If you got in this situationn! What will you?

[icebar]

If someone finds the private key by chance, though it is almost impossible, then he can claim ownership because if he gets access to that wallet, he gets the opportunity to use Bitcoin as he wishes, but legal ownership of the asset and getting access to the wallet through the private key are not the same thing. If it comes to the issue of legal validity, then of course the real owner is the one who claims it. In this case, only if the person who collected the private key is reviewed how he collected it, then the real truth can come out. Ownership of Bitcoin can change due to inheritance, but for this, it can never be proven by the private key alone who is the heir. Therefore, although it is impossible, even if something like this happens by chance, he may get access to Bitcoin, but he cannot legally claim to be the real owner.

[Bd officer]

Although it is not easy to guess someone's private key, if you guess someone's key, then you have become its illegal owner. Whether the asset is stolen or found on the street, you are not its real owner. Now you have mentioned one point, now if the real owner of a wallet dies, then his children or his heirs have the right to claim it, but you cannot become its owner by guessing it. If you do this, then it will become illegal.
I don't remember my own key, sometimes I make a mistake while accessing the wallet. How can I guess someone's private key there, ha ha.  

[Issa56]

I saw this topic on Reddit/Bitcoin, and got curious if this ever happened on anyone. What actually will they do? Or does this kind of scenario implicate some lawful violations. Considering that someone didnt use any sort of unlawful stuff like knocking on someone door and forced to give a private key and steal it.

Lets just say a dormant wallet for a long time and someone luckily guess the keys.

You guessed the key, and the bitcoin doesn’t belong to you, then you should know that the bitcoin belongs to someone else, and you are stealing from the person. You don’t have to knock on someone’s door, or force anyone to open the door. Just imagine you have money in your bank account, and someone guessed your password and sent out everything you have in the account, is that not stealing? If you will report a case like this, you going to say someone stole your money. I feel you should apply the same thing to your post here.

If you meet bitcoin in a wallet, you should know someone kept it there, and because the wallet is dormant doesn’t mean the owner doesn’t have access to it, the owner might just be holding the bitcoin, and might not be ready to use the bitcoin. If you guess the seed phrase, and you moved out the bitcoin, then you have stolen from the person.

[strunberg]

I saw this topic on Reddit/Bitcoin, and got curious if this ever happened on anyone. What actually will they do? Or does this kind of scenario implicate some lawful violations. Considering that someone didnt use any sort of unlawful stuff like knocking on someone door and forced to give a private key and steal it.
Lets just say a dormant wallet for a long time and someone luckily guess the keys.

If you meet bitcoin in a wallet, you should know someone kept it there, and because the wallet is dormant doesn’t mean the owner doesn’t have access to it, the owner might just be holding the bitcoin, and might not be ready to use the bitcoin. If you guess the seed phrase, and you moved out the bitcoin, then you have stolen from the person.

Any wallet containing coins retains its rightful owner, even if someone manages to guess the seed phrase. Bitcoin wallets differ from bank accounts, where the bank provides legal safeguards for account security; Bitcoin wallets operate without a third party, meaning individuals are solely responsible for their own private keys. If someone accidentally guesses the seed phrase, they could transfer the Bitcoin and claim the funds. They might well avoid legal repercussions, as tracing the person who guessed the phrase and took the assets would be extremely difficult. In fact, many wallets remain inactive for long periods because the owners have disappeared or completely forgotten about them—implying that someone who successfully guesses the seed phrase could possess the coins without fear of legal action. Nevertheless, both morally and legally, I consider this an act of theft.

[Somegory]

You can't enjoy what's not yours, even if you can steal the money successfully that's a lot of money, you will be tracked down and hopefully make some mistakes that will get you arrested.

If you want to teach the owner some lesson just seize it for a time being, like keep the money for a month and send it back after, they must have thought it's over and they will blame themselves for it.

When they get the money back they will do the needful to avoid such thing the next time.

[Faisal2202]

When we say something, we can say it very simply, but we don't understand how difficult it is to do. It is impossible to create a private key by guessing and match it with another wallet, because when we want to access the wallet with our private key, if there is a slight mistake, we will not be able to access our wallet. So I want to say that it is completely impossible to create a wallet based on guessing and see $1 billion in that wallet and we can never even think about this; even though we can access the wallet, it is impossible to see $1 billion there.

Yes it is impossible, only an idiot would hold funds in a single wallet, although that wallet can have more addresses that's a different thing but keeping that much funds under a single seed phrase is the most idiotic thing to do so that's why we can never find $1 billion.

Also rich people like this one here, always use multi signature wallets, so one wallet won't do any good that's why it is best to not wish for something this delusional.

Instead be moderate like expect to get $1 million to $10k that would be enough but I will not use them, and secure them until the real owner claims it back using the right key. But the key alone is not the only factor for verification, I will definitely demand more.

[Ronsbit]

Although it is not easy to guess someone's private key, if you guess someone's key, then you have become its illegal owner. Whether the asset is stolen or found on the street, you are not its real owner. Now you have mentioned one point, now if the real owner of a wallet dies, then his children or his heirs have the right to claim it, but you cannot become its owner by guessing it. If you do this, then it will become illegal.
I don't remember my own key, sometimes I make a mistake while accessing the wallet. How can I guess someone's private key there, ha ha.  

I have not heard it before were it was or is said that someone made a good guess of a wallet private keys and got access to the wallet which is not theirs. First and foremost, it is stealing because the owner of the wallet did not grant you a legal access to their wallet. We only hear about brute force and other measures which is both legal and criminal by which wallets are being accessed.
Doing a guess work does not guarantee easier access . It is best we all know this and have peace.

[Sarah Jordan]

I don't think guessing a private key is possible. A dormant wallet that wakes up might have different reasons maybe the owner is ready to use it or maybe the person is lucky to get the keys as you have said. If a key is generated randomly that has bitcoin then it isn't illegal. In bitcoin who can sign owns it.

Talking about if the owner is alive the owner can sue as legally its seen as theft. But if the owner is dead and no other person to claim it then you're lucky. But the problem will be when the coin is moved to a kyc wallet it can be traced. That's why we need to know law doesn't support theft even if it's gotten by luck

[Fivestar4everMVP]

I saw this topic on Reddit/Bitcoin, and got curious if this ever happened on anyone. What actually will they do? Or does this kind of scenario implicate some lawful violations. Considering that someone didnt use any sort of unlawful stuff like knocking on someone door and forced to give a private key and steal it.

Lets just say a dormant wallet for a long time and someone luckily guess the keys.

First of all, I would say the probability of this happening is at a flat 0%, and this is because never have I heard or read anywhere that someone correctly guessed the private key to a wallet that contained bitcoins.
And I honestly do not like discussing things or matters that are unlikely to happen, but since I am already here and do find the topic rather interesting, what I would say is..

If I find myself in such a situation,^{how I hate wishful thinking}  what I would do is move the funds to a separate wallet and wait to see if any one would complain about losing the bitcoins, if that happens, I would happily give the funds back while I beg the owner to allow me keep a small share 🙈.

Reason I would move the bitcoins to a separate wallet is, if I could correctly guess the private key to the wallet, there is a high chance another person could as well be able to guess it and who knows, that other person may not return the bitcoins if he or she lays hold of it first.

[viljy]

This situation can be viewed from the perspective of finding a lost item. If the key was lost by the owner, or the owner died without leaving the key to his heirs, or there are no heirs, then the person who received the key (whether by chance or not) can dispose of these coins as a found item.

If, however, the former owner claims ownership, they must prove this right (if they lost the key, they must provide strong evidence of their ownership right). The same applies to the heirs, who must prove that the testator intended to leave them bitcoins as an inheritance (perhaps he deliberately did not do so). In short, one can rely on existing legal norms "by analogy", rather than on this: "not your key, not your coins" is not a legal norm.

Another thing is how all of this can be implemented in practice. Well, it’s not that simple. Law enforcement has never been an easy task. Here, we’re simply looking at how this situation could be resolved under ideal conditions.

[Odusko]

Although it is not easy to guess someone's private key, if you guess someone's key, then you have become its illegal owner. Whether the asset is stolen or found on the street, you are not its real owner. Now you have mentioned one point, now if the real owner of a wallet dies, then his children or his heirs have the right to claim it, but you cannot become its owner by guessing it. If you do this, then it will become illegal.
I don't remember my own key, sometimes I make a mistake while accessing the wallet. How can I guess someone's private key there, ha ha.  

Since it Bitcoin, once you get the private keys, and with no trace of centralized wallet that deposits the Bitcoin into the wallet, you are indeed the owner at that point, and with such tool like mixers that could hide coins movement, the new wallet owner can actually move out the Bitcoin to another wallet without any trace, but if it other crypto coins, you may find it hard to conceal the coins movement.
Wf let ask how the hell will 1 billion dollars Worth of Bitcoin be seating in a wallet with key carelessly shared to a random person.

[Ever-young]

This scenario will definitely remain and die In Assumption because there is no way you can keep guessing. Bitcoin security is not a joke, it’s not your regular centralized 4 digit pin. So since this thread was created by assumption, we’ll continue with the assumption.

Now since we already assumed a miracle happened and I got the keys, it means that more miracles will keep happening because you have not gotten, Personally I’m not seeing a possibility of such a thing even happening.

And if probably I made my way I must call myself genius and a criminal at same time because there is no way everything will happen legally without bias and contradictions.
But if we choose to keep leaving in assumption, and I really made my way without corny activity, and the wallet was found dormant, i dont think there is any reason to carry out disciplinary actions.

The chances of this happening is 1 in 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456, seed phrase is not a random English words added together, research said bitcoin seed is generated with a strong entropy which is why even with advanced tool searching it's not possible to guess.

[Cricktor]

I still don't know why some are talking about guessing or "accidently" finding the right seed words (quite often only 12 out of a set of 2048 from known BIP39 wordlist). This is not what the OP was talking about.

12 mnemonic recovery words represent commonly 128 bits of entropy in the case of a BIP39 seed (132 bits in the case of an Electrum wallet seed). Such an amount of entropy bits feels like "cheating" compared to guessing or "accidently" finding a  Bitcoin private key, which is 256 bits long. Guessing twelve seed words is roughly 2¹²⁸ times easier than guessing a private key.

Anyway, both are absolutely out of question as long decent random entropy is in place. Since we are in the realm of imagination, do the math yourself for the easier task: imagine you have a billion devices, each capable of "guessing and checking" a billion Bitcoin private keys per second. We're talking of thousands of trillions of years... (ignoring the case that roughly on average 2⁹⁶ private keys yield the same P2PKH Bitcoin legacy address).
It's interesting that here coins send to a P2PK public key would be much safer, harder to find (unique relation of a public key to its source private key), than an unlock script for a legacy public address (P2PKH), where you only need to match a RIPEMD160 hash collision.

[Nanga Parbat]

Since it Bitcoin, once you get the private keys, and with no trace of centralized wallet that deposits the Bitcoin into the wallet, you are indeed the owner at that point, and with such tool like mixers that could hide coins movement, the new wallet owner can actually move out the Bitcoin to another wallet without any trace, but if it other crypto coins, you may find it hard to conceal the coins movement.
Wf let ask how the hell will 1 billion dollars Worth of Bitcoin be seating in a wallet with key carelessly shared to a random person.

I completely agreed with your point because we are talking about Bitcoin after having private keys, and then there is no problem in transferring funds from this wallet to your own. You are the sole owner of these coins and have a good life waiting for you in the coming years. But its only happen in dreams or also can happen in films in real life its had zero percent chances of happening peoples those are having enough funds never keep things like this and allow others to enjoy with their savings peoples those are well aware about consequences and also have understanding of risk management they never done things like these always have their own secure system which never done any mistakes they lost enough funds once they are having into their custody.

[Anthony Bill]

It depend how you where train in your family, if you are well train in your family I don't think you will touch anything inside the wallet because you know that the particular wallet belong to someone that is still alive. There are some that will store massive coins in some wallet not to visit in that wallet to check if the coins are still there or not because they believe the quality of the wallets they are using to hold the coins.

[Pi-network314159]

Technically this is a huge debate Im surely wanted to know some answers. Whats your thought on this?

First of all private key are hard to guess right except it was misplaced and someone happens to see it. However I'd someone inport the seed and check the history and see that no Bitcoin has been sent out for over 10 to 15 years now then it's obvious that the owner is dead or has misplaced it. You are free to use it in this situation. But if you check the history and discovered that there was a recent transactions, it means the owner is still active and still holding for his future generations. Well the decision is up to the person who found out the wallet. And honestly speaking, It is hard to find anybody in or outside of this forum that will see such amount without withdrawing it.

[Nasdel4]

I am a kind-hearted person and will be returning them if it is in hundred but a billion dollar treasure is no joke and everyone would do the same thing in my opinion.

Even a kind hearted person needs some money you know! Lol...it's a really tough situation to be in but I agree with you on the fact that it'll be really difficult for anyone who stumbles across a billion in bitcoin to turn a blind eye especially when international laws don't apply. I'll also like to know if there are any laws regarding this so I'll be aware.

[Stalker22]

Even a kind hearted person needs some money you know! Lol...it's a really tough situation to be in but I agree with you on the fact that it'll be really difficult for anyone who stumbles across a billion in bitcoin to turn a blind eye especially when international laws don't apply. I'll also like to know if there are any laws regarding this so I'll be aware.

Absolutely.  Law definitely applies.  Taking crypto that is not rightfully yours is still theft.  On top of that, most countries have legislative provisions relating to found property - you generally have to report it or try to return it to the owner.

[Z_MBFM]

1. Did that someone break any Law upon discovery of this ^{(Based on country probable geolocation Laws exist for digital)}?
2. Is he allowed to spend it or transfer to another wallet and sold it
3. Technically on bitcoins perspective anyone control the keys or able to sign a message = own the bitcoin ^{(Is this somehow exempted?)}
4. Does he own now the bitcoin assuming the owner is probably dead and he can sign a message?
5. Is he fortunate or like win a Jackpot or just place himself more in danger upon discovering this?

I am answering all your questions together. In the case of Bitcoin, if you have a private key and if there is Bitcoin in that wallet, you can do anything with it. If you get the private key of such a Bitcoin wallet, then you can spend that Bitcoin, there will be no violation of any law. And you can also claim yourself as the owner of that coin. However, when you cash out that 1 billion dollars, how much and how you can consume that Bitcoin depends on how you give the account to your country's government. Because this is a very large amount, so of course when you go to cash it out, you will have to prove the source of this money to the government, this is the real fact. If you keep it as Bitcoin, then you will have control over it if that private key is only with you.

[Youngrebel]

Technically this is a huge debate Im surely wanted to know some answers. Whats your thought on this?

First of all private key are hard to guess right except it was misplaced and someone happens to see it. However I'd someone inport the seed and check the history and see that no Bitcoin has been sent out for over 10 to 15 years now then it's obvious that the owner is dead or has misplaced it. You are free to use it in this situation. But if you check the history and discovered that there was a recent transactions, it means the owner is still active and still holding for his future generations. Well the decision is up to the person who found out the wallet. And honestly speaking, It is hard to find anybody in or outside of this forum that will see such amount without withdrawing it.

To me I don’t think that just because a wallet has been inactive for few years maybe 10 or 15 years as you mentioned it doesn’t mean the owner is dead or that the Bitcoin is free to take, the might could have lost access, intentionally held it for that long period of time for a reason or he left it for his family. And if I will be honest with you, saying the decision is up to whoever finds the wallet to me it sound too easy to say as if finding someone private key is not the same as owning their Bitcoin where problem will actually start from is having the log to the account.