Lost bitcoin after selling order was cancelled before transaction confirmed

[tombostar77]

Help guys please,

I tried to sell my bitcoins.....and used coinmama who launch an order which is only valid for 30 minutes. My transaction wasnt confirmed until 2 days later so my money is gone and coinmama never received anything. Have I any recourse? Very worried here...... Cry Cry

[o_e_l_e_o]

Can you be a bit more specific?

Did Coinmama give you an address to send your bitcoin to? And you broadcast a transaction but it took longer than their 30 minute window to confirm? Check the transaction hash on a block explorer such as blockchair.com. Check the address you sent to is correct.

If the above is all correct, then Coinmama have your coins, regardless of whether or not the transaction timed out or not or what shows up in your account. You will need to contact their support here: https://support.coinmama.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

[tombostar77]

yes they supplied me with the address and i broadcast it and it is on the blockchain....and coinmama are denying that they got it....they said because the order expired the address could be incorrect......the id is below....you can check it on the blockchain .....

bf4ad7fa91a9596c44de7426dbd08ade6a02173044a8f7acebb9f8c4601f3eb7

[LeGaulois]

I guess because you didn't set enough miners fees? You will receive back your transaction when it will be removed from the pool of unconfirmed transactions. It can take 3 days like it can take 1 week.

You could attempt RBF transaction to replace a TX with a fee higher or CPFP but since your order with coinmama is canceled by now you have no use of it

edit: Got it now, I don't see a reason why the address would become invalid then, they're still the owner of the wallet and received the TX ~5 hours ago (here)

There is a double-spend attempt on this transaction by tx/9f87860d743b6d454a19806f7fe6094444278f44987d87e65ff33a6d74f8b84f

[tombostar77]

...follow up question ...as i am trying to talk to coinmama as they are denying receipt of it.....which on my wallet, (or on the blockchian) represesnts the address i sent it to- the input or the output hash? thanks

[o_e_l_e_o]

You paid a decent fee of 18 sats/vbyte, so your transaction did not take 2 days to confirm. Looking at the mempool from 5 hours ago, it almost certainly confirmed in the first block after you broadcast did. When you say it "wasn't confirmed for 2 days", did you fail to broadcast it for 2 days? Coinmama's support states that orders will automatically expire after 30 minutes if the funds are not sent (note "sent", and not "confirmed"). I suspect you failed to make the transaction on time, so the order was automatically closed.

Still, provided that bc1q7hsnpd794pap2hd3htn8hszdfk5hzgsj5md9lz is the address Coinmama gave you, then your coins are categorically at that address. I would contact them back and ask them to refund your coins.

[tombostar77]

thanks guys....ye the fee i increased today after it had lain 2 days unconfirmed..then it went like a shot....it was only 5 minutes after doing this that i realised that the order had been cancelled.......

[o_e_l_e_o]

The mempool has been more or less empty for the majority of the last two days. The only way your transaction would be unconfirmed is if you had paid less than 1 sat/vbyte and it wasn't being relayed by the nodes, or if you hadn't broadcast it all.

However, that is neither here nor there. Since it has now been confirmed, provided the address is correct (the one I gave in my previous post), then the only person who can help you to recover your bitcoin now is Coinmama support.

[tombostar77]

cheers o_e_l_e_o ...... ye.... this last 3 hours theyve been saying we didnt receive anything...sorry it must have went to an incorrect address...sorry and good day and all that...and just there a few minutes ago they have said they have forwarded my email to their payments division so there may be movement...the relief(if it gets resolved that is)....its over 500 bucks and its not even mine..i was helping a friend sell his coins as he needs his money back....

[tombostar77]

hi again,
below is the letter i received today after their leading me on yesterday that it might be resolved.......can someone tell me is it possible, i cant see how, to trace the owner of a bitcoin address......coinmama are denying they own the address i sent them to....this is very frustrating as I fail to see how i didnt send to the addrss their sell order provided me......can they deny owning an address...or is there any way to din out how could i possibly have sent it somewehere else......im crying now literally becuase I have sent them into thin air it seems...coinmama are taking no responsibility.....how could i have entered in an address thats valid by mistake...i dont have other address to send to......they are denying owning the address
bc1q7hsnpd794pap2hd3htn8hszdfk5hzgsj5md9lz where i sent my coins (the transaction id : bf4ad7fa91a9596c44de7426dbd08ade6a02173044a8f7acebb9f8c4601f3eb7)

Dear *****,

I'm Ivan, Alex's colleague at Coinmama.

As he already mentioned, no coins were sent to the wallet provided for your sale order - 3GZGGS6qGR7omR7yHS1HTyhUo73e7HJwYh -  if you click the link, you will see that no coins were sent to our wallet.

We have absolutely no control over the Blockchain and cannot locate or retrieve coins sent to any other addresses, by mistake or intentionally.

If you know who own the wallet address you sent the coins to - you would need to contact them and ask to send it back to you.


Best regards,
Ivan
Happiness Hero

[LeGaulois]

RE:

It's possible Coinmama doesn't own the address bc1q7hsnpd794pap2hd3htn8hszdfk5hzgsj5md9lz.

In your reply above, they mentioned a BTC address starting with 3 (P2SH type), that was supposed the address to receive the bitcoins.
And the address that received the transaction is a bech 32 type.

Their system wouldn't use different address types and I don't see the company lying to you about the original address
Could it be because you copy-pasted a wrong address with a clipboard hijacker malware? Wrong website?

bc1q7hsnpd794pap2hd3htn8hszdfk5hzgsj5md9lz
Is part of a wallet with 78 different addresses. Are you sure you didn't copy-paste by mistake an address from an exchange platform or something?

[tombostar77]

im fearing something like that...i was certain i was using the address on the sell order..i just dont think i checked the addresses 10 times before sending it as i should have and for as big an amount as if ever sent...im absoultely giutted......retracing or finding out who owns an address is an impossibility i suspect......

[o_e_l_e_o]

OP, LeGaulois is correct - you either have clipboard malware or a fake version of Electrum.

The address you actually sent the coins to, bc1q7hsnpd794pap2hd3htn8hszdfk5hzgsj5md9lz, is listed in this post as belonging to an attacker responsible for the fake "4.0.0" version of Electrum. The same address also shows up in this stackexchange post from another user claiming the exact same thing as you - bitcoins were sent but never received.

Can you confirm if you used Electrum, and what version it was?

[tombostar77]

yes electrum 4.0.0

[o_e_l_e_o]

Ok, so that's the problem, not Coinmama at all.

Electrum 4.0.0 doesn't exist. The latest version of Electrum is 3.3.8. Version 4 is a fake, malicious version which when used will send all your funds to an attacker's address. This is what has happened to you, so I'm afraid your bitcoin has been permanently lost.

You need to, at a minimum, back up your wallets, uninstall version 4, delete all traces of Electrum left behind after the install, download the real version from https://electrum.org/#download (which is the only site you should ever use to download Electrum), verify your download is legit by following the instructions here (https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-verify-your-electrum-download/), and then install it and recover your wallet.

[tombostar77]

.....thanks for your help.....i am gutted.....lost all my friends coins when he asked me to help him sell them......completely my fault....oh well...thanks again

[bL4nkcode]

How unfortunate, this shouldn't happen again and again after the fix of electrum wallet on their latest updates.

You should take security measurements (mentioned above) starting now so it will not happen again, only download wallets from its sources not even in playstore or app store (for mobile) not unless it's linked on their official website.

[tombostar77]

ye thanks i will have to be ultra ultra ultra careful with all my blockchain transactions... (especially if they are a friends funds and they are hundreds of dollars worth...)


but can you tell me why the electrum on my friends computer (he just sent me a screenshot of it) still show the amount as being in his account....this is not possible right......it is on the blockchain as that exact amount amount (minus fees) being transferred from my address to the scammers address....

[o_e_l_e_o]

The most likely issue is that his Electrum client has a connection issue for one reason or another and hasn't synced to the latest blocks, and so is displaying out-of-date information. As you say, the transaction is viewable on the blockchain, and so has taken place and is final. The address 18Nwb9sApxHuipYGNDhWLjdmgUb7jd2Mbs (provided that is your friend's address) is empty.

[tbterryboy]

cheers o_e_l_e_o ...... ye.... this last 3 hours theyve been saying we didnt receive anything...sorry it must have went to an incorrect address...sorry and good day and all that...and just there a few minutes ago they have said they have forwarded my email to their payments division so there may be movement...the relief(if it gets resolved that is)....its over 500 bucks and its not even mine..i was helping a friend sell his coins as he needs his money back....

Why would you take this risk? You should never try to take responsibilities of other's money. This would get you a headache and nothing else. You would have referred your friend who wished to sell his coins onto some exchanges like coinmama and you should have told him/her to transact on their own.

This would have not been hectic for you and instead if the user would have been registered from your referral link than you might have got some benefits commonly known as referral bonus. You have to try to solve this query much quicker now or else you will need to pay your friend his 500 bucks from your pocket. Henceforth, never make such mistake. Don't make anyone dependent on you.