An BTC Assumption

[Jason Brendon]

We don't know everything, right? There is always something, knowledge, or hacks in life that you don't know about.
Let's say you wake up in the morning only to find out your wallet has been emptied. Your savings are all gone.
But you were following all the security practices you can possibly can, like generate everything offline, good entropy, not using brain wallet and so on and so forth.
But your funds are gone.
What will you do with it?

[jackg]

A lot of attackers/hackers, especially notorious ones, seem to be found at some point so that might be one way you could go about recovering your funds - by waiting.

I think the obvious start would be to search up your wallet to see if the same thing has happend to other users, potentially report it to the police/online to flag the issue and see if there's anyone that can work out why that happened (and take advice from that). I think a lot of people, me included, would just move on from something like that and start to rebuild again (buy stocks instead to be safer or store your funds in multiple locations or with a multisig).

I think the answer changes a lot based on how the funds were taken though too if that got discovered.

[mk4]

I'm so careful with my opsec that I really doubt I could even get hacked without doing something immensely stupid/careless. The only culprit that I could think of is if someone went to my secret storage place and actually found my seed backup.

[Upgrade00]

But you were following all the security practices you can possibly can, like generate everything offline, good entropy, not using brain wallet and so on and so forth.

If you follow all security practices when using Bitcoin, which are a lot, the possibility of getting hacked is almost non existence.
If you're holding a centralized asset on a centralized wallet or exchange, then you can be hacks without you having to do anything.

But on a decentralized protocol like Bitcoin, stored on a non custodian wallet softwarr or hardware and backs up securely, you can sleep easy knowing your funds are safe.

We don't know everything, right?

That's why we're constantly trying to learn.

[witcher_sense]

We don't know everything, right? There is always something, knowledge, or hacks in life that you don't know about.
Let's say you wake up in the morning only to find out your wallet has been emptied. Your savings are all gone.
But you were following all the security practices you can possibly can, like generate everything offline, good entropy, not using brain wallet and so on and so forth.
But your funds are gone.
What will you do with it?

I have no idea what would I do if a situation similar to what you described happened to me, but I think that my first reaction would be tearing my hair out and running from corner to corner like a crazy person. But a situation like that may happen to everyone, even with those who practice good opsec because one day a critical vulnerability may be found that will allow hackers to empty all wallets, including ones created on an air-gapped computer with good random number generators. Hopefully, the open-source and decentralized nature of bitcoin development will enable developers, contributors, and reviewers to catch such bugs very early and take all necessary steps to minimize the harm.

[pooya87]

What will you do with it?

Same thing that if I woke up some day and saw in the news that there is an incoming meteor on the trajectory to earth to cause an extinction level event. I'd get on with my life

[Solosanz]

Because reality isn't always same with our expectation.

You can't prevent anything happen in this world even though you've follow all of the prevention steps, there's always a risk even it's 0.000001%. Although there's still a chance, but it doesn't mean you need to be stupid like invest in newly created project and leave your coins on centralized exchange, you just increase the chance of losing money to above 50%!.

It's similar like people who think they didn't need to school to become a smart person since Albert Einstein get kicked out from school.

[Lucius]

Let's say you wake up in the morning only to find out your wallet has been emptied. Your savings are all gone.

This is something that can always happen and anyone who has any idea how Bitcoin works knows that you can never be 100% safe. Therefore, if we accept that something like that can happen, we will be able to cope more easily if it actually happens.

We all start from the assumption that we have taken all possible measures to protect ourselves at the given moment, as well as that there will be no unforeseen attack on Bitcoin that no one could have predicted. Bitcoin comes with the risk of everyone being their own bank, and it's a safe bet that not all people are ready for that.

There is something more valuable than money, so you should not consider such situations as the end of the world.

[Dave1]

We don't know everything, right? There is always something, knowledge, or hacks in life that you don't know about.
Let's say you wake up in the morning only to find out your wallet has been emptied. Your savings are all gone.
But you were following all the security practices you can possibly can, like generate everything offline, good entropy, not using brain wallet and so on and so forth.
But your funds are gone.
What will you do with it?

I guess if that is the case then you can't do anything as we all know that once your crypto is gone, it's very hard to get it back because that's how it is design in the first place. You can call it wrong, but you have to accept that fact.

And so if you really have huge amount of bitcoin, maybe a hardware wallet or a airgap pc as your safe place to store it.

And if you are following all the security practices, then the only thing I can think of is that it could be a inside job, someone close to you might have gotten it.

[bittraffic]

That's why we need to be very careful with our seed because even if we discover who the hacker is, there is less chance of getting it back. Exchanges got hacked never got the coins back. It's really going to be a hard start all over again for someone who lost his rainy-day stash which is a reason for separating some coins in other wallets and hiding them in another place.

[bitbollo]

...
What will you do with it?

Nothing. I would not do nothing since it will be irrilevant.
Maybe try to understand why this happens and if there is any chance to recover / understand the issue.

Of course this is a scenario really hard to be seen (probably impossible) since it's easier have a good security for cold storage just following some hints from security protocols like glacierprotocol.org

[Nrcewker]

We don't know everything, right? There is always something, knowledge, or hacks in life that you don't know about.
Let's say you wake up in the morning only to find out your wallet has been emptied. Your savings are all gone.
But you were following all the security practices you can possibly can, like generate everything offline, good entropy, not using brain wallet and so on and so forth.
But your funds are gone.
What will you do with it?

There are very less chances that something like this might happen. I mean if you are following all the security practices, then no one can steal your Bitcoins. If something happens to me, then at first I will check if I have sent it to someone by mistake or not. Moreover I would at first doubt my family members if they have by chance taken the coins for various reasons. If nothing works, then it will be a lesson for me, and I will instantly dig up why this happened and how to avoid being bankrupt like this in the future.

[stompix]

But your funds are gone.
What will you do with it?

What all people are going to do when they are in that situation in real life and not when they are reading a scenario on a forum?
Panic, curse, panic, curse, retry all the wallets 100 times in the hope I have loaded the wrong one, check the balances 1000 times on block explorers, curse again, take antihypertensive medication, start inquiring all family members, panic more, and then accept it and slowly starting to admit what happened, and return to the normal life, probably easier than others since I don't drink and don't smoke so I can't find "refuge" in those or other "alternatives".

That's one reason I don't hold all my life savings in one place, that's why I will never be full BTC no other saving in either deposits or treasury bonds or whatever, and why I don't plan on doing it and nobody should do either.

Oh, and everyone saying they will be calm and analyzing this and blabla, common people, be real, you won't stay calm if all your money would be gone. Nobody would! Drop the poker face!

[tranthidung]

Three important rules of diversification

• Don't store all your bitcoins in one wallet
• Don't store all your bitcoins in one wallet from one wallet software
• Don't store all your wallet backups (of different wallets) at a single location

Black swan events can occur any time but if you do good practice (security, privacy) and diversification (of choosing wallet softwares, storing bitcoins in different wallets and storing backups at different locations), you will have higher odds to be fine.

[Pandu Geddon]

if we have done all the security, including storing assets in a wallet that is not connected to any online device. the first thing to do is interrogate your closest person. it could be our naughty wife or daughter, where are the chances that they know you keep all data backup from your wallet?
when we have taken good care of our wallets. even though there is a small chance that mistakes will occur, all of course come because of our negligence.

[kamvreto]

if we have done all the security, including storing assets in a wallet that is not connected to any online device. the first thing to do is interrogate your closest person. it could be our naughty wife or daughter, where are the chances that they know you keep all data backup from your wallet?
when we have taken good care of our wallets. even though there is a small chance that mistakes will occur, all of course come because of our negligence.

Negligence is a factor that can happen when we have implemented all security. Sometimes some of the negligence that we do not realize it.
Save the seeds in the best place and offline and only your family knows, of course there will be no hacks unless a stranger knows where the storage is.
The security protocol that has been applied to the bitcoin wallet used has of course been carried out as much as possible.
Lost or lost funds must have a cause and effect, it is impossible if they just disappear.

[m2017]

We don't know everything, right? There is always something, knowledge, or hacks in life that you don't know about.
Let's say you wake up in the morning only to find out your wallet has been emptied. Your savings are all gone.
But you were following all the security practices you can possibly can, like generate everything offline, good entropy, not using brain wallet and so on and so forth.
But your funds are gone.
What will you do with it?

You have probably just described the worst morning any user of this forum can have.

No one expects this, but everyone can be exposed to it if they make a mistake.

What to do with it? Nothing. If the wallet is empty, then there is nothing to fix. You will need to figure out exactly where you went wrong and find your mistakes in order to avoid a repetition of this.

[NeuroticFish]

Let's say you wake up in the morning only to find out your wallet has been emptied. Your savings are all gone.
But you were following all the security practices you can possibly can, like generate everything offline, good entropy, not using brain wallet and so on and so forth.
But your funds are gone.
What will you do with it?

You have probably just described the worst morning any user of this forum can have.

No one expects this, but everyone can be exposed to it if they make a mistake.

What to do with it? Nothing. If the wallet is empty, then there is nothing to fix. You will need to figure out exactly where you went wrong and find your mistakes in order to avoid a repetition of this.

Sometimes it's not easy to figure out what you've done wrong. But you have to try and, even more important, make sure you do best next time.
And that's a lot more than nothing.
That usually means hardware wallet if you didn't have, that usually means much safer ways to handle/store the backup seed, this kind of small things that matter.

[buwaytress]

My first big incident was in the mid 2000s. The service I held funds on was seized. It was my first time dealing with that kind of incident, months and even years of anguish followed as it wasn't just funds I had, but borrowed capital. It's been over 15 years of waiting, if I ever get it back, it's a nice bonus but I've written it off and paid off my debts since.

Fast forward to Bitcoin, I have had similar incidents (all with online accounts using whatever services).

Like jackg above, I quickly move on. Sure, I reached out to support, tried to recover, but I accept that I have all kinds of risks with whatever service I leave funds on and try not to do so unnecessarily.

Even if my savings do end up being lost, I'd move on quickly. No point in hoping.

[wiss19]

It won't be gone just like that for no reason but if all of the good practice is done and then the bad ones are avoided then I suspect our partner or family member is the one that is responsible for this. Maybe we shared our login codes with them before because we trusted them.

It is needed though because if there are bad things happened to us then we are sure that our wallets can still be opened by someone that we trust and then use those coins for good. I will then confront them if what is the problem on why they sweep my wallet to early. Hopefully they can return some of my coins even if not the actual amount. I can still forgive them because they are not a different person.

[sunsilk]

There must be some reasons for that and have to recall everything that you've done to look at something to find fault from yourself. It won't just be gone for nothing and there's for sure some activities that has happened for which you've done unnoticedly.

Anyway, I've experienced that as well but only has to update the wallet. 

[serjent05]

What will you do with it?

Nothing?  What else can I do?  My crypto is gone, I cannot transact with zero cryptocurrencies.  Aside from figuring out why it was gone,  I would follow with the best answer I guess... 

I'd get on with my life

In addition, I will reformat everything and if possible would put another layer of security in my units (computer, gadgets, and room).  And improve the way I secure the backup of the seed phrases and keys. 

[drwhobox]

What will you do with it?

We can't be perfect, there is one way or another for hackers or insane people who want to rob, but what happened is happened right?
I will look for what the hell or how that happened for at least one month, if I lose everything I will spend a month for the reason that caused me everything.
After a month, I will search for a way to earn bitcoin/recover my loss again. I can't stop for a bad morning.

[Jason Brendon]

Exactly! That's the point i was trying to make. We never know. Things can happen.
Just like you would have never known in 2020 that there would be a war in Ukraine. (don't criticize, just a figure of speech, you get my point).

It can you that on day a backdoor/vulnerability is found, and some wallets got swept. And you happen to be one of them.

You never know.



[/quote]
I have no idea what would I do if a situation similar to what you described happened to me, but I think that my first reaction would be tearing my hair out and running from corner to corner like a crazy person. But a situation like that may happen to everyone, even with those who practice good opsec because one day a critical vulnerability may be found that will allow hackers to empty all wallets, including ones created on an air-gapped computer with good random number generators. Hopefully, the open-source and decentralized nature of bitcoin development will enable developers, contributors, and reviewers to catch such bugs very early and take all necessary steps to minimize the harm.
[/quote]

[Godday]

Hacking on every valuable site has indeed become a risk for every user, although the security that has been designed is so great but the point of weakness is definitely there, some hackers take advantage of the opportunity, then we as users who are victims of this have indeed become our risk, but we still have to be careful so that such a thing does not happen for ourselves, if a hack happens we can't do anything and something like that we don't want, then never get caught up in doing something that can indeed interfere with the security of our assets.

[mk4]

• Don't store all your bitcoins in one wallet

Not sure if I'd share the same opinion. While not storing all your bitcoin in one single wallet will decrease the chances of you losing your holdings in one unfortunate event, it increases the chances of you losing a part of your holdings.

[famososMuertos]

OP: Something went wrong in the self-custody process.  It's that simple, it's not about magic or mystery.

 It only remains first of all to have the mental strength to overcome the amount that is lost, then assume the personal challenge of having thought of a plan B and that this allows you to weigh the economic losses.

 Then try to check where you went wrong, in fact the difficult part of the whole process because the mistake of losing your funds is only yours and if you don't get it or detect it, you will lose your Funds again at some point, but through no one else's fault , the phrase system works well, it's simple, people fail in custody, either due to the classic online or offline error.

[klidex]

We don't know everything, right? There is always something, knowledge, or hacks in life that you don't know about.
Let's say you wake up in the morning only to find out your wallet has been emptied. Your savings are all gone.
But you were following all the security practices you can possibly can, like generate everything offline, good entropy, not using brain wallet and so on and so forth.
But your funds are gone.
What will you do with it?

I guess if that is the case then you can't do anything as we all know that once your crypto is gone, it's very hard to get it back because that's how it is design in the first place. You can call it wrong, but you have to accept that fact.

And so if you really have huge amount of bitcoin, maybe a hardware wallet or a airgap pc as your safe place to store it.

And if you are following all the security practices, then the only thing I can think of is that it could be a inside job, someone close to you might have gotten it.

What you mean is also true, If someone stores their Bitcoins in a hardware wallet and practice good security it will be difficult to get in and steal all the Bitcoins in it.
And I also believe that if an investor has a very large amount of bitcoin, they will dare to spend a little money to be able to guarantee security for the bitcoin wallet.
It is impossible and unreasonable for someone to store large amounts of bitcoins in just an ordinary wallet.

[Rruchi man]

Let's say you wake up in the morning only to find out your wallet has been emptied. Your savings are all gone.
But you were following all the security practices you can possibly can, like generate everything offline, good entropy, not using brain wallet and so on and so forth.

Too late to cry over spilled milk, best thing is to ensure that it doesn't repeat itself. And how do you ensure it doesn't repeat itself is by trying to breakdown and understand how you have found yourself in that situation, so you can best avoid it when you choose to begin getting bitcoins or whatever coins you lost again. I don't think one bad experience should make you change your mind about bitcoins even if you lost all you had. Get up, dust yourself and make better security plans because if you had done everything correctly, your wallet will not have been emptied.

[Yatsan]

Regarding OP's stated scenario, If ever I'd be waking up in one morning and see that my funds are gone, I'd probably check the transactions and if it is transferred to another wallet who I'm not familiar with, that would be it. Acceptance would be the only way out as well as knowing what could have wrong. I won't hope that funds will be returned especially in this industry. Best way is to just learn from it even if it is not an easy thing to do.

Let's say you wake up in the morning only to find out your wallet has been emptied. Your savings are all gone.
But you were following all the security practices you can possibly can, like generate everything offline, good entropy, not using brain wallet and so on and so forth.

Too late to cry over spilled milk, best thing is to ensure that it doesn't repeat itself. And how do you ensure it doesn't repeat itself is by trying to breakdown and understand how you have found yourself in that situation, so you can best avoid it when you choose to begin getting bitcoins or whatever coins you lost again. I don't think one bad experience should make you change your mind about bitcoins even if you lost all you had. Get up, dust yourself and make better security plans because if you had done everything correctly, your wallet will not have been emptied.

Regrets and frustrations won't be helped especially if you've lost something that important. But as I've mentioned, knowing what could possibly go wrong would lessen the burden especially if you are at fault for such instance. And if not, try seeking for possible reasons why such thing happened and try to contact the management of your wallet to somehow see what can you do to simply help oneself.

[crunck]

We don't know everything, right? There is always something, knowledge, or hacks in life that you don't know about.
Let's say you wake up in the morning only to find out your wallet has been emptied. Your savings are all gone.
But you were following all the security practices you can possibly can, like generate everything offline, good entropy, not using brain wallet and so on and so forth.
But your funds are gone.
What will you do with it?

Once your crypto assets, specifically bitcoins, have been stolen by hackers, there is no way to get them back, and nothing can be done but regret. Cryptocurrency investment is a risk, if you leave it on the floor, you will be afraid of the floor collapsing, if you leave it in a non-custod wallet, you will be attacked by hackers if you are not careful, there is always a risk. So only invest what you can afford to lose.

[coolcoinz]

There's always an entry point, a vulnerability, an exploit.

Say you do follow all the safety advice. You have funds divided into a number of wallets, you hold everything offline, you have backups, you don't store your passwords anywhere... What was the vulnerability? Did you let someone into your house? Was the backup physically taken and uploaded by the attacker?
I hold a lot of BTC and most of it is at least 5 years old. I've never had anything stolen from me and I've never had any type of security breach, that said, my friend had ransomware on 2 of his computers. I know people who had USB stick trojans that they got by using public printers and stuff. I had that malware that changes your address when you copy-paste on one of my "online" computers.
Everything can be found and cleaned once you are aware that you could be infected and take certain measures to avoid spreading it to your cold storage.

What if I wake up one day and it's all gone? I'll lose 80% of my liquid funds. I won't be forced to beg, or live in a tent, but I'll lose the ability to buy expensive stuff and invest for many years, maybe forever. That's why I make sure I run a tight ship here ant there's security layers over layers. The only way I could lose it all is if blockchain itself was compromised, but that's something I have no control over.

[Jason Brendon]

Fuck! You know what? Shit did happen.
Bitcoin developer lost his 200 some btc.
https://twitter.com/LukeDashjr/status/1609613748364509184?s=20

[big kid]

I don't think I'll be able to do something, I'm holding everything in OWNR wallet. I can check transactions on the blockchair, but everything is anonymous, it's not possible to find out who could do that. The only way someone can steal my crypto is to steal my seed phrase.