Sure, I am not sure if JohnGalt deserves the forked coins that were taken outside of his permission, since he had compromised his private keys, even though sure, there could be some kind of a benevolent sharing of the value of the coins that were taken with JohnGalt if the person who had taken the forked coins were to choose such a sharing course of action...
So yeah... I actually showed the private key on purpose ‘cause I wanted to prove everything was real. I could’ve just signed a message with it or whatever, but this just felt quicker at the time—and honestly, my head wasn’t all the way clear. I figured once the coins were moved, it wouldn’t really matter anymore (which... turns out, not the smartest assumption).
Something kinda like this happened back in 2013. This dude, Matt Miller, showed a paper wallet on TV and revealed the private key—and boom, someone snatched the coins right away. The person who took the coins actually reached out to him, and Matt was just like, “You can keep it.” But this ain’t the same. He didn’t even realize what that key meant. I did. I knew exactly what I was showing.
Some people might say that by putting the key out there on purpose, I basically gave up any claim to it. And whether or not I understood what I was giving up? Doesn’t even matter.
I have no idea who took the coins. Probably never will. And I don’t know what kinda person they are. Like, if they were honest, they would’ve seen it, realized it was probably a mistake, maybe taken the forked coins, hit me up, and asked for a reward or something. That would’ve been fair. A selfish person would’ve just grabbed it and been like, “Wow, free money, lucky me!” But a shady person—the criminal type? They look for stuff like this. Waiting for someone to slip up so they can pounce.
Anyway... $45K is a lot, don’t get me wrong. But what can I do? And compared to 100 BTC? At the end of the day, I’m just gonna take it as a lesson learned.
Of course each of us make mistakes from time to time, and sometimes we repeat similar kinds of mistakes without necessarily realizing the source of our mistakes, and for sure when you make your mistake in public, then it becomes a kind of mistake that others can potentially learn from. I have made some decently large mistakes related to bitcoin, and sometimes I have discussed my mistakes in public threads, and sure sometimes if we discuss our mistakes in public (or make them in public), then aspects of the mistakes might be revealed that go beyond our understandings of our mistakes.. and we might not even agree with the characterizations of others in regards to the mistakes that we made and/or whether our actions and/or our motivations were justified.
I understand that historically, guys used to reveal a lot more information about their various transactions, yet it seems that in recent times, guys are tending to not reveal as many details of their transactions, including for OPsec purposes.. which yes, that means that the readers and participants in these various public forum threads are not able to learn as much, as compared with when the information is out in the open. In your case you state that you chose to share the private key information based on a motivation to provide evidence that you were not making shit up. The situation that you claimed existed really did exist, and personally, I don't find that to be a very compelling reason to show the private key, even though sure, you could have shown part of the private key in order to show how the peeling of the label worked, and perhaps you could have had shown the transaction of your moving the coins. yet even these days guys sometimes don't even want to show their transactions because then those coins become publicly connected to you.
I cannot completely argue against guys choosing to share some of these kinds of pieces of information, since we can more easily learn from some of those kinds of details, and yeah, sure it is true that we can verify that you are not just making shit up... to the extent that your credibility might be questionable... which surely, any of us could overestimate how necessary it may well be to bolster our credibility. I have had times in which I have made claims about certain kinds of bitcoin-related matters, and guys have asked me to provide more information to make it clear that my claims were sufficiently valid, and in many of those cases, when it gets into showing specific transactions or wallet balances, I personally found it to not be relevant to attempt to prove my credibility in those kinds of ways.. and I also found it a bit invasive for some members to be asking for such proof, even though surely the whole story would become more believable with the showing of transactions and/or balances.
We are not all going to choose in the same ways in regards to how much information we share, and surely sharing a lot of information can also cause a lot of abilities to triangulate and to infer, and even readers of our posts might come to the wrong conclusions, including that some of us specifically proclaim that our posts tend to contain a combination of fiction and truth, and I even had some guys specifically tell me that some of the information that I had provided in my post describing a situation does not exactly add up, and that is part of the point. It is not supposed to add up with any exactness in order to still communicate some of the ideas.
For sure, there are situations in which proof of reserves is important, especially if we might be offering goods and/or services and/or using other people's money, yet if we are talking about our private stashes or our access to private stashes and/or even our security around such private stash matters, there likely are greater justifications for not necessarily being clear about some of the details, even though it might be more difficult for some of the readers to either learn from the situations or even believe which parts of the purported factual discussions are real and which parts are not real.
Just as a reference, it appears that all of the forks including BCH are probably still a bit less than $45k, yet sure if there might be some forks that might be extractable that add up to more value, and then the private keys could also be valuable in the future, yet if we lock in and we say that the value of those private keys (after the extraction of the BTC) ONLY amounted to about $45k, then that is ONLY slightly less than 0.5% of the total value of the Casascius bar, so surely relatively speaking 0.5% is not a very high price to pay relative to the total value of the BTC that had already been extracted and presumptively moved to some safe set ups.
Even in my time on the forum, I recall in my earlier times on the forum in 2014 to 2016, there were newbies (and even established members) shooting to accumulate 30-100 bitcoins, and so surely some of the guys from that time, might have still struggled to get stash sizes that were reaching 100 BTC for their total stash size. Perhaps in the 2016 to 2020 timeframe, there were even experienced forum members who were suggesting that it would be practical to divide their bitcoin into UTXO sizes that were in the ballpark of 1 BTC per UTXO in order to attempt to be practical, and even future-oriented in their UTXO management.
In recent times, many normies (perhaps even guys with larger stash sizes) are likely considering UTXOs that are quite a bit less than 1 BTC, especially if they are dealing with any of their UTXOs that might interact with other members of the public or even potentially give away how many BTC that they have, so even guys might not want to show that they have a stash size of 1 BTC or more, so in that context even creating UTXOs in the 0.01 to 0.1 BTC range might end up being sufficiently manageable and/or future-oriented.. So, yeah, dividing up one's BTC stash seems reasonable, and surely there could be some portions of any guy's stash that are larger (and perhaps more inactive) than other portions of the stash (in the context of three types such as 1) cold storage, 2) medium storage and/or 3) hot wallets), and sometimes we can make mistakes in both our dividing up of our stash, separating out KYC coins from non-KYC coins, and even our consolidation of some of our UTXOs might sometimes create connections of our past BTC spends that might not be good for our privacy to be combining them.
I have a question are you going to sell some of them if you put them in a trezor they are not cashed in.
So your hands are still diamond 💎.
I recall one of your posts from late 2022-ish in which you said that even 100 bitcoin was not enough to live off of, and surely you and I differ in opinion in regards to how many coins are necessary to live off of.
I personally think that currently
16.915 BTC is the threshold level of enough to sustain an $80k per year income from the BTC. So, from my point of view, currently,
100 BTC would be the threshold amount to sustain an income level of about $473k per year (which is $39.4k per month).
I will concede that in late 2022,
100 BTC would have been more challenging in terms of how much of an income it would sustain, even though the 200-WMA reflects that it could have been capable of a $244k per year sustainable income, yet in order to rest assured that too many coins were not being withdrawn, it may well would have had been prudent to only withdraw in the ballpark of $150k per year until the spot price returned at above at least 25% above the 200-WMA in order to be assured not to overly draw from a guy's bitcoin stash.. presuming a guy might have had 100 BTC in late 2022/early 2023.
Of course, anyone who has other sources of income should likely spending from other sources of income before spending from his bitcoin stash, yet surely there should not be any problem to increase a person's standard of living, especially if he has a decent stash of bitcoin that he had not spent from for 13 years or more.
