lost coins

[twinings216]

It seems like there are two common ways to lose coins:

1.  wallet is stolen
2.  there is a fork in the block chain, or major systematic problems with the whole coin system

next, it seems there are two ways to store coins

1.  in your local wallet
2.  on a major exchange website.

If we combine those two sets of choices, there are a few combinations.    For each of those combinations,  how do you find out that your coins are "gone"?    how will you know.       for example, would your wallet suddenly show "empty".   or you wouldn't know they are gone, until you tried to spend the coins.

thanks.

-newbie

[Bitconorama]

Losing coins: The wallet may either be stolen or the drive on which it resides is damaged and uncrecoverable, or you lose your password
A fork of the blockchain doesn't cause a loss of coins

Storing coins: Yes, they're either stored locally or online

As far as telling whether you've lost them, you can simply check your balance anytime -Whether that is in your wallet, like Bitcoin-qt, in an online exchange, or you can check with the blockchain directly for any given address and see its current balance.

Welcome to the forum

[twinings216]

>>  you can simply check your balance anytime

I guess my point is that coins are virtual, they are just numbers.   

and so if somebody steals your coins, you might still have them also.   there could be multiple copies of the same wallet.   they haven't vanished from your harddrive.   just a copy-and-paste operation .

And so, is the wallet smart enough to realize this?   is the online exchange smart enough to realize this?      in real time - not 3 months later when you attempt to spend the coins, and find out they are invalid now.

[lightfoot]

When someone steals your "wallet" what they do is transfer your coins to their wallet. Once that's done the transaction can't be reversed.

C

[torrentheaven]

It seems like there are two common ways to lose coins:

1.  wallet is stolen
2.  there is a fork in the block chain, or major systematic problems with the whole coin system

Most coins are lost because not wallet backups and drive failure or forgotten passphrase to access your coins

[DannyHamilton]

Method of loss

• Lost/forgot password
• Hard drive crashed and you don't have a backup
• Stolen

If you forget your password, you probably don't realize this until the next time you try to use your wallet.
If your hard drive crashes, you probably don't realize this until the next time you try to use your computer.
If your bitcoins are stolen, you won't know it until you check a caught up copy of the blockchain.

You might also be using a service such as blockchain.info.  In this case, the website could cease to exist. This is analogous to a hard drive crash.  As long as you have a backup of your wallet you'll be ok, but if you don't have a backup you won't know that the bitcoins are lost until you discover that the website is gone.

If you use bitcoin account at a service such as MtGox, Coinbase, localbitcoins, etc.  Then you don't have any bitcoins.  The service has all the bitcoins, and they tell you how many of their bitcoins they'll allow you to spend.  If bitcoins are stolen from them, they could engage in fractional reserve without your knowledge and continue to display more bitcoins to their users than they actually have.  In this case users won't know that the bitcoins are gone until there is a run on the service.

[PickNic]

It seems like there are two common ways to lose coins:

1.  wallet is stolen
2.  there is a fork in the block chain, or major systematic problems with the whole coin system

next, it seems there are two ways to store coins

1.  in your local wallet
2.  on a major exchange website.

If we combine those two sets of choices, there are a few combinations.    For each of those combinations,  how do you find out that your coins are "gone"?    how will you know.       for example, would your wallet suddenly show "empty".   or you wouldn't know they are gone, until you tried to spend the coins.

thanks.

-newbie

also when pools try to find a block sometimes they lose some blocks of 25 btc

[Gator-hex]

1.  wallet is stolen

Butterfly Labs has created a hard wallet where the private key is kept separate from the rest of the OS.

Other than that use Ubuntu/Linux with encrytped user partition just for one thing your Bitcoin storage.
Keep your coin clients under separate user accounts, and never mine where your client is.

2.  there is a fork in the block chain, or major systematic problems with the whole coin system

Only seen it happen once, I didn't lose any coins, maybe mining pools lost some mining effort, it was fixed in less than 24hrs.

[Bitconorama]

and so if somebody steals your coins, you might still have them also.   there could be multiple copies of the same wallet.   they haven't vanished from your harddrive.   just a copy-and-paste operation .

And so, is the wallet smart enough to realize this?   is the online exchange smart enough to realize this?      in real time - not 3 months later when you attempt to spend the coins, and find out they are invalid now.

Ok ..I think I understand what you're saying. Yes, your wallet is only code that can be copied. Someone that has obtained a copy of your wallet can either import it into their client and withdraw the funds immediately, ...or, they could sit on it and wait and watch for the balance to increase. Ultimately, once some has your wallet dat file, that particular wallet is forever compromised even if you're unaware of it. At the very time the thief withdraws the funds from your wallet balance, the shown balance in YOUR client will reflect that right away once it reconciles itself against the blockchain. You may be oblivious to your wallet file being stolen, but once the coins are spent, you will be aware.

As far as an online exchange goes, as mentioned previously, your coins are really in the exchange's coin pool. If someone gets access directly to your account you would most likely notice that your coins were stolen the next time you log into your account and notice a missing balance. If the exchange is hacked, well you could know immediately, or it could be some time depending upon the action taken by the exchange.

[dadomado]

considering that this is pretty clear that you can specify some of the methods to do things like this would not have happened and for those who are not so well informed that they can better protect, thank you?

[sanjoea]

I feel maintaining online wallet is good than system wallet, For bitcoin you can trust blockchain and coinbase
These two are the best for creating wallet and doing transaction

[strasboug]

typical way of online wallet scam is that the "website hacked, and all coins stolen".

[Sonny]

2.  there is a fork in the block chain, or major systematic problems with the whole coin system

Only seen it happen once, I didn't lose any coins, maybe mining pools lost some mining effort, it was fixed in less than 24hrs.

To lose your coin in hard fork, you need to:
1. Receive a tx in that short period of time (before you notice the hard fork).
2. The tx is confirmed in one fork, but not the other fork yet.
3. The sender double spend the tx in the latter fork.
4. The latter fork is the longest chain (main chain).

So, for the majority, no coin will be lost in an event of hard fork.

typical way of online wallet scam is that the "website hacked, and all coins stolen".

Sounds so much like inputs.io lol. 

[DannyHamilton]

typical way of online wallet scam is that the "website hacked, and all coins stolen".

Sounds so much like inputs.io lol. 

And Bitfloor.

And InstaWallet.

And Bitcoinica.

And a significant percentage of the world's population appears to be incapable of learning from the past experiences of others, so we can expect similar instances in the future.

[landslide]

Yo take risk to store coins at major exchanges, look at what happened recently with Mt Gox.

[Wusolini]

typical way of online wallet scam is that the "website hacked, and all coins stolen".

Sounds so much like inputs.io lol. 

And Bitfloor.

And InstaWallet.

And Bitcoinica.

And a significant percentage of the world's population appears to be incapable of learning from the past experiences of others, so we can expect similar instances in the future.

and Bitcash.cz

as you wrote ...  there will be more

[Kaligulax]

Bitcoins are typically lost (as in, inaccessible to humanity, rather than via theft) by the owner losing access to their wallet (ie their wallet.dat file gets corrupted and they have no backups), or accidentally transferring their coins to the wrong address. In either case, coins are contained in an address that nobody knows the private key to. The coins aren't completely lost, in that they still exist on the blockchain, but it's statistically impossible to guess the private key to the address they are on.

There's not really a way to "know" a coin is lost, but guesses can be made. For example, if Blockchain.info (a blockchain analysis website) finds a private key with coins that haven't been moved for a long time, people can speculate that account may have been lost. But that's not that certain, as the owner could just be storing it. This is why you sometimes hear a figure about n percent of bitcoins have been lost. But it's a pretty weak guess.

Lost coins would cause deflation, meaning the other coins are worth more.

[Sheldor333]

Best way to protect your coins would be a hardware wallet and a strong password + 2FA on a cloud-based wallet is good enough for a novice. The cloud-based wallet should ideally require a strong password and 2FA so the novice will get his or her hand held during the signup process. The hardware wallet is uninfectable. Also check http://www.bitcointrezor.com but this could be a problem if your computer is compromised.

[Frisky]

Maybe.

[Kiki112]

well somehow I sent 0.21 bitcoins with a 0.001 fee and lost 0.25BTC so count that in too
at least on blockchain, my wallet says normally xD