A user complained in the largest Bitcoin community on the internet, on Reddit, that he lost 2 bitcoins stored in a paper wallet created since 2018. According to the user, he used a website to create his wallet.
And over the years, the user began to accumulate bitcoins in his wallet, gradually creating his own funds. Depending on the public bitcoin address provided by the user, the live coins managed to find out that he had 2.03 bitcoins.
That is, the user “u/78523985210” got 260 thousand reais in bitcoin, but in the end lost everything.
“Three years ago I made a paper wallet using an online generator (don’t remember which site) and my public key is 1MXb3vY5sCC2rB2bD2rusQjxEyYUDEKcHT.”
User who lost bitcoins stored in a paper wallet remembers being extra careful with his password, but it didn’t help much
Creating a paper bitcoin wallet can be an important and rewarding activity for advanced users, but it can carry some risks for less experienced users.
One of them is the address generation environment, which, when it comes to a website, can pose the risk of cyber-attacks. The website used by the user who lost all his money underwent a cyber-attack after he created the address, i.e. his private key may have been leaked.
He recalled that he had even tried to protect his private key with various mechanisms, but to no avail.
“I kept my locked private keys in a Keepass password manager (with a very long and strong password) and made sure it was different from my primary generic Bitwarden password generator.”
User lost everything in November 2022, but didn’t find out until June 2023
Despite accumulating bitcoin fractions over the past few years, the wallet recorded its last receipt movement in April 2022. After that, the combined balance of 2 bitcoins left the address in November of that same year and was lost forever.
But everything indicates that the victim of the theft had not consulted his address in recent months and to his surprise it was already too late. The user even asked if someone could help him restore values, but he gave up after would-be scammers asked him for money to run the service.
“I just checked my balance today and realized everything is missing as of 11/25/2022. Is there anything I can do like posting to a bounty hunter site or am I just wasting my time?”
However, the case shows the risks of generating private bitcoin addresses on sites on the internet, which are not the best places to create a secure address. Unfortunately, the Reddit user lost his balance forever, as bitcoin transactions confirmed on the blockchain do not allow for reversals, losing everything he has achieved over the years for good.
Source: Live Coins
Barry Siefert is an accomplished journalist and author at The Nation View. He is known for his expertise in the field of cryptocurrency, and has written extensively on the topic. With a background in finance and economics, Barry has a deep understanding of the underlying technology and market forces that drive the crypto industry.
