What do yo do if you find a private key online with money inside?

[coinlocket$]

Interesting question, since someone would prefer to remain anonymous I made a Poll.

If you want to write some words I would be happy to read your thoughts and before you ask, No I haven't found a wallet with money inside.

[Jet Cash]

I think you should try to alert the owner if you can track him down.

The more interesting question is - what do you do if you find a wallet on the hard drive of a salvaged computer?

[paxmao]

Answers are biased. If you take that money you are not necessarily stealing, just like if you find money on the street and you just don´t know who does it belong to and have no way of retrieving it.

So I guess my only possible answer is to kill myself, which is much of a discomfort and possibly messy.
 

[aleksej996]

Steal all without a second thought.

If they the keys are kept insecure, then better for me to steal it and secure it than to leave them open like that.
Later I can always give them back if someone asks for it, if I feel like it.

[Direwolve735]

I think you should try to alert the owner if you can track him down.

The more interesting question is - what do you do if you find a wallet on the hard drive of a salvaged computer?

For me, the essence of these situations is the same, only the form changes. It all depends on your moral beliefs: you think this is a theft or not. And even if you consider it a stealing, will your conscience prevent you from doing it? Here either the moral law works, or not.

[Smarty14392]

I think stealing all the funds is the best option in this situation as even if you track down the original owner of the wallet ( which is very difficult sometimes) you do not have any means to check if the earning is from legit means or its scammed from someone or the owner you found is the correct one. So, I think it's better for keeping the money with you.

Still, if you are totally against using others funds, you still have an option to donate it to charity

[Pmalek]

Finding money and not giving it back to the owner or to the police is considered as theft in various countries. Today there was a report about a Romanian man who bought a cabinet and inside of it he found a hidden box with approximately €59.000 if I remember correctly.
The report was on a German channel and a lawyer explained that in Germany, if you buy an item from someone and find money inside, you have to give it back. Otherwise you could get a hefty fine and even go to prison. You are also entitled to a 5-10% reward depending of the amount found.
If you give the money to the authorities and nobody comes forward to claim the money after X amount of days - the money will be yours.

[aleksej996]

Finding money and not giving it back to the owner or to the police is considered as theft in various countries. Today there was a report about a Romanian man who bought a cabinet and inside of it he found a hidden box with approximately €59.000 if I remember correctly.
The report was on a German channel and a lawyer explained that in Germany, if you buy an item from someone and find money inside, you have to give it back. Otherwise you could get a hefty fine and even go to prison. You are also entitled to a 5-10% reward depending of the amount found.
If you give the money to the authorities and nobody comes forward to claim the money after X amount of days - the money will be yours.

Sounds like he should have kept his mouth shut.
There would be no way to prove he found the money if he didn't admit it.

Same with bitcoins, really hard to prove he was the one that found them.
He could always send them to his new address before spending them and just claim he bought them with cash, denying that this address belonged to him.

[Pmalek]

Sounds like he should have kept his mouth shut.
There would be no way to prove he found the money if he didn't admit it.

My previous post is about two different cases. The Romanian man found money in a cabinet he bought in Romania. That is one story. The other part of my post is about a German lawyer explaining how such cases work in Germany but it is not related to the guy who found the money, that was just an intro.

[r1s2g3]

I will like to have the option of  "Safeguard the funds".
Move the funds from that wallet to new wallet and try to find the owner. Since BTC is truly global I do not know which authority you can report but if your local law allow to keep the belonging is not claimed in "X" days then it is also a good option.
But my very first step is to safeguard it.

[coinlocket$]

I will like to have the option of  "Safeguard the funds".

Added.

[odolvlobo]

If you cannot ensure that the rightful owner retains ownership, then the best choice is to do nothing. If you do anything, you are potentially harming someone, and if you do nothing you lose nothing, so the best outcome comes from doing nothing. If you take the coins (or "safeguard" them) you are stealing them since you don't know that they were lost or abandoned.

[xtraelv]

If you cannot ensure that the rightful owner retains ownership, then the best choice is to do nothing. If you do anything, you are potentially harming someone, and if you do nothing you lose nothing, so the best outcome comes from doing nothing. If you take the coins (or "safeguard" them) you are stealing them since you don't know that they were lost or abandoned.

If you find the private key online like the question stated then if you do nothing -
With the key being online it will only be a matter of time when someone will either:

a) Steal it
b) Safeguard them

So doing nothing is just leaving the decision for someone else.

If you move them to another wallet for safe keeping then at least they don't get stolen and the owner has the chance to recover them.

Bitcoin is a messaging system (they can send a small amount of bitcoin with a message if they want to get in contact)  and there would be various ways of proving ownership.

[odolvlobo]

If you cannot ensure that the rightful owner retains ownership, then the best choice is to do nothing. If you do anything, you are potentially harming someone, and if you do nothing you lose nothing, so the best outcome comes from doing nothing. If you take the coins (or "safeguard" them) you are stealing them since you don't know that they were lost or abandoned.

If you find the private key online like the question stated then if you do nothing -
With the key being online it will only be a matter of time when someone will either:
a) Steal it
b) Safeguard them
So doing nothing is just leaving the decision for someone else.
If you move them to another wallet for safe keeping then at least they don't get stolen and the owner has the chance to recover them.
Bitcoin is a messaging system (they can send a small amount of bitcoin with a message if they want to get in contact)  and there would be various ways of proving ownership.

"Safeguard" is just another way to say "I might as well take them because someone else is going to steal them anyway." However you want to justify it, it is stealing. If someone is going to steal the coins, it would be better for you if it were not you.

Tell me, how are you going to contact the person that owns the address? There is no Bitcoin "messaging system". I don't know where you got that idea. The odds of you returning the coins that you are "safeguarding" is 0, so it is just stealing.

[xtraelv]

"Safeguard" is just another way to say "I might as well take them because someone else is going to steal them anyway." However you want to justify it, it is stealing. If someone is going to steal the coins, it would be better for you if it were not you.

Tell me, how are you going to contact the person that owns the address? There is no Bitcoin "messaging system". I don't know where you got that idea. The odds of you returning the coins that you are "safeguarding" is 0, so it is just stealing.

BIP 21 supports URI and BIP 70-72 supports attaching messages to transactions.
Which wallets have support for BIP 70 - 72 for merchant message transactions?
https://bitpay.com/docs/wallets

The Bitcoin network is a secure messaging system that processes value-transfer messages called transactions.

If you move it to a safe address, notify relevant authorities and never spend it then it is not stealing.

If you "donate it" or spend it then it is stealing.

[odolvlobo]

BIP 21 supports URI and BIP 70-72 supports attaching messages to transactions.

That is not what they do. They standardize the communication of payment information between a wallet and a merchant or payment processor.

[xtraelv]

BIP 21 supports URI and BIP 70-72 supports attaching messages to transactions.

That is not what they do. They standardize the communication of payment information between a wallet and a merchant or payment processor.

(they can send a small amount of bitcoin with a message if they want to get in contact)

So they can use that for initial communication.

There are multiple ways to send a message:

EXAMPLE:
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/6dfb16dd580698242bcfd8e433d557ed8c642272a368894de27292a8844a4e75?show_adv=true


Using:

Code:

OP_RETURN {80 bytes of whatever data you want}