How Bitcoin Nearly Bailed Me Out

[Newchanka]

So I needed some funds to make up for a payment. I contacted three of my clients who were supposed to pay for some writing jobs but the payments were delayed. I was getting frantic when I remembered that one of my old Blockchain wallets. I started wondering if the wallet I hadn't used for years could have some valuable bitcoins. I also remembered that I had the seed words in my phone as a screenshot (crazy!) so I imported the wallet. Boy, you wouldn't believe how much I had in there. Not up to all the money I needed but enough to make a difference.

I wonder who else has access to old wallets

[Welsh]

Also, probably worth noting that storing your seeds as a screenshot in the future probably isn't the best way of going about things, since the phone is online, and you use it regularly if it were ever compromised so would your seed. Seeds should always be stored offline, and preferably not on digital media. Obviously, you still need to look at securing the offline backup from physical threats.

At least you made some sort of backup, and were able to recover them successfully though!

[aysg76]

So I needed some funds to make up for a payment. I contacted three of my clients who were supposed to pay for some writing jobs but the payments were delayed. I was getting frantic when I remembered that one of my old Blockchain wallets. I started wondering if the wallet I hadn't used for years could have some valuable bitcoins. I also remembered that I had the seed words in my phone as a screenshot (crazy!) so I imported the wallet. Boy, you wouldn't believe how much I had in there. Not up to all the money I needed but enough to make a difference.

I wonder who else has access to old wallets

You were lucky to have your funds back but the highlighted part in your post is the worst way to backup your seed phrase as having Screenshot in your mobile phone is as risky as telling them to people openly.The first rule is i would say offline storage on piece of paper or metal sheets with full safety.What if your phone was lost, stolen or damaged would you be able to get your funds back then and it would be permanently lost adding up to the shrinking supply of 21million.

Hey, lucky you forgot about the old wallet before otherwise you might have spent what was in it. Probably a good idea for others to learn from this & write down all wallet passwords, seeds & what platform they are on.

Writing up but not the way he has done is the lesson for us because everyone would not be lucky like him as this is very easy way in which your seed security is compromised but don't know how people do such things.He might be lucky to sell them at good price compared to what he would have got in past but he could have lost them all.So take this lesson from him.

[Despairo]

You're lucky that your screenshot didn't get deleted and your phone still work, if not then it's different story. You're already learn the most important thing about Bitcoin, it's HODLing. Bitcoin is the best long term investment, don't need to worry if you have bought at the peak. Back on 2017 where many people regretting buy Bitcoin at $19K and then after 1 year it goes dump until reach $3K. Most of people panic and sold their coins since they thought Bitcoin would goes to zero. But if they keep holding until now, they've doubled their investment.

[Welsh]

You were lucky to have your funds back but the highlighted part in your post is the worst way to backup your seed phrase as having Screenshot in your mobile phone is as risky as telling them to people openly.The first rule is i would say offline storage on piece of paper or metal sheets with full safety.What if your phone was lost, stolen or damaged would you be able to get your funds back then and it would be permanently lost adding up to the shrinking supply of 21million.

I can think of worse ways of storing a backup for example storing them online via pastebin or something would be absolutely disastrous, but yeah it definitely isn't optimal, far from it. Not only from the malicious attackers point of view, but also phones are easily damaged. I don't know how many phones I've gone through over the years. Only takes water damage or a drop or two, and your data could be gone.

There's many ways of backing up a seed, you could go the washer route which is probably a little over kill for most users, but as long as your storing it offline in a reasonably secure place, then you should be fine.

[batang_bitcoin]

Great. I did that before the bull run but no funds were in the old wallets that I've used. You're lucky before something bad happened to your phone but this time, you don't do again and you must keep your keys safe elsewhere.
I've understood the laziness about screenshotting those important words and I've done that too not until my old phone was about to be broken so I did stopped it and learned the lesson.

[mk4]

LOL it's been a habit of mine for at least once a year to check all of my saved backup phrases of my old wallets just to see if I for some reason received some bitcoin from an old failed business/blog/service that I've ran in the past. 4 out of 5 times I end up with nothing but whatever it only takes like 10 minutes or so.

..though it's quite a bummer to see transactions from stupid purchases I've made in the past lmao.

[titular]

I had more than half a bitcoin sitting in a wallet before realizing that I had it last year. I had it from back in 2015 trying to purchase a fake IDs.

[Ultegra134]

So I needed some funds to make up for a payment. I contacted three of my clients who were supposed to pay for some writing jobs but the payments were delayed. I was getting frantic when I remembered that one of my old Blockchain wallets. I started wondering if the wallet I hadn't used for years could have some valuable bitcoins. I also remembered that I had the seed words in my phone as a screenshot (crazy!) so I imported the wallet. Boy, you wouldn't believe how much I had in there. Not up to all the money I needed but enough to make a difference.

I wonder who else has access to old wallets

I had my Bitcoin stored on an online wallet, BitGo, for quite a few years had been left untouched and were recovered in 2020 (stored from 2016). Since then, I was in a hunt to track down any abandoned wallets, in hopes to recover them. Luckily, I found 3 Blockchain.com wallets, with approximately $200-250 worth of Bitcoin, not bad at all.

On top of that, I recently recovered 0.0025 BTC on a Coinbase account, not lifesaving but certainly not bad at all.

[Doan9269]

So I needed some funds to make up for a payment. I contacted three of my clients who were supposed to pay for some writing jobs but the payments were delayed. I was getting frantic when I remembered that one of my old Blockchain wallets. I started wondering if the wallet I hadn't used for years could have some valuable bitcoins. I also remembered that I had the seed words in my phone as a screenshot (crazy!) so I imported the wallet. Boy, you wouldn't believe how much I had in there. Not up to all the money I needed but enough to make a difference.

I wonder who else has access to old wallets

The riskiest aspect of it is the screenshot your had on the phone, though it helped you recover access to the wallet but you're been lucky because the mobile was still intact and it never got expose to a third part, else they would have swindle the coin left in it, for future reference, find a suitable means to secure your keys other than on screenshots.

[pawanjain]

So I needed some funds to make up for a payment. I contacted three of my clients who were supposed to pay for some writing jobs but the payments were delayed. I was getting frantic when I remembered that one of my old Blockchain wallets. I started wondering if the wallet I hadn't used for years could have some valuable bitcoins. I also remembered that I had the seed words in my phone as a screenshot (crazy!) so I imported the wallet. Boy, you wouldn't believe how much I had in there. Not up to all the money I needed but enough to make a difference.

I wonder who else has access to old wallets

Lol  You were just too lucky or may be you are trying to pull off an April fools day prank on us.

Somehow you remembered that you had a blockchain wallet.
Somehow you had stored the seed phrase as a screenshot.
Somehow you managed to access the wallet.
Somehow there were coins in it.
Somehow those coins were enough to make a difference to bail you out.

Now we must need a high level of luck to get such things accomplished.

[henmark]

This has happened to me many many times before unfortunately. It's life, and I get it, we all have some needs. This is why super rich people with millions of dollars can do better investments then we can because they never need "urgent money" for small stuff like we do.

I was lucky during 2017 because I had to sell my coins at near top levels so that I could pay the debt I had for over 3 years, it allowed me to earn a lot easier and have no debt. It was a decision that I made, I could have just kept my coins and kept on paying the debt but it worked out in the end since the price went down.

For the past 6 months or so I have been in big debt again, life has been hard, it is a family medical situation that I don't want to talk about, and I had to cash out 70%+ of my savings just to pay for the hospital and drug bills as well. In the end that person is not even still healthy and we are still paying, but at the very least we are not in debt because of it, which is the silver lining.

[OgNasty]

I wonder who else has access to old wallets

I recently found $250 in an old slushpool wallet when I was testing out a new miner.  Pretty funny because I know it was only in there when I stopped mining many years ago and left dust behind.  DUST!  That dust that wasn't worth paying the withdrawal fee to remove was now worth hundreds of dollars.  I can only imagine all the BTC I've left behind at various sites over the years.  If only all those sites still stuck around.  I'm sure I'd be mega super rich.

[hyudien]

Access back to the old wallet as if we found a treasure? where you forget to save a few satoshi with a long enough duration and are still awake. It's one of the things I do often. Opening several seeds that are recorded one by one in a personal book hoping there are forgotten treasures.
In 2017 I did that and thank you for changing my life since then too. The unforgettable lesson is that only we ourselves really have access to the wallet. How full control is the only advantage that keeps us from using it.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Hey, lucky you forgot about the old wallet before otherwise you might have spent what was in it. Probably a good idea for others to learn from this & write down all wallet passwords, seeds & what platform they are on.

[Asiska02]

Great you were able to use your stored seed to retrieve your funds in the old wallet. At the same time it is very dangerous to do so in the future, it can be compromised and when someone have access to it all your funds will be gone. Preferably and more secured when it is saved offline and kept in a safe place.

[Oceat]

Lucky for you, you still be able to recover your old address with complete private key but it's not a good practice to save your private key on an active phone though. Just like what the above said, you need to place it offline not online but how lucky you are having some old BTC address to left some BTC inside. Most of the News when I heard something like this they were either lost their private key or something worse happened to their hard drive while some would hire someone to brute force crack their long passphrase key but unable to do it.

[jossiel]

Great you were able to use your stored seed to retrieve your funds in the old wallet. At the same time it is very dangerous to do so in the future, it can be compromised and when someone have access to it all your funds will be gone. Preferably and more secured when it is saved offline and kept in a safe place.

Yeah, like a friend who's knowledgeable in accessing those seed phrases and borrowed your phone.

While using the phone, he accidentally or intentionally searched for some things on your phone and found that screenshot of your seed. Well, not really a good idea to keep it there.

Just like what everyone said about writing, it will cost you some time and effort but it's still the best way to keep those keys.

[AakZaki]

if that's the case you are very lucky. whether you have not previously checked it again or searched again in recent years.
if you completely forget the wallet and then recall it is a miracle. moreover you still have the seeds.
you are also too careless to save the seed only in your device, if it is lost or the device is corrupted it will not be able to be opened forever.

[TimeTeller]

if that's the case you are very lucky. whether you have not previously checked it again or searched again in recent years.
if you completely forget the wallet and then recall it is a miracle. moreover you still have the seeds.
you are also too careless to save the seed only in your device, if it is lost or the device is corrupted it will not be able to be opened forever.

Let us put it this way, he is very lucky to remember where he put his seeds.
And the device is still with him. These days, we change our phones much often.
His story is a fortunate one. This is why I am also saving my eth address with password and keystore as well as bitcoin keys.
Who knows, those small satoshis and small amount of eth will be valuable in the future?
Don't forget where you saved your important keys, and make sure they are secure.
It may not be worth today but with how things are evolving in crypto, some are worth checking few years from now.