So I wake up this morning to find that all of my bitcoin in my phantom wallet was drained. I never have given out my information, clicked on fishy websites, I’m not even that big of a crypto guy I just bought some bitcoin some months back and let it sit.
The wallet it was transferred to is bc1qzzwrq26uhark6ufhgun2zm8x5y8ugwehfvr7v3
I’ve already made a ticket with phantom, what else can I do? Is there any possibility I can recover these funds? (I’m guessing there isn’t). This has kind of ruined crypto as a whole for me, if my money isn’t safe in my wallet and there’s no stopping some random hacker take my stuff, then what is the point?
Would appreciate any pointers from you folks.
https://i.redd.it/undt7einhith1.jpeg
Posted by Confident-Border4304
35 Comments
Sadly, it’s gone OP. Your seed phrase likely was compromised.
Bitcoin transactions are irreversible once confirmed. It’s highly unlikely that you can recover this. DMs offering to help are all scammers.
The way to make it safer is to use a reputable open source wallet and keep your keys offline with a hardware signing device. You didn’t mention anything about the security of your seed phrase, and you’re using a proprietary (not open source) hot wallet. Any number of things could have gone wrong.
Edit: like maybe you wrote your seed phrase in your notes app. It’s like a step-by-step on how to lose your bitcoin.
How did you create the wallet / where was your seed stored?
How did you store your seed phrase OP?
This is why you always use cold storage
This is why most people would be better off holding the bitcoin ETFs in a brokerage account
How did you store the seedphrase
Hot wallets are not nearly as secure as cold wallets. You compromised your password or seed phrase along the way
Did you use a hot wallet?
This is the main reason I’m not a bitcoin holder
General question for anyone. What is the benefit of even using an online wallet instead of just keeping it on an exchange such as cash app or strike?
I understand cold wallets are the best, just curios of people thoughts with hot wallets vs exchanges
Put it in your binance account dude
A hardware wallet cost ~$50, and will keep your seed phrase safe.
If the cost of the hardware wallet is small compared to the value your BTC investment, buy one.
Hot wallet are only suitable for “coffee money”.
False, the transaction was authorized by someone with the key.
I’m sure this isn’t exactly comforting, but it’s gone forever and that’s part of why some of us have faith in crypto. Anyone who has your secret number can irreversibly spend your coins, and anyone who doesn’t cannot. I’m sorry to hear about this, if you ever decide to get back into crypto then make sure to never ever let your seed touch the internet.
The network needs your seed so it’s technically not unauthorized, you just compromised your secret by storing it digitally.
That’s exactly why crypto is not for everyone : no regulation or protection and tons of people are being drained their portfolios because they have no clue about security…
Bitcoin that you can’t afford to lose should always be keeps in hardware wallets or any kind of cold wallet. Right now you got a lesson. Best for you is to invest your time to learn about Bitcoin more and how to make sure to keep it safe. Lucky for you is, that we should still have cheap bitcoins in the next half year.
Do you know where the data is stored for your notes app? Could easily be stored online without you ever knowing
Unfortunately youve answered your own question but wont accept the answer.
You stored your seed phrase digitally. Rule number 1 is you dont do that.
Most if not all wallets tell you that at the point of creation.
To be very clear:
YOU STORED YOUR SEED PHRASE DIGITALLY, IN YOUR NOTES APP, ON YOUR PHONE.
F, how much did you lose? $100k? How did get you to have *negative* bitcoin?!
No way to tell because in their eyes if everyone could do that they could duplicate their BTC , the anonymous nature of addresses gives them not way to prove whether it was you or not
Why do people keep using shady wallets when there are hardware wallets out there?
The point of a hardware wallet is that your keys don’t sit on an Internet connected device. It’s not that hard to understand.
Your wallet is on your phone. Which I presume is connected to the Internet. What happened is that you downloaded something, it can be anything, that contained a small malware whose purpose was to look for crypto private keys in your phone. It found your phantom wallet keys, and sent them to the creator of the malware, using the same Internet connection it used to get inside your phone in the first place.
Then the malware’s creator recovered your wallet and drained it
sigh. There are bots constantly trying to hack into icloud and google photos to scan for peoples seed phrase photos or note pads.
This is how your 0.02btc was taken.
The more you know!
>phantom wallet
That’s the mistake, right there.
Sorry bro
There’s nothing you can do about it. Let this be a lesson and a motivation
On the bright side, you “only” lost 0.024 btc. While it still hurts, it’s not life-changing money. We are still in the bear market, so you can start accumulating right now.
But buy a damn hardware wallet, and don’t store that damn seed on an Internet-connected device
This needs to be at the forefront of bitcoin development to fix if its ever going to be a practical daily use money. The fact that hot wallets can be so easily hacked means bitcoin can never reliably be used for day to day transacting. Victim blaming is not the solution here. I’m sorry for your loss OP.
If you want crypto exposure without exposure to crypto try some of the ETFs like MSBT
Get ready for 1,000 bots emailing you saying they can get it back.
They cannot.
Always sad to hear someone got drained, it’s a shit world. What I don’t get is going on reddit asking for advice and denying the logic of 100 people telling the same thing. What did you expect? ah yes Bitcoin wallets randomly get hacked from time to time it’s not your fault?’
Still wouldn’t give up though just try to start over with a cold wallet and write the seed on the paper.
the coin is lost. Dont belive anyone who says otherwise.
your money is gone for good. file a police report. no one (including the scammers dming you) can recover your money. if police arrest the criminals and have physical access to their wallets, that’s your only chance
Just buy a IB1T my dude… Let someone else deal with security and go live your life
Sorry for your loss .. Next time use cold wallet … You can buy it or create your own with TailsOS
Sadly there are many free apps and such that on the surface look like a legit app but actually only exist to scan your photos and notes for seed phrases 🙁