ANY BTC HOLDER WORST NIGHTMARE, and it happened to me...

[just_Alice]

All these years we were pampered by centralized services. Some of us are sometimes incapable of taking care of our most precious possessions.
We would rather trust 3rd party to keep our money safe than believe in ourselves.

Op, your total loss was that 3.5 BTC?

I know it is too late now, but what wrong is with keeping copy of your passphrase stored in multiple places in your house?
You don't trust your family?

Yes, total loss is 3,47 BTC.

I totally trust my family 100000%, but somehow I felt like I would never forget a password that I created for 3 reasons:

- I have (now I look stupid saying that) very good memory.
- I'm the "organized" type. Never loose a thing, never forget appointements etc...
- Back when I got into bitcoin, I didn't feel like I could ever loose this password, because I've used the "skeleton" so much in my life that I just had to remember the "wallet variation" I had created.

Bottomline, I know most of it, but there is too many possibilities of cap letters, numbers used or not, that even a pro cracker didn't manage to crack....

I'm really sorry you've lost so much and I wish I could help somehow. If you remember most of it then I think it is possible that you will remember the whole phrase one day. Do you know how Dmitri Mendeleev created the periodic table of elements? Here's a quote from Wiki:

"I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary."

I believe that he saw it in a dream because he already knew the most part of it. And I really wish something like this happens to you.

[crazyivan]

Sorry for your loss bud. Always make a few offline copies of your data, hide the in a book, piece of text or something similar. If possible, non English one. Then store that in a cold storage bank safe.

[HabBear]

Sorry to hear it, bro.  What kind of wallet were you using?  And yeah, that's the danger of crypto--no protections that we normally get with bank accounts, so it's our responsibility to keep the money safe.  Sucks, man, and I'm not normally one who doles out much sympathy here.

This isn't true. Online bitcoin wallet companies prevent the loss of a security passphrase or private key from blocking access to the wallet funds.

Coinbase, Xapo, etc., all allow password resets. Of course you don't get to hold your wallet's private keys but the same equivalent applies to fiat bank accounts. The money we keep in a fiat bank account isn't kept locked up in a safe for us, it's comingled with everyone elses funds, loaned out, and we're left with a credited number for which the bank promises to pay us back when we want it.

We trust the banks in this fiat world with our life savings, however don't trust bitcoin banks for the same activity. Yet in the bitcoin world we say we don't trust the fiat banks...and we don't trust the bitcoin banks either, even though they're part of the community that we all place such blind trust in.

I'm digressing.

To drumamat, I'm so sorry to hear of your current misfortune. As long as the coins are still in the wallet there's still a chance you can crack your passphrase. You may still wake up one day with that brilliant "oh shit, the passphrase is...." or maybe you hit a breakthrough with the scripts. Keep at it. And thanks for sharing your story. You ARE helping others prevent becoming the victim of the same misfortune.

[Cryptonite310]

That all really sucks man, I'm sorry you lost your coins. I heard about those stories in the past and do what I can to prevent it from happening to me.

[HabBear]

Jonny, you making stuff up again?

i remember andreas suggesting to hide your bitcoins in a picture of a cat.
if you lose the pwd just get them from there.  search openpuff

Here's what happens when I search "openpuff" > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=search2

I was looking forward to reading Andreas' story.

[lite]

It's sucks to lose, sorry for your loss. 3.5 BTC is a lot, i can't afford to lose that kinda of money, so i have this hardware wallet (ledger hw.1) it's where i keep most of my coins. i have to remember only 4 digit pin to access my coins.

[zahra4577]

Hey guys,

I just want to share my story, because I feel like only people in this community can get that,

We all know the pizza story, the "young swede than became a millionaire in 2013" story, the lost hard drive story and this one that can happen to anyone:


======>I lost my passphrase. 6months ago, tried everything, even hired "bitcoin dave", nope, nothing, no password no bitcoin.


I was too scared to get hacked somehow or to let a piece of paper with indications about it... Now I'm screwed, I can't find it, no matter what I try my Bitcoins are lost forever. I always kept them, spent .10 of them once and that's it. All of my fortune behind this password was made through mining dogecoin on day one and other altcoins. And guess what, I lost the passphrase to the dogecoins too (1million Doge, could be worse)...
6 months ago I had a little financial down moment, decided to see if I could sell one, and discovered that I forgot the password.

Now, it would be the thing to save my ass (3,5 BTC is a good chunk of change for me) and be able to get back on my feet, and I feel so stupid.

Just wanted to share my experience, kinda looking for mental support here!

Take care (and remind yourself your passphrase everyday, you don't want this feeling I swear).

Feeling sorry for you buddy.Thanks to God I have never been in such a situation but then I do not have even 1 btc but if I ever have more than 1 btc and less than 5,I would keep them in 3 different online wallets and not on offline wallet

[lionheart78]

I feel sorry when I read your story.  It is quite educational but it is really sad that we have to learn from the lost of others.  I hope you remember the phrases and be able to access your wallet again.  And thank you for sharing us your experience that reminded us not to get easy and take our passwords for granted.

[Pente]

May I suggest making a list of every possible password you have ever used or even considered using. Alphabetize it, make space for notes on each one, and keep that paper around. Add notes to it, just keep letting your password list grow like a tree, clean it up. The idea is that your password is somewhere in your memory and eventually you will come up with it again. Even if you never find it, that list might be useful years down the road if BTC ever hits $1M each. Your descendants could even look at it and consider possible alternatives. Computers will get more powerful and variations can be searched using your list of possibilities.

Anyway, just my ruminations, good luck.

[Harry Callahan]

It is sad to hear that you lost a huge amount of money but the problem is we have to pen down everything relating to bitcoin,as even i used to memories the password and when you are not using for an extended time you tend to forget the password you were using and when it comes to bitcoin if you loose your password you will loose your coins and it happened for me too but the difference was my wallet was empty.

[squatz1]

Some people call Bitcoin a religion because so many of us are so fanatical about it. I don't like analogies but this one fits.  I repeat my password in my head 3 or 4 times a day... almost like a prayer. I am a Bitcoin fanatic.

Agreed, very few are careless or doesn't give importance in memorising their password. In my view same as quoted repeating it often could help you remember it in a easy manner. There are few cases where the retaining of the password is possible through a long process.

I know some people may not agree with me at all, but this in itself is the reason that I use an online wallet such as Bitgo or Blockchain.info. I know some people are going to say that they have access to your keys or something like this, but do you really trust that you personally would not lose the keys yourself at some point.

I use BitGo and still do have my keys somewhere in my house in a hidden place, so if I did ever need to get to them I could.

Sorry for your loss though man, pretty sad to see something like this happen and I do wish you luck in trying to find the private keys at some point. You may get lucky if we all pray for ya.

[basketcoin]

well man you always need to the balance to keep your information safe, my advice to use is to tell someone you trust your password a family member or a friend

[jonald_fyookball]

Jonny, you making stuff up again?

i remember andreas suggesting to hide your bitcoins in a picture of a cat.
if you lose the pwd just get them from there.  search openpuff

Here's what happens when I search "openpuff" > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=search2

I was looking forward to reading Andreas' story.

No man. Google search steganography open puff a

[Sadlife]

My god that's just bad to worse man, even though ive lost lots of bitcoin in the past yours is just way to big amount especially when bitcoin's price is soaring up and also altcoins.
You should have written your passphrase down or copy paste it in a textfile and hid it away that no one will find. What kind of passphrase is that. ? is it from an online wallet provider or it's just stored in your pc?

If it's an online wallet like coinbase you could try the "Forgotten password function"

[HabBear]

Found it, for everyone else, here's a link to Open Puff Stenography.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPuff

I couldn't find anything specifically related to Bitcoin uses or a Andreas talking about it. But I didn't search the Dark Web or maybe those files were hidden using open puff.

Jonny, you making stuff up again?

i remember andreas suggesting to hide your bitcoins in a picture of a cat.
if you lose the pwd just get them from there.  search openpuff

Here's what happens when I search "openpuff" > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=search2

I was looking forward to reading Andreas' story.

No man. Google search steganography open puff a

[beerlover]

Hey guys,

I just want to share my story, because I feel like only people in this community can get that,

We all know the pizza story, the "young swede than became a millionaire in 2013" story, the lost hard drive story and this one that can happen to anyone:


======>I lost my passphrase. 6months ago, tried everything, even hired "bitcoin dave", nope, nothing, no password no bitcoin.


I was too scared to get hacked somehow or to let a piece of paper with indications about it... Now I'm screwed, I can't find it, no matter what I try my Bitcoins are lost forever. I always kept them, spent .10 of them once and that's it. All of my fortune behind this password was made through mining dogecoin on day one and other altcoins. And guess what, I lost the passphrase to the dogecoins too (1million Doge, could be worse)...
6 months ago I had a little financial down moment, decided to see if I could sell one, and discovered that I forgot the password.

Now, it would be the thing to save my ass (3,5 BTC is a good chunk of change for me) and be able to get back on my feet, and I feel so stupid.

Just wanted to share my experience, kinda looking for mental support here!

Take care (and remind yourself your passphrase everyday, you don't want this feeling I swear).

That's so sad man. 3,5 BTC is not small at all. I have mine written on a note. I have not checked it for long, but I'll go do that as soon as possible. sorry to hear about your loss.

Yes, this is a huge amount of BTC, as it not that simple to purchase or earn it. I am also worried about mine ones. The better option is to make a diary for it and check your wallet randomly. I will advise all the members to use most protected systems for your BTC. It is very panic to face such a situation.

[1Referee]

I will advise all the members to use most protected systems for your BTC. It is very panic to face such a situation.

It surely helps, but even the best antivirus and malware software won't be sufficient enough to keep all threats out of your system. In order to prevent your cold wallet coins from being exposed to these dangers, you should have the private keys engraved on a metal bar. Private keys should never be stored on your hard drive, or even worse, in cloud storage. As long as you do that, your coins will be completely safe. However, problem is that the majority of the people create their private keys on *potentially* compromised systems. No matter how much security steps you walk through after that, the one moment where your private keys were unprotected are enough to grant someone else long life access to your coins.

If you are paranoid when it comes to the security of your coins, and no, that's not weird, take a look at https://bitkey.io/ it's free to use.

[Supercrypt]

i remember andreas suggesting to hide your bitcoins in a picture of a cat.
if you lose the pwd just get them from there.  search openpuff

there are a lot of these ideas out there, it is best to come up with some combination according to where you live and the household objects you have!
for example i read once about someone who was keeping his electrum seed in his physical phone book. among names and random phone numbers!

Come on who does it ? This is so stupid the phone book may get corrupted.

If you are keeping it in soft like in a cell phone contacts or in an email etcetera so, they should keep it in various places theses should not be stored in a single place as many things can happen to it. Like the software can be corrupted or anything can happen to the hardware. If we keep it at more than one place it may be safer.

[upsidedown75]

Sorry for your loss bud. Always make a few offline copies of your data, hide the in a book, piece of text or something similar. If possible, non English one. Then store that in a cold storage bank safe.

Yes it so sad to hear about that. Losing your money like this is not really good. The suggestion of making copies of the data is a good one but I think we people need to educate other from our experiences and that is to also make some detail of your stuff in hard so it may not be easy to lose. Also if possible use some coding for your data like don’t use the real words in fact make some code words and then keep it in a safe place.

[Cereberus]

Very sad story but a part of fault is on you, on user itself. If you are truly a BTC holder like you are saying then the only "device" to keep your coins secure is a hardware wallet. They are easy to store, they are small you can store them in your personal shelf or rack where you keep your things. I am feeling very secure from almost a year now, since I bought the hardware wallet I really do not care anymore about my bitcoins security, I know they are safe.