there is no reason for doing it at all. I know that it will take a while for people to realize this, but storing very complicated passwords is easier nowadays and you do not have to remember them, just store them.

Ofcourse it is true all personal information as regards bitcoin is private and never meant to be shared by any third party but some people still fall prey of scammers without any idea that their details have been hacked. This act is perpetrated through links sent to them via email social media handle and lots more unbeknownst to them are vulnerable to invading their devices with malware's when they click on such link and possibly download whatever was sent to them through that link.

Many people have lost access to their accounts as a result of these carelessness and it has cost them alot. That is why it is advised not to click any link sent to your email or anything account of yours If you are not expecting mail from such or you do not recognize such email better still you delete it all at once.

Very common with newbie mistakes on which it is really that common specially into those who dont have that sufficient knowledge because scammers and hackers is everywhere. They would really be taking advantage into those people who dont have sufficient knowledge on which it would really be just that normal that errors and mistakes like this is common but on the time that we do experience such mistakes then we would eventually learn about further things which it is a common concept or scenario that we do have. Important thing is that we do make learnings along the way
and this is why you should really be that so easily be giving out those seed phrases because this is really indeed the key of your wallet, once been known then say goodbye into your funds.
Also, dont randomly click out links online or make some downloads because this is where virus and malwares which causes for your coins to be stolen.

There will always be these stories but the good part for you @OP in this was, you learned from it. You know now the importance of a seed phrase or private key and you sure know it’s not equal to a bitcoin address but the opposite.
Private key and public address. The name tags tells the difference.
It was a your mistake and you’ve learned.

It’s a good thing having to relate this tale and even with that, there isn’t any guarantee that there wouldn’t be any further victims. Of course there would always be other victims but, the take does it but to reduce the numbers of victims. In a space guided by trust, you’ve got to have a third eye open