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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This thread will be quite educating and funny. The best means of learning is from people's experience 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 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 scam 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 learnt it the hard way. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

Should I buy two S19j Pro's for $3,700 USD and mine it for the next few years or just buy $3,700 worth of bitcoin (0.16 BTC) ?

My worry is that mining difficulty will keep going up and I will run out of time being profitable before I reach 0.16 BTC.

At the current difficulty of mining, it will take over 250 days to mine 0.16 BTC with two S19j Pro's (assuming electricity is free) but the difficulty will be WAY higher in the next 250 days...

I love the idea of mining because it allows me to dollar cost average into the market and there is no KYC involved.

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Sort of, you have control of the full bitcoin node using the web front end that they give you or by SSH into the box and running things at the command line.
You don't get the front end that you see when running the GUI like you would in Windows.

Personally, I use the desktop version when I just need a BTC node.

And the bundled / nodes in a box stuff when I need a LN node, or want to demo things to people who don't want to know how it works, just that it does work.

-Dave

Yes they all need core. The 'nodes in a box' install core and then everything else.
They do run on a RPi4, well perhaps not run but walk really fast :-)
I have a few of them running on Rpi and they are fine, but a 4th gen i5 with 8gb RAM and a 1tb SSD blows it out of the water in terms of performance.

Once again, US pricing but the used PC the extra stick of RAM and a new 1tb SSD were under $150 all in.

-Dave

Core is enough to do what you want to do which is validate transactions.

Umbrel / Rapbiblitz / etc. Add a lot of stuff that you may or may not want to do but they give you the option.
Electrum server, Lightning node, pretty GUI for some things, block explorers, and so on.

Those are a bit more difficult to setup & configure so the nodes in a box take care of that for you.

-Dave

where should i start? really starting from zero.

Aren't you contradicting yourself here as first you said its a big amount, they you said its not and now again you say its big?

Anyway, if in the end is not a huge amount you should definitely advise your friend to check Bisq as it should be possible to sell bitcoin in relatively short time frame. If he doesn't want to go through that hassle and amount is not big, he can try Binance too but in that case he should be ready to go through some extra verifications.

Binance is one of the most trusted crypto exchanges, so it's pretty safe as long as a person is ready to comply with their rules. If it's a really big transaction, I believe they can ask about the sources of money, and if a bank account receives a big transaction, the bank might have questions as well. So I don't know, perhaps split into several transactions and into several bank accounts if it's possible and easy in your country? I wouldn't do a big transaction via an exchange because I wouldn't want to deal with the delays and sorting things out, as well as a small but present risk of not getting your money, either due to a scam or funds being frozen by the exchange or by the bank.

There is no big deal here. Here should register on Binance, get his or herself verified using any provided means of identification verification in Binance. It does not take longer time to complete verification if the information provided are accurate. After successfully passed the verification, click on P2P service and choose available vendors to trade with. Make sure you attached your banking information first thou. To be on a safer side, select among the verified vendors. If you have the money up to the quantity of btc he wants to exchange, then you can send him the money and collect the btc in return so you can save him or her of time wasting.

Assuming we were dealing with a little number of funds here I would have asked you to just go ahead with using Binance, I guess you're already aware of the fact that you'll be asked to complete your KYC but since you mentioned a large amount then I'll ask that you look for a decentralized exchange like https://bisq.network, _{not suitable for large volume trade,} for example that the way you won't have to worry about your coin being seized by any central body.


This will be the safest and most trusted option all you have to do now is to compare the price that he was supposed to sell in an exchange and them send him the money once you've confirm that he has sent you the coins, at least this way none of you will be able to scam each other unlike online p2p tht's been flooded by scammer looking for newbies to dupe.

Why you're saying Binance is a piece of shit? there's no problem to use Binance as long as you're fine to submit your KYC, it's currently the biggest exchange so huge amount transaction isn't really common on there. Just use Binance to trade, not for holding your coins.

If your friend can wait and doesn't really need the money in hurry, you can suggest him to use Bisq or hodlhodl since it's P2P exchange and there's no way they will halt your withdrawal.

In principle, he shouldn't have a problem, as he has an account at Binance and the bitcoins there. There is a certain risk in leaving them in centralised entities such as Binance, but I don't see any more risk in changing bitcoin to fiat or simply having the bitcoin there, it's the same risk. Another thing is when he withdraws to his bank account, his bank could stop the transaction and ask him about the origin of the funds if he is not clear.

In any case, if everything has a legal origin and he can prove it, the most he faces is a delay.

Even though I have Binance account, went though KYC (had to do it to unlock account due lost 2FA), using their debit card for 2 years and never had any issues with them, I honestly still wouldn't trust them with larger amounts and would find some other way, most likely directly P2P.


Well, since he mentioned that his friend wants to exchange large amounts Bisq is probably not the best way to do it if you wanna do it fast due their low volume so may end up losing a lot of money. Then again, if his friend is not in a hurry and has time, he can do it gradually little by little.