Top 5 ways to recover your stolen or lost crypto

[JessicaVL]

Cryptocurrency is generally deemed as pretty secure, but sometimes things do happen. Even top traders have had crypto assets lost or stolen and, until quite recently, it seemed like there was very little one could actually do about it. Thankfully, there are ways to get your cryptocurrency back. We’ll be looking at the top ways to recover your lost or stolen cryptocurrencies, and how to avoid going through something so traumatic in the first place!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um_r2_krsoI

Act as quickly as possible
Benjamin Sauter, a partner at Kobre & Kim law and an expert in crypto theft cases, told Decrypt, “The quicker you can act, the better,”. The longer you wait to start tracing your crypto, the more time you give thieves to transfer your assets to cold storage, send them to sketchy exchanges, or to tumblers to mix them up. “The more sophisticated you are, and the less sophisticated the thieves are at laundering the assets, the better chance you have,” Sauter continued.

If the funds are in an exchange, you’ll need to contact them and ask them to freeze your assets. This will buy you some time. Unfortunately, not all exchanges will comply so you may need to get a lawyer involved to throw their weight around and convince a court to order an issue for them to be frozen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGQbLXeyJsM

Legality
For the legal system to actually work in your favor, you’ll likely need to know who stole your cryptocurrency. While you may be able to freeze funds against a John Doe, it’ll be challenging. According to Marc Jones, a partner at Stewarts Law in the United Kingdom, “In general, to enforce an order requiring fraudsters to pay damages or handover stolen property, ultimately you’ll need to know who they are.”

Thankfully, one of the many benefits of cryptocurrency is that you can see where the coins have gone. If they go through an exchange, you’ll most likely be able to find out who the wallet holder is thanks to the KYC process. From there, you can get a court order to reveal the thief’s identity and recover your stolen cryptocurrencies.

Recovering lost cryptocurrency from a cold wallet
The phenomenon of lost cryptocurrency isn’t a unique experience. In fact, the Wall Street Journal released a report that stated that lost cryptocurrency was actually extremely common. So much so, that up to 20% of all Bitcoins have been lost and are unrecoverable. Luckily, there are measures you can take to prevent this from happening.

Cold wallets are offline wallets that are designed for storing cryptocurrencies. With cold storage, the digital wallet is stored on a platform without internet connectivity. This protects the wallet from cyber hacks, unauthorized access, and other vulnerabilities that could be exploited if they were connected to the internet.

There are a number of different ways that you can recover from cold wallets:
- Encrypted Devices: Encrypted phones and laptops work like cold wallets, so that you can safely store and access your private key information. Like cold wallets, you can retrieve lost information through professional help.
- Paper Wallets: If you have a paper wallet, consider storing it in a vault or safety deposit box. That way, you’ll literally have a physical backup of your key information. This is a pretty old fashioned way of doing things, so maybe consider other options first.
- Pen Drives/Hard Drives: While this is a very secure way to store your coins, retrieving your data from them should they be damaged or corrupted is a timely and expensive process. You’ll definitely need a professional to do this.

ReclaimCrypto
Coinfirm is teaming up with global investigations firm Kroll, to launch a joint initiative called ReclaimCrypto. ReclaimCrypto combines the latest blockchain forensic techniques with the world of legal investigation and asset recovery. Pawel Kuskowski, CEO of Coinfirm told Coindesk:

“So far, there is no one place where victims can go and get help. It’s almost like they are pleading to get someone interested in their case. In the end, they have to work it out themselves; see about getting a lawyer, perhaps in some other jurisdictions.”

ReclaimCrypto aims to help in the recovery of stolen cryptocurrencies. You can submit an initial form with the data about your stolen coins, and ReclaimCrypto will do an assessment. You’ll only be charged a success fee on the crypto they recover for you, not for the initial assessment!

https://twitter.com/altcoinsara/status/1103436947865911296?lang=en

How to protect yourself
Now that we’ve looked at the top ways to recover your lost or stolen cryptocurrencies, you’re probably asking yourself how you can protect yourself against those scenarios. First off, consider dividing your assets into “cold” and “hot” wallets. The cold wallet should store the bulk of your funds, while you use the hot wallet for everyday transactions. Always make sure to keep your private keys secure, and consider using a multi-signature wallet. Protecting yourself from cryptocurrency theft and lost cryptocurrency is a vital step to ensuring the success of your portfolio, so make sure to take all of the necessary steps to ensure your safety.

eToro is the world’s leading social trading platform. Learn more at www.etoro.com.
Cryptoassets are volatile instruments which can fluctuate widely in a very short timeframe and therefore are not appropriate for all investors. Other than via CFDs, trading cryptoassets is unregulated and therefore is not supervised by any EU regulatory framework. Your capital is at risk.

https://www.etoro.com/blog/market-insights/top-5-ways-to-recover-your-stolen-or-lost-crypto/

[Findingnemo]

Actually there is no way to recover the lost crypto once it was stolen unless you find the person who steals from you and accesses his wallet and sends you funds back again.All the other tracing works or complaining to the exchanges won't give any chance to recover.

[kanayaTabitha]

Actually there is no way to recover the lost crypto once it was stolen unless you find the person who steals from you and accesses his wallet and sends you funds back again.All the other tracing works or complaining to the exchanges won't give any chance to recover.

Those tips are quite helpful i think, but it won't make any decent difference when our wallet stolen, sometimes the thiefs are instantly send our assets to their wallet, so it will waste if we spend too much effort to take back our wallet. We better to prevent the lost or stolen rather than find way to recover it

[kolonel_x]

Actually there is no way to recover the lost crypto once it was stolen unless you find the person who steals from you and accesses his wallet and sends you funds back again.All the other tracing works or complaining to the exchanges won't give any chance to recover.

Those tips are quite helpful i think, but it won't make any decent difference when our wallet stolen, sometimes the thiefs are instantly send our assets to their wallet, so it will waste if we spend too much effort to take back our wallet. We better to prevent the lost or stolen rather than find way to recover it

Yes, if the funds have been sent to the hacker's wallet it will be difficult to return and we can only surrender what has happened.
True, your words prevent will be better compared with restoring, therefore we must be careful in storing assets in any wallet, if it has been stolen, it is difficult to return it compared to the funds in the frozen can be recovered.

[rijaljun]

Imagine, someone lost crypto worth about $500 USD and he took legal action, reporting to police, had a lawyer and waited everything to be processed that took so much time and at the end he realized that he has lost more than the $500 cause he needed to pay the expenses during the search of his stolen money.

[BitHodler]

Imagine, someone lost crypto worth about $500 USD and he took legal action, reporting to police, had a lawyer and waited everything to be processed that took so much time and at the end he realized that he has lost more than the $500 cause he needed to pay the expenses during the search of his stolen money.

In some cases it's not necessarily about getting your money back, but about justice. I would gladly cover the legal expenses to see hacker/thief be forced to pay a hefty fine or be sent to prison to rot for a while.

It's not fair to have someone like that enjoy the money you worked for. If people were to ignore reporting small theft amounts it basically means that the thieves win and have even more incentive to steal only smaller amounts.

[Findingnemo]

Actually there is no way to recover the lost crypto once it was stolen unless you find the person who steals from you and accesses his wallet and sends you funds back again.All the other tracing works or complaining to the exchanges won't give any chance to recover.

Those tips are quite helpful i think, but it won't make any decent difference when our wallet stolen, sometimes the thiefs are instantly send our assets to their wallet, so it will waste if we spend too much effort to take back our wallet. We better to prevent the lost or stolen rather than find way to recover it

Use paper or hardware wallets for storing your total portfolio amount, just keep the small and affordable amount on wallets which can be accessed anywhere from mobile for paying or to convert them into fiat. If you are using an exchange to store cryptos then follow all the safety measures like 2FA, login guards, unauthorized mobile access guards and much more.

[Quidat]

Once your wallet is compromised and stole the coins in it then dont expect on such retrieval or the chance to take it back.
Knowing crypto which is anonymous and having those no reverse transactions which is the perfect recipe for stealing
due to these features.The thing here is that if you dont like for your funds to be stolen then its better to follow things up
on protecting your assets on the first place. No. 1 rule is= Dont let others do knows about your private key.

[harizen]

Those possible ways listed above to recover stolen coins is really a hassle thing to do. And in the end, we don't even know if it will yield a good result.

Do anything to protect our funds so we don't end up following those ways.

In most cases, if the coins are stolen either by any means, chances of recovering it so slim even with the help of big institutions.


OP, I have noticed (even in your previous posts) that you are just entirely copy+pasting the whole thing in the article without giving your own thought or view. It's fine though if you are the author of that E-toro article/s.

[Hamphser]

Once your wallet is compromised and stole the coins in it then dont expect on such retrieval or the chance to take it back.
Knowing crypto which is anonymous and having those no reverse transactions which is the perfect recipe for stealing
due to these features.The thing here is that if you dont like for your funds to be stolen then its better to follow things up
on protecting your assets on the first place. No. 1 rule is= Dont let others do knows about your private key.

Indeed! Once the private keys were compromised it would be better to act as quick as you can to take what you have to take. Only if you were lucky enough to be faster than the person who happens to know your private key. It is better to never tell your private keys to anyone unless you trusted them the most with your cryptocurrency.

[bitbunnny]

Once you find yourself in a situation of lost or stolen cryptocurrencies there is not much you can do. You don't have much chances to get it back unless you are really lucky. That is why actually these advice are not so helpful except those about self protection, that is actually the key. Be very careful with your funds, keep them in different wallets, keep your passwords and other security data safe, take care about your computer or mobile phone security hygene, check every transactions twice before you send it and similar.

[stomachgrowls]

Act quickly as possible? Wont really be that enough even how quick you are once those funds is transferred into a personal wallet then recovering is impossible

Legality? You can fight if you do have the funds to spend with some lawyer and you do have the hints or do know on where those funds go but if none then you are just basically wasting your money.

Recovery of lost coin into a cold wallet?
There were several recovery services but it doesnt still give out assurance.


Dont believing too much on these side shillings about these services like Etoro and Reclaim crypto you said which is totally irrelevant.

[liuqi]

Once you find yourself in a situation of lost or stolen cryptocurrencies there is not much you can do. You don't have much chances to get it back unless you are really lucky. That is why actually these advice are not so helpful except those about self protection, that is actually the key. Be very careful with your funds, keep them in different wallets, keep your passwords and other security data safe, take care about your computer or mobile phone security hygene, check every transactions twice before you send it and similar.

Funds inside the wallets are always safe unless and until you were not handling the wallet private key at the right place. Most of the people loosing the funds with their friends and family members Only.
Reason is they are only people who can access the mobile or computer. So none of others can steal your BTC when you know the basics of handling wallets.

[ene1980]

If the funds are in an exchange, you’ll need to contact them and ask them to freeze your assets. This will buy you some time. Unfortunately, not all exchanges will comply so you may need to get a lawyer involved to throw their weight around and convince a court to order an issue for them to be frozen.

The only possible solution for this is to identify the hack instantly and inform all the exchanges and tumbler services about the hack and wait for the funds to reach them and then they can confiscate the funds and return that to you, but it is not a simple process and these are possible in the future but to have everyone under under umbrella is a hurdle. If some company can come up with a service like that then it would be great.

[leowonderful]

If you lose a somewhat trivial amount of cryptocurrency, just move on and take it as a lesson for whatever mistake(s) you happened to make leading up to the loss; it's extremely difficult to recover stolen coins if not impossible in most cases, and so it's not worth your time trying to do more IMO. That's just one of the minor downsides of using cryptocurrency; transactions cannot be reversed, though in some circumstances lost coins can be recovered. I like that eToro's making all sorts of guides for people that are newer to Bitcoin and crypto in general, but a much shorter answer that most people won't like is that if your coins are stolen or lost, it's most likely not recoverable.

[Theb]

Act as quickly as possible
Benjamin Sauter, a partner at Kobre & Kim law and an expert in crypto theft cases, told Decrypt, “The quicker you can act, the better,”. The longer you wait to start tracing your crypto, the more time you give thieves to transfer your assets to cold storage, send them to sketchy exchanges, or to tumblers to mix them up. “The more sophisticated you are, and the less sophisticated the thieves are at laundering the assets, the better chance you have,” Sauter continued.

If the funds are in an exchange, you’ll need to contact them and ask them to freeze your assets. This will buy you some time. Unfortunately, not all exchanges will comply so you may need to get a lawyer involved to throw their weight around and convince a court to order an issue for them to be frozen.

I don't think that you have that luxury in time when it comes to stolen funds being recovered since in most cases the only time you know your funds are stolen is when its already gone. So in your given scenario where you are asking the exchange to freeze your funds is really impossible since I don't think you have that time to call a lawyer and for them to go into court just to save your capital in time. In matters like this I really don't have any kind of solution on how to recover your funds since everything will now involve a legal action about this which means involving the authorities so it's really better to protect your account from attacks like this such as having 2fa in your account, not having the same passwords for all of your accounts especially your email, and also not downloading random things from suspicious links to avoid spyware from your computer.

[shield132]

Imagine, someone lost crypto worth about $500 USD and he took legal action, reporting to police, had a lawyer and waited everything to be processed that took so much time and at the end he realized that he has lost more than the $500 cause he needed to pay the expenses during the search of his stolen money.

Haha, +1 to this. Sadly this is what happens in almost every case. What's gone, is gone (in crypto world, yeah, that's why it's called crypto). Btw it's so funny, these guys want anonymity but at the same time want to find stolen coins and even get them back.
Bitcoin and the way transactions are sent are far different from bank transactions. On bank transactions, if any mistake happens, you can call to them and fix it with them but in bitcoin, whom are you going to call? If you are capable of recovering your stolen cryptos, then recover all of them, you will be a billionaire.

[rijaljun]

Imagine, someone lost crypto worth about $500 USD and he took legal action, reporting to police, had a lawyer and waited everything to be processed that took so much time and at the end he realized that he has lost more than the $500 cause he needed to pay the expenses during the search of his stolen money.

Haha, +1 to this. Sadly this is what happens in almost every case. What's gone, is gone (in crypto world, yeah, that's why it's called crypto). Btw it's so funny, these guys want anonymity but at the same time want to find stolen coins and even get them back.
Bitcoin and the way transactions are sent are far different from bank transactions. On bank transactions, if any mistake happens, you can call to them and fix it with them but in bitcoin, whom are you going to call? If you are capable of recovering your stolen cryptos, then recover all of them, you will be a billionaire.

I thought you'd give me some merits by saying +1

Well, people should be aware of everything that may appear during the proccess of decentralization.

In some cases it's not necessarily about getting your money back, but about justice. I would gladly cover the legal expenses to see hacker/thief be forced to pay a hefty fine or be sent to prison to rot for a while.

It's not fair to have someone like that enjoy the money you worked for. If people were to ignore reporting small theft amounts it basically means that the thieves win and have even more incentive to steal only smaller amounts.

I'm not trying to say stealing money is right thing to do but I would never pay more than what I have lost just to take revenge. They just don't deserve my money more than what they have stolen.

[tracey77]

I'm not trying to say stealing money is right thing to do but I would never pay more than what I have lost just to take revenge. They just don't deserve my money more than what they have stolen.

Fully agree, but it's not that simple. Usually crypto thievery revolves around small sums in a single case. Someone is stealing small amounts of crypto from many people, because no one will pursue him heatedly, such approach let those people run away with your money. Justice loses with clear calculation and I'm not surprised and I also wouldn't seek for vengeance if it turned out completely unprofitable for me - all in all it's all about money. The situation is different when it comes to biggers sums, for example stolen from some company or organisation and in this case, even when the chances for retrieval aren't high, it may be profitable for such to hire for example Coinfirm mentioned here. Of course it's better (and cheaper) to prevent rather than seek for help after the incident but sometimes even the best security systems fails to protect assets from being stolen. Everyone who gets into crypto should know the basics how to protect yourself and always be careful.

[panganib999]

Recover stolen? crypto? Are we talking about the same crypto of blockchain tech? If so then I'm pretty sure you can't recover that. Most of the information you actually listed is Prevention instead of being called recovery. BTC or any altcoin at that can never be recovered once sent to another's wallet. It's just simply impossible. It's just how the system was made. Well, if the scammer/hacker actually sent the coins back out of changing heart, well, that could be a possibility. But the chances are close to null, ngl.