Bitcoin Forum

Earlier today I watched in real time as someone stole all my bitcoin. I was asking for help on the reddit page linked to electrum for help and obviously the help I received led to me losing all my bitcoin. What can I do?

What happened? How did you lose your coins? On the history tab, have you seen the coin moved to a wrong address? Explain better.

How was your Bitcoin lost, what help did you seek out for?. Give us more details so you don’t fall prey again and other members can learn too.

But for the record electrum support do not have any social media accounts or will request you to share your seed phrase or click on links. No wallet does that. The scammer might have used your naivety for his gain, sorry for your loss mate

Can you share your thread on Reddit or post on Reddit, so we can understand how people scammed you and stole your bitcoins.

This topic can be moved to Electrum board too.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=98.0

You can not do anything to get your bitcoin back because Bitcoin transactions are irreversible.

You only can learn from this accident and avoid repeating it again.

So I have no way it get it back? I am very amateur...I was just trying to receive the bitcoin and got an error message saying that are was already receiving and said hold down receive and there was nothing listed. I stupidly shared my key I guess by going to what looked like an extremely trusted site to validate it.

No way, as said, Bitcoin transaction is irreversible.

Except if you file a report to police and that scammer get arrested, then stolen bitcoin will be returned to you with support from police.

You can see it in your Bitcoin wallet as Pending transaction (not confirmed yet) or you can check it with Bitcoin block explorers.

List of useful Bitcoin block explorers (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5197909.0)

Not your private keys, not your bitcoins.

You share your private keys, you lose your bitcoins.

Bitcoin Q&A: Not your Keys, Not your Coins (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcrEEnDLm58)

It's better to edit the post and unlink the URL and preferably, put a bolded warning that it is a phishing website.
(or a Mod will delete that reply later)

Virustotal has four hits (3 reds) on that website and one of the AV is quite reputable.
Link: virustotal.com/gui/url/9b33a24dba056c91bdac0d1683c75c9ec2b47e31c75b5701403c1e0593a985c6 (https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/9b33a24dba056c91bdac0d1683c75c9ec2b47e31c75b5701403c1e0593a985c6?nocache=1)

Virustotal not enough?
I've tested it in a sandboxed environment and the site lazily links almost all of its feature to a wallet list where it'll ask for either "seed phrase", "json backup" or "private key".
Those aren't something that will "connect" your wallet, those are the data that'll get your crypto stolen.

At least you admit it, that was a very costly mistake that you must learn or avoid repeating in the future.
Never share your keys with anyone.
Sorry for your loss but it was an irreversible transaction and there's no way to get it back.

I tried it and I clicked the "Connect Wallet"  and I found out that they didn't support Electrum as a selected wallet.  Why?

Why do you ask?
How would anyone know aside from the owner of the phishing site?

If it's because OP mentioned that the link is from r/Electrum, OP didn't linked the said reply so it's impossible to tell how he ended up pasting his private key there.

That's why I was confused about, what wallet OP used, if that's Electrum then the given phishing site didn't support it.
It's not well detailed so I got confused and asked.

Also, trying to support my doubt that only Electrum has a stronger security feature than other wallets that can able to freeze unbroadcasted transactions, that's why they didn't include it.

Sad to say that "freezing feature" in Electrum has nothing to do with security since it's all about "coin control".
Those frozen coins or addresses in the user's Electrum wallet only applies to that specific wallet file, the Bitcoin network doesn't care about it since it's not a Bitcoin consensus rule or a policy.
If a hacker got his hands on the user's seed phrase or private key and restored it to other wallet or another Electrum, the user's frozen coins can still be spent there.

I think that the owner of the phishing website simply just doesn't know it or prioritizes Multi-Coin wallets,
plus the site is rushingly made by using common crypto-website templates.

If you share your seed or private key with a third party, this will allow the third party to steal your Bitcoins.  The seed or private key gives a person complete control over the bitcoins - he can do anything with them, including sending them to his address, which is under his sole control. 
I am very sorry for your loss! 
For the future, if you encounter any problems while using the Electrum wallet, then there is no need to panic and try to take active steps. 
It's better to take a break, drink tea or coffee with sweets and think about what you could have done wrong? 
If you did not immediately find a solution, then it is advisable to ask the corresponding question on the Bitcointalk forum (but, of course, you cannot publish confidential financial information).

Sorry for your loss OP. I hope the stolen amount isn't too big!
Unfortunately, as other members have said, if the transaction has been confirmed then there is nothing you can do from your side  to get your mobey back. However, if you know the stealer, you can try to convince him to send you your money back.

The lesson: never share your keys/seeds with anyone. When you create a new wallet on Electrum or any decent wallet you will see a warning like this: "never disclose your seed / never type it on a website". The warning is there for a reason!

You didn't get hacked.  You got conned.

A thief, con artist, tricked you into giving them control over your bitcoins.

You haven't provided enough details to know for sure, but any (or all) of the following are possible:

• You may have been tricked into downloading a fake Electrum from a website that is disguised to look like the Electrum website, but actually isn't.
• You may have been tricked into believing that you were receiving Bitcoins when they actually were never sent
• You may have been tricked into revealing your security information directly to the thief

Bitcoin isn't a bank account. It's a currency. If you handed someone on a street corner a $100 bill, and then they took off and disappeared with it, the only way to get that money back would be to catch the thief and force them to hand it back to you (through threats or government action). The same is true of Bitcoin.  You handed your Bitcoin to a complete stranger on a digital street-corner without any knowledge of who they were or what they would do with it.  Then, they disappeared with the money. The only way to get that back from them is to catch them and force them to give it back to you.

when you ask for help, you must remember that it should be you who initiates the DMs, not someone else trying to message you and just assisting you. you can smell the scam from the beginning when that happens. even in the telegram when you pretend to be the newbie, all sorts of PMs will hit your inbox representing the admin of the group.

but, because you share your keys, then you sure lost your coins. you just have to be careful next time. sorry for your loss.

"Moron

Stupid

Loser piece of shit."


I know that on some level you feel this way.

I simply want to ask one question how much did you lose ?



ALSO HERE IS FREE ADVICE SHIT CAN THAT WALLET AS IT IS NOT SECURE ANY MORE.!!

If your wallet was hacked and your bitcoin was stollen i think their is nothing you can do to get them back. These days the strategy scammers use in scamming people who lose bitcoin is to help them to recover back their bitcoin. Don't let anybody deceive you that your bitcoin can be recovered back to you because they will still scam and take more money from you.

And we still expect to see mass crypto adoption… this is another example that shows us why it is still an unrealistic expectation. Imagine grandpa’s and grandma’s guarding their own private keys. “Priv wot? Get tha fuckoutta here!”  Legacy banking/custodial solutions will always be the only choice for these people and sometimes people just don’t want to act paranoiac with their funds. Sometimes they want to pay someone (usually banks) to guard their funds. Because being careful with everything you do on your computer sometimes gets pretty tiring. Sometimes you lose your sight as you get older and you won’t even be seeing the computer screen correctly…

I guess banks will always be the popular choice.

Old people (and some younger people too) get scammed through (internet) banking too. They fall for phishing emails or phone calls, and their money is gone. Physical money has a much better "user interface", and even then I've seen scams with "money doublers" in real life.

The dude don't even realize that he should have kept his priv keys secret. Back in the day there was a wallet service, maybe it still exists haven't checked, "my  ether wallet" or some shit like that and you needed to enter your private keys on that website to make transactions with your funds. They were offering somewhat other "offline"&"safer" solutions too as far as I remember but I was shocked when I saw it for the first time. The more shocking thing was that every user of MeW was taking that like it was the most normal thing with crypto. I see many similarities with MeW and what happened to OP. The difference is, MeW was the most normal thing years ago. Enter your priv keys on MeW! It is safe and sound  8)

If crypto ever gets adopted by the masses, probably 90% of the population won't use it as they were supposed to.

This scenario with the op isn't an example of anything, someone who was conned into handing over their BTC's to a conman, the same way millions of people over the years have been conned into handing over their fiat to conmen. There would be more adoption of BTC, people who want to avoid censorship would use it, and they should learn the basics in security first.
I agree with this, BTC was not even created to replace the system, it cannot. However BTC would be the popular choice amongst those who want to use decentralized money that only them are in full control of.

What I don't understand is what kind of help you needed with the wallet that would make you hand over your keys by entering them in a phishing website?

Your second post is very confusing. Seems like you were waiting for a transaction and somehow you got a message that you are already receiving some coins?! Message by who or what? Electrum isn't going to tell you to wait. A person probably did. I am sorry to say, but you seem to have done many things wrong, and this isn't the fault of Bitcoin or Electrum.

Grandpas and grandmas have an "expiration date". This technology isn't for them. It's for their children and grandchildren. It's also for those grandpas and grandmas that are capable of acquiring new knowledge. 

We can't have mass adoption when the average person has below-average intelligence and is completely unconscious of everything around them that can be a threat to their security. Common sense can prevent many social engineering scams, and that's what this is. It was hacking that lead to the coins being lost. It was OP giving them away. I am not trying to kick a person while they are lying down, but this could have easily been prevented.