My beautiful niece,
Calling me "Bitcoin uncle". 💖
Almost stole my keys!
#sweetnesshaiku
AI says you'd better check again!
My beautiful niece,
Calling me "Bitcoin uncle". 💖
Almost stole my keys!
#sweetnesshaiku
Sweet indeed, but mind your opsec. Children speak freely and innocently. Bad guys have children too.
I mean, unless your "niece" is no real blood niece, twenty-something, and
really beautiful of course...
Thanks guys, I know about OPSEC, even my post here (kind of) risks it. But so be it. The thing is, my niece has been with me from day one. She was a little girl when I bought my first Bitcoin in 2015, and was mostly present during my numerous conversations with her daddy at that time and later on, when I was trying to turn him into a bitcoiner. I succeeded in the "coiner" part, but not in the "bit" part. He ended up a shitcoiner and traded (is still trading) endlessly since then, and even managed to triple (3x) his investment, which made him happy, but also kind of bitter, because if he had listened to me and bought Bitcoin over the years, his profits would now be closer to 50x.
So, about my niece, she's been more or less with me throughout this journey, and surely knows things that, at the time, I did not even think of keeping a secret or assumed that it would matter 10 years later. But she's a smart kid, and I've told her not to say anything to anyone about me or her daddy and our coiner status. But when we are alone, she does comment about it to me sometimes, with heart-melting admiration, as she did yesterday, and that's why I wrote the haiku.
OPSEC is good, but it's not so easy to anticipate its importance early on in the journey, especially when 1 BTC costs $200. Will it bite me in the future? Maybe it will. But I have a feeling that the few people in my life that know, will protect it for me, or will try to, at least. It's something I can't do anything about, so I've learned to live with it.
[...]
My beautiful niece,
Calling me "Bitcoin uncle". 💖
Almost stole my keys!
#sweetnesshaiku
Sweet indeed, but mind your opsec. Children speak freely and innocently. Bad guys have children too.
I mean, unless your "niece" is no real blood niece, twenty-something, and
really beautiful of course...
I have had the very same problem with a couple of my nieces speaking quite loosely even within my earshot, and proclaiming that I have a lot of bitcoin, and even coming up with specific numbers that seem so damned unreasonable.
I have some other acquaintances saying things too, and when they say things in front of us about their conversations with other folks, there are some senses that they are likely speaking way too loosely and frequently wanting to come up with specific numbers.. so if they don't have the numbers, they will make some estimates.
I even have had several adults come straight out and ask about how many I got, which is really quite poor manners, even though I understand why the curiosity remains part of their desire to fill in blanks, since based on what I said, it could be x, y or z.
I also have an adult cousin who I shared some actual details about some specific wallets that I control, and I come to realize that I probably disclosed more than I should have had... since the same point (or similar points) could have had been made with smaller amounts... Perhaps?
[edited out]
some niece can make you a "present" by cleaning up your "disorganized" table, lol.
it already happened to quite a few people.
I have had certain ideas to have certain "nice people" help me out with certain kinds of things, yet when they sometimes go overboard in regards to their degree of snooping or wanting to know about things that are on a "need to know" basis, I sometimes will consider that they might not have any "need to know" more than they already know. It is not easy to figure out how much disclosures to make, especially sometimes when there may be "projects" that we are working on that could justify "needing to know" more, and so it can be challenging to figure out how much to disclose... and which areas might become acceptably vulnerable.. so for example, if this portion of a stash is found out about.
I have a few different bitcoin related budgets that are related to a presumption of the existence of a certain quantity of bitcoins, yet I do not necessarily make the full quantity of bitcoins to be available within folks able to spend from those budgets. Maybe it would be easier, if we have a budget or a relationship, and I bring a certain quantity of bitcoin, and you bring a certain quantity of bitcoin, so then we both have bitcoin in the mix, but then some folks might bring capital and others are supposed to bring labor, so they might not necessarily have the same quantity of bitcoin to bring to the table... yet hopefully they have talents to make up for their lack of capital to bring to the table.
I can relate. I believe many of us have had similar issues with friends and relatives. I guess the only way to completely prevent this, would be to act in complete secrecy, completely alone, and never ever talk about Bitcoin to anyone in a way that would hint that you may be a coiner yourself. Try to imagine your life 10 years ago. You just bought, say, hypothetically, 10 BTC for $2000. Would you worry so much about OPSEC? I don't think most people would. Unless you are a complete loner, with no interaction with humans, it would come naturally to mention this to a close friend or relative, and maybe even attempt to explain about Bitcoin to them and make them buy some themselves. It's only natural to want to help loved ones by suggesting to them something you think may be successful. As for me, I remember even giving little chunks of $1 worth of Bitcoin to many of my students at that time, just to show them how it works. How's that for OPSEC? Things have changed so much since then, and those 10 BTC you (hypothetically) bought for a mere $2000 have (hypothetically) turned you into a millionaire (soon multi-millionaire)!
Aside from having a boating accident (which may not be so believable these days), what I've done is to make sure my very close circle of people that know certain sensitive information about me are aware of the implications and ramifications of spreading such information to others. So far, I have the feeling that it has worked. Only time will tell, but I believe that the recent (and especially the upcoming) Bitcoin price appreciation, has made many of us more "concerned" about certain things and practices.
I guess even our posts here in WO could potentially put many of us in an unpleasant situation, should our accounts be associated with our physical identities. I would even suggest that the mere fact that we are regular WO participants, regardless of the content of our posts and how "poor" we say we are, could be enough to cause this, should such a leak occur. And this will only become worse in the future. WO could be considered a whale honey-pot, and hence the target of malicious entities. I don't want to name names, but some of us here have mentioned purchases which put their Bitcoin amounts in the triple digits or more. So, it always helps to exercise good security practices when it comes to post content, forum access and profile management. VPN? Tor? A neighbor's Wi-Fi? All of the above? Pick 'n' mix and find what works for you. And, sadly, I find OPSEC and $100k/$1M parties to be a contradiction in terms and will likely never happen.
BTW, we're getting close to $100k again, I see. Can you imagine? 10 years ago @ $200 to now @ 100k (expected). An average of almost 1.9x / year! Mind-blowing!
Edit: corrected prices (1 BTC = $200 @ 2015, instead of $100 as I initially wrote).
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