Security is important in Bitcoin

[Justinopet]

The reason why i outline that security is one the most  important thing or objective that a beginner in cryptocurrency journey should know as one of the major key is that , my friend who bought a Bitcoin with the savings does not know that trust wallet seed phrase which some people called "private key" is very important, he bought a Bitcoin that worth two thousand dollars and he never knew that his seed phrase have to keep in secret and he wrote his seed phrase on paper and drop it on his table after two months he started looking for the paper were he wrote his seed phrase where he login his trust wallet and two thousand worth of Bitcoin in his wallet is  not to be found, its there i noticed that security is highly important in Bitcoin and right now im of very observant and careful with any that concerns security mostly cryptocurrencies.i am a newbie and i will like to tell my fellow newbies to be security conscious of things that relates with Bitcoin because its a decentralized currency.

[coolcoinz]

I don't understand the story. Are you saying that he set up his wallet at home, left the phrase on his table and another family member found it, knew what it was and used it to steal his money?
Is 1k a lot of money to your friend, because the story suggests it isn't. I find $1k to e a decent amount of money, enough to buy a computer or 2 sets of tires for your car (summer and winter), or a pistol, if you're into guns... I wouldn't invest 1k in something that I don't understand.

Your friend's problem is not lack of security but negligence and carelessness. You don't need proper security to put your seed phrase in a "safe" place, like inside a book, or an encrypted file on your computer.
In my early days when my bitcoin wasn't worth a lot of money I used to keep my private keys in renamed txt files hidden somewhere on my computer. I'd take a normal text file, change the extension into something like "infinity.dll" and hide it somewhere. That's not proper security, but still many times better than some people, who store these on gmail accounts, cloud servers, or password managers.

[EL MOHA]

There two things that could have happened to your friend, first is his wallet might have been compromised through phishing attacks or any attacker, this is achievable without the hacker having access to the offline seed phrase. If it is then the physical seed phrase that was used to get access to the wallet then I wouldn’t call your friend’s case a case of lack of knowledge but carelessness because when creating a wallet every wallet even trustwallet will tell you the importance of seed phrase and that you shouldn’t let anyone have access to it.

[electronicash]

upon creating a wallet the app will remind the user how important the seed phrase is afaik. i think your friend knows how important it was so he wrote it. it however just flew out of his mind how to keep it out of someone else sight. when it comes to money, it shouldn't be left alone on top of his desk.

it took him 2 months to come looking for it.  a person who knows what a seed phrase looks like may try to import a wallet for himself to withdraw so he best be cautious about it.

if he is still logged on to his trust wallet, can't he see it from there to write it again?

[Crypto Library]

The reason why i outline that security is one the most  important thing or objective that a beginner in cryptocurrency journey should know as one of the major key is that , my friend who bought a Bitcoin with the savings does not know that trust wallet seed phrase which some people called "private key" is very important, he bought a Bitcoin that worth two thousand dollars and he never knew that his seed phrase have to keep in secret and he wrote his seed phrase on paper and drop it on his table after two months he started looking for the paper were he wrote his seed phrase where he login his trust wallet and two thousand worth of Bitcoin in his wallet is  not to be found, its there i noticed that security is highly important in Bitcoin and right now im of very observant and careful with any that concerns security mostly cryptocurrencies.i am a newbie and i will like to tell my fellow newbies to be security conscious of things that relates with Bitcoin because its a decentralized currency.

Security is important in every cases, no matter what investment you make physical or virtual, if you don't have good knowledge about security or if you can't make your investment security, then there is a high possibility of facing loss. Did your friend really not know about the importance of seed phrase? If not, why would he write it on the paper? Anyway, if there is such indifference, then this kind of situation has to be faced again and again.
Moreover, I would like to say another thing that only seed phrases or private key protection does not mean that you have been able to fully protect your fund. Because there is another issue here is that your wallet gets hacked, many times new users keep their funds on the device they browse unsafely, in this case, they are victims of phishing. So, to fully secure your fund, you have to turn off unrestrained browsing. Moreover, it is always better to use cold wallet for holding. You can visit this topic if you want, And later you can suggest your friend.

[Dzwaafu11]

Security is very important, but I will tell you that this story looks frictional because if he left his seed phase on the table and lost the seed phase and later found it again just to login to find out he lost his bitcoin, defiantly the bitcoin was stolen by one of his family members or his friends. This happens as a result of his carelessness. If not, how can you buy bitcoin worth two thousand dollars and keep your seed phase careless? So I will like to recommend and add to your post to say that instead of encouraging a beginner in bitcoin to know more about the security of his wallet and his private key, he will also not be too lazy to learn and perform educational research, and most importantly, he shouldn’t be as careless as your friend who misplaced his private key intentionally.

[ajiz138]

It is carelessness that your friend keeps the seed phrase anywhere even on a table that many people see while other people who know it might just be a waste paper and might just throw it away.
So where we have to be very important to store seed phrases safely and not be careless because this involves such a large asset, if your friend doesn't find his seed phrase then he will lose his assets forever.
About security we already know how to anticipate and keep well, there is even a thread where how to keep the seed phrase safely and well, again it goes back to them on how to do it.

[GiftedMAN]

Op I think you need to take your time to go through your story then consider how interesting it is because I find your stories to be very far from the truth,  I mean how will someone wake up and decide to buy Bitcoin that is worth $2k without knowing what seed phrase is all about? The most funny thing is that he don't know anything about seed phrase but he wrote it down and kept it on the table why did he keep it on the table and how does he know that the seed phrase needs to be written down since he has no idea what it is about. I think op needs to come up with something reasonable because I believe technology is everywhere now even a layman will understand the importance of seed phrase before getting a wallet.

[cryptomaniac_xxx]

The reason why i outline that security is one the most  important thing or objective that a beginner in cryptocurrency journey should know as one of the major key is that , my friend who bought a Bitcoin with the savings does not know that trust wallet seed phrase which some people called "private key" is very important, he bought a Bitcoin that worth two thousand dollars and he never knew that his seed phrase have to keep in secret and he wrote his seed phrase on paper and drop it on his table after two months he started looking for the paper were he wrote his seed phrase where he login his trust wallet and two thousand worth of Bitcoin in his wallet is  not to be found, its there i noticed that security is highly important in Bitcoin and right now im of very observant and careful with any that concerns security mostly cryptocurrencies.i am a newbie and i will like to tell my fellow newbies to be security conscious of things that relates with Bitcoin because its a decentralized currency.

Very expensive lessons to learn, although I could be playing devil advocate here and say that this story is hard to believed. I mean someone writes something, even if it is not a private key, then drop it like that?

In any case I would agree that definitely security is very important. Some of us really learn it the hard way like your friend as our wallets could have been hack because we might have backup our mnemonic phrase and private key in the cloud and online. One thing though is how your friends go and invest with that huge amount of money without learning what Bitcoin is?

Seems to me that there are more questions here.

[Cryptomultiplier]

Firstly, when it comes to online platforms that require most of our personal information or for business or invest purposes, it is good to observe even the basic security protocol, which could be just using passwords, authentication and other notifications.

For a BTC or cryptocurrency investor who has some funds in a wallet or intends to acquire some, using good wallets mostly offline wallets with key phrases, should be safely  kept secure from prying eyes and criminals.

Without a secure wallet or secure asset location, there won't be a need to want to keep up with an investment plan or even portfolio, because why bother when hackers or anyone close could easily have access and make away with the funds?

[usekevin]

The reason why i outline that security is one the most  important thing or objective that a beginner in cryptocurrency journey should know as one of the major key is that , my friend who bought a Bitcoin with the savings does not know that trust wallet seed phrase which some people called "private key" is very important, he bought a Bitcoin that worth two thousand dollars and he never knew that his seed phrase have to keep in secret and he wrote his seed phrase on paper and drop it on his table after two months he started looking for the paper were he wrote his seed phrase where he login his trust wallet and two thousand worth of Bitcoin in his wallet is  not to be found, its there i noticed that security is highly important in Bitcoin and right now im of very observant and careful with any that concerns security mostly cryptocurrencies.i am a newbie and i will like to tell my fellow newbies to be security conscious of things that relates with Bitcoin because its a decentralized currency.

The beginner of the bitcoin have to know about the security features of the bitcoin,So he can save their money in the bitcoin without the knowledge of the other people like your friend did to yourself.The important thing in the bitcoin is the  trader of bitcoin should safeguard of their private key.So he won’t loss their saving bitcoin in the future,the better way to hold bitcoin will be holding in the reputed exchanges like binance.If you are going to buy bitcoin for more than 1k dollars,you should use the cold wallet to store the bitcoins and for the safety of the bitcoin.

The bitcoin wallet will have the phase and the private key,the trader should spend some time to save the both phase and private key of the wallet in separate sheet.It’s essential to keep many copy of that spreadsheet to your mail and to the personal computer backup hard disk.

[SatoPrincess]

my friend who bought a Bitcoin with the savings does not know that trust wallet seed phrase which some people called "private key" is very important, ll

FYI Private keys and seed phrase are not the same thing. 


$2k worth of bitcoins lost due to negligence is disheartening. It’s even more sad that your spent his savings on bitcoins only to lose it all two months later. Two things I noticed from this tale;

First your friend isn’t very knowledgeable on bitcoin yet he spent his savings investing in bitcoin. Which makes me believe he didn’t follow the “invest only what you can afford to lose” rule.

Secondly, $2k is not a small amount of money and must mean a lot to your friend. Unfortunately he made the dire  mistake of not storing his seed phrase properly. I think he only wrote it down because the wallet required him to write it down and type it again when creating the wallet.

[mvdheuvel1983]

Well now that you have know that to secure ones private key is important through the experience of watching your friend, what were the practical steps you took to avoid the same mistakes. You should know that your friend is still at risk if he goes ahead to create another Trust Wallet account. I had expected you to write that you learned from your friend and read up on ways to store your seed phrase safely. That you read about wallet security, clipboard malware, and the other many security risks that poses a threat to the safety of our bitcoins.

[Stalker22]

~
he wrote his seed phrase on paper and drop it on his table after two months he started looking for the paper were he wrote his seed phrase where he login his trust wallet and two thousand worth of Bitcoin in his wallet is  not to be found,

What are we talking about here?  This person does not need a backup (seed) phrase to access his Trust wallet. Unless he somehow lost his passcode or his smartphone completely, and  that would be really stupid if he had deposited a significant amount of money into such wallet.  

Also, the backup phrase is not the same thing as a private key.  Those are two distinct terms that should not be used interchangeably.

[Ndabagi01]

Your friend has simply ignored the importance of security and allowed the money he has invested in bitcoin to be stolen as a result of his carelessness. Your friend may not have sufficient knowledge of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but he would have been warned while setting up the wallet that the seed phrase should not be shared with anyone.

He is a "I don't care friend," and this will teach him a lesson in the future. $2K is a significant sum of money that will be felt mentally when stolen; I am sorry for your friend, but his carelessness is to blame. He should get a new wallet and forget the old one this time, he should get a self custodian wallet like Electrum or Bluewallet to save money.

[darkangel11]

OP, you must understand that we are not talking about security when you leave your seed for the world to see.
It's like if you had a car and invested in GPS tracking and the best alarm system out there, but you'd leave it outside unlocked with keys in the ignition.
You could have the best hardware wallet and a security safe to keep it in and then leave a piece of paper with recovery seed outside the safe.
No security measures will work when you're stupid.

[Rruchi man]

Sorry will be the name of any investor who trivializes their security either through carelessness, or ignorance.

 

its there i noticed that security is highly important in Bitcoin and right now im of very observant and careful with any that concerns security mostly cryptocurrencies.

The careless and less security conscious individuals will have lots of regrets with bitcoins because of poor security practice that can result to loss and theft of investment. Knowing how to secure your bitcoins after buying is not lesser in importance than were to acquire it. There are many people who are not interested in using their own money to buy bitcoins, but looking for how and where to steal from.

[Baofeng]

my friend who bought a Bitcoin with the savings does not know that trust wallet seed phrase which some people called "private key" is very important, ll

FYI Private keys and seed phrase are not the same thing. 


$2k worth of bitcoins lost due to negligence is disheartening. It’s even more sad that your spent his savings on bitcoins only to lose it all two months later. Two things I noticed from this tale;

First your friend isn’t very knowledgeable on bitcoin yet he spent his savings investing in bitcoin. Which makes me believe he didn’t follow the “invest only what you can afford to lose” rule.

Secondly, $2k is not a small amount of money and must mean a lot to your friend. Unfortunately he made the dire  mistake of not storing his seed phrase properly. I think he only wrote it down because the wallet required him to write it down and type it again when creating the wallet.

Yes, it's $2k worth of investment, how can be someone as careful as the OP's friend? For us it's a huge amount of money already, and others it could be just a dream that we can invest that much and then protect it at all cost.

Although there's no one to blame but your friend because of his carelessness or probably he is ignorant. That's why we said that bitcoin investment is a BYOB (Be your Own Bank). So at least you should learn and know how to protect it. And talking about security, just search everything about it in this community and maybe you can give a piece of advice to your friend to not make the same mistakes if ever he will invest on bitcoin again.

[PX-Z]

How people jumping to other side without knowing what's in there. People could at least read even a little on how bitcoin works before buying it.

@OP securing your bitcoin won't just stop on keeping your seed phrase safe. No matter how secured your locker where your paper backup is, if your device is full of malware, unsecure and having bad practice of sending bitcoin. At the end of the day it will be the same.

[MusaMohamed]

my friend who bought a Bitcoin with the savings does not know that trust wallet seed phrase which some people called "private key" is very important, he bought a Bitcoin that worth two thousand dollars and he never knew that his seed phrase have to keep in secret and he wrote his seed phrase on paper and drop it on his table after two months he started looking for the paper were he wrote his seed phrase where he login his trust wallet and two thousand worth of Bitcoin in his wallet is  not to be found

Your friend is careless and he is careless as ihis habit. I don't need to know a seed phrase is important to keep it safe and in a secret place. I do this with my bank accounts and I am sure will do the same with other accounts that store my money.

If your friend does not know that a seed phrase is important, why he wrote it down, it is unnecessary step if seed phrase is useless.

Security checklist
How to back up a seed phrase?
Wallet basics

Wallet Basics:

Do not use wallets that don't give you recovery data; these wallets are likely controlling your keys.
Do not use paper wallets unless you're an advanced user who understands all the risks.
Do not store large amounts of value in single signature wallets.
Make sure your heirs know how to recover your wallets without you!
Note that it is NOT recommended that novices use the Bitcoin Core wallet. If you want to use a wallet backed by a fully validating node you run, read Securing Your Financial Sovereignty.