I'm back into Bitcoin!

[imstillthebest]

lucky that the first result showed was bitcoin because the word wallet.dat are too common and it can also mean for another wallet not just a bitcoin wallet but by the way is all the btc came from the faucet and on what year did you stop
? many people do claim in the faucets but they are not lucky as you , they forget their passwords and emails that they use back then .

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[btc78]

What a nice story to read and I can only imagine how I would react if i woke up to fine 2.49 BTC on my computer.

For things to know make sure you have a Hard wallet to store the computers offline.

if i woke up one day with more than 2 bitcoin ? i will hurt myself to check if i am still dreaming lol.

OP is now become more interested again in bitcoin from the long time of inactivity , now that

You are very lucky, you have realized the things in my dreams.

all of our dreams lol, hope i will have the same dream as how OP got His 

[john_nautica]

Congrats OP & good for you, I’m happy you were able to recover some bitcoin. You should look to HODL at least 50% of that for future halving cycles. Don’t sell all of it this year.

He has got lucky that he wakes up to having that much bitcoin in his Wallet that have suddenly changed his financial status so he could wait for another 1-2 years to gain evermore because those were eventually lost coins but now he has them back so why not hold them for some more time instead of selling at these dips.Just a friendly advice.

I agree, the wise action to do after encountering such is to plan on how to multiply that amount of BTC. Although it won’t hurt to splurge and enjoy it for a little, it is important not to let thyself get carried away and be reckless in spending.

[hitsnorth]

Wow, it's the opposite of "bitcoin pizza" story. Good for you! Get yourself a cold wallet and buy some more if you can.

[avikz]

Today I woke up to this: 2.49 BTC sitting in the balance field. Man, I knew Bitcoin wasn't worth 20$ anymore! Let me tell you, this made my day, probably, my week or even this entire year!

Is there anything I need to do now that I'm holding a pretty big amount of Bitcoin? I've read that hardware wallets are the safest, should I buy one? Is there anything I need to know?

You are extremely lucky. You should have purchased few lottery tickets as well on the same day when you had discovered this balance in your bitcoin wallet. The amount you have found in your bitcoin wallet, is more than my mortgage amount. I want to write a similar true story about my dogecoin locker, but I am not able to find where I have kept around 40k dogecoins.

Hardware wallets wouldn't be required as you are using a bitcoin core wallet. But ensure that you always keep enough space  in your hard drive for the blockchain to sync.