Explaining Bitcoin, blockchain, digital security, and more for anyone that wants to learn!
Josh is a software engineer with a passion for technology and teaching others. With chaintuts.com, he is creating articles, videos, and code projects that break down core concepts around Bitcoin, blockchain, digital security, and more.
I just got scammed by a recovery site call Rettieventron . For $850 the last of my. Bitcoin They said I need to purchase software for them to use to hack the scammers wallet . The. They said the software did not work . They needed $1000 more for better software . Then they just took off and left me broke . This site is %10000 a scam site !!
I am a victim of a Bitcoin market scam; The investment capital was $15,000 dollars and the total winnings in Buy and Sell times were up to $260,000 dollars.. but in the end I didn't get any money back.. can you help me to get it back..😢
Unfortunately, I can't. The platform was entirely fake, and since Bitcoin transactions are irreversible, there's no way that myself or anyone else can retrieve the coins from the scammer's wallet address. Be very wary of anyone claiming they can, because recovery scams are very common and many people fall victim twice. You'll have to take the loss, sadly, as there's no way to reverse Bitcoin transactions.
I don't believe there currently is. There used to be a sort of workaround working with a miner but I believe that is no longer true. In all likelihood, that BCH is lost unfortunately.
There appears to be some information in this Reddit thread, but I haven't vetted this. Just be very careful as recovery scams that steal coins are extremely common in the crypto space. old.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/1bh3fsq/assistance_with_segwit_recovery_of_bch/
I’m trying to brute force my wallet. I lost keys and I remember some of them. Is there a way to calculate how many passwords I would have to check based on amount of words I remember. Let’s say 7 out of 12 words.
Hrm, it seems it's pretty hard to do depending on the number of missing words. Each word adds about 11 bits of information you'd have to brute force, so above 2-3 words is going to be very difficult and resource intensive. This Bitcoin Stack Exchange thread has some information: bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/65476/difficulty-of-brute-forcing-a-seed-with-missing-words
Thank you!! I used to, but it was only 1 or 2 people. I may reopen it in the future or re-add crypto addresses to my website if there's interest. Appreciate you watching the channel :)
@@chaintuts I'm a somewhat noob so am always looking for good educational content and you explain things succinctly and clearly. I'll look on your website for a donation address
Firstly thank you for the tutorial. 👍 Secondly, I have followed your tutorial and wanted to ask what would be a cause for the electron cash wallet show a balance as 0 BCH after importing the private keys?
I would double check and make sure you have the right keys. Usually that means you're importing the wrong private key or seed phrase for the wallet. For example, you've accidentally imported a key from the sending wallet, not the receiving wallet. For example if you sent from Exodus to Ledger, you have to have the Ledger seed/keys for this to work. A lot of people mistakenly grab the Exodus seed but it won't help at all in that case.
@@chaintuts Thank you for taking time to respond. For context: I sent BCH from an exchange to my ledgers BTC account roughly 1 year ago and only noticed the mistake a few days ago. Actions: opened BIP39, input the ledger 24 word seed phrase, changed from BIP44 to BIP89 as per the ledgers BTC address, located the corresponding transaction and BTC wallet address, copied the private keys from BIP39 into the Electroncash app exactly as shown in your video. Once complete the electroncash account shows a zero balance against that private key. Have I missed something?
Hrm, I'm really not sure about that one. One next step you might try is to import that key into a different wallet that takes private keys such as Coinomi. What's the address start with? 1, 3, or bc1?
Unfortunately in that case, you probably can't recover. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) doesn't have compatibility with native segwit addresses (bc1) or segwit addresses (3). 3 addresses are still considered "valid" by the BCH network because they are used for multisignature addresses, which are different "under the hood" than segwit. I'm not sure why sending to a bc1 address even worked on the BCH network. But either way, sadly, there's not currently a way to recover coins sent to segwit addresses on BCH.
Thank you so much. I started on discord and this person is trying hard to get me to transfer money to account. It is like you are saying, "the person has tried many times to get me to transfer money from my account to another account".
It only matters sometimes...SHA-256 and RIPEMD (hashing functions involved in Bitcoin) aren't any more vulnerable to quantum. So for an address that hasn't been spent from, the crack time would be the same. For addresses where the pubkey is revealed, ECDSA is somewhat vulnerable to quantum. Hence the push for Schnorr signatures and other signature algorithms :) Very interesting stuff.
I haven't heard of them so I can't really say. I do some work with a nonprofit organization called the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4) that offers several professional certs on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Security Auditing. I can attest to their stuff being high quality. Full disclosure, I work on the CryptoCurrency Essentials Committee (CCE) as a volunteer.
Hi LK, yes this should work in reverse, especially since BTC supports legacy 1 addresses that BCH uses. In order to recover, you must have the private key/seed for the *receiving* wallet, not the sender. So if you sent from Coinbase Wallet to Exodus (etc.) that has a seed, you can try these steps. If you sent to an exchange wallet, unfortunately you're out of luck. I do some consulting for possible cases for a fee. You can use my contact form here if you'd like to discuss: chaintuts.com/private-tutoring-consulting/index.html
The only thing you can do now is stop giving them any more money (they'll ask you for "taxes", etc.), block any accounts associated with the scam (your "investment manager" that may have started this), and report this to the police with as much information as you can. There's no way to get the money you've already lost back, unfortunately.
@@chaintuts Thank you for the advice, I blocked them and wrote it off as a loss. I need to trust my gut because all the red flags were there I just chose to ignore them.
Hello i watched your old video on how I to recover your bitcoin cash sent to your bitcoin wallet by mistake. I followed every procedure and after pasting my private keys on my electronic cash wallet my money didn’t reflect it kept showing 0.0000BCH. I don’t know if I did anything wrong but I believe I followed everything step but end up not working. Can you please tell me why it’s not working and how I can get my money back?
They have every excuse in the book to try tricking me both on Facebook and Instagram. It's how the conversations start that gives their illegal conduct away. Usually if they start off with something like "Hello, how are you doing today?" I already know it's fake because most people will say your name if they start off with hello. Like "Hello Josh how are you? vs Hello how are you (meaning I don't know your name) etc. Another one is just straight up starting a conversation with a person by saying "Can you please vote for me?" Or "Hey can you do me a favor? Can you tell me your phone number so I can log back into my account and tell me what the reset link code is?" Like these people really think they're gonna trick me into taking over my page. They try so hard to do it too. I tell them bogus names and then if I don't respond they ask me if I got their link or not. One story I gave the most recent one was that I had a girlfriend who would send him/her the scam link. I told them her name is Jenny and her phone number was 555-867-5309. The dumb *** actually believed me. Like they act like we are gullible but then we turn around and return their stupidity ten fold without them being "smart" enough to know they're being played 😂😂
Thanks for the comment RJ! It's true, they try all sorts of stories. Sometimes it is fun to waste their time and see how they operate. Helps prevent more victims and educate others.
Another great video Josh. It is unfortunate that so many people just don't realize how critical some pieces of information are, like a 2FA code, a password reset link, or a crypto wallet seed phrase. I'm not really faulting them because, if you are not at least somewhat of a tech person or haven't taken the time to learn about them, some of these things can be very foreign concepts. I worked with a guy yesterday who was newer in crypto. He had an issue with his wallet. Someone convinced him to put his seed phrase into a wallet confirmation site or something. Then his wallet was empty. Luckily, he only lost something like $22. I hate seeing those things happen to people, so I do my best to try to help people understand to never share information like that.
Thanks Daniel! It's very true. People are so much easier to break than systems...especially if a person is unfamiliar with hoe an account is secured. We are all vulnerable.
Sad but not unsurprising. High follower accounts are often targeted for takeover so scammers can use them. In fact, the UFC RU-vid account was recently used to promote a giveaway scam.
Sorry to hear that, a b. If you're willing to, can you tell me/us what happened? Will be good for other cryptocurrency users to learn more about how these scams operate.
Sorry there must be a mis-translation, as I cannot make sense of your question. As far as I know, Cipherblade is a good company. Rich Sanders, one of their investigators, is a colleague of mine from Pittsburgh. They do blockchain analysis and help file legal paperwork. Their services are expensive and there is no guarantee of recovery.
I am not able to help you - there's no technical means to reverse a Bitcoin transaction. Is this 230,000 US dollars? If that's the case, it may be helpful to contact CipherBlade or CipherTrace for legal counsel. It's expensive and time consuming. There's not technical way to get money back from a scammer. But sometimes, the police can seize coins from exchanges if the scammers move the coins there. You absolutely need to file a police report.
Hi I lost money to an online trading platform scammer who keep asking me deposit the withdrawal pin fee in order to take me profit. So any possible ways to actual recover instead of falling to another scam?
Unfortunately, no. Cryptocurrency transactions are not reversible. In 99% of cases, the money is gone forever. You *absolutely* should report this to the police. If you lost above $100,000 USD, you may wish to consider working with a blockchain analysis firm like CipherBlade. Anything less than that and it's not worth the significant cost of working with a PI + police.
They are both fake. Pretty much any "recovery" service that claims they can reverse transactions through some technical means is a SCAM. The only legitimate recourse you have is to contact the police. There are 2 PI firms I know of, CipherBlade and CipherTrace, that provide legal assistance to the police (reports of where the coins went, such as exchanges). That's it. There's no way to "hack" back lost coins, and pretty much every recovery service is a scam.
Awesome video! Thanks for that good explanation. Let me know if you'd ever want to discuss NFTs and how they can relate to cars/ trucks, it's be fun to chat!
There is no way to recover the coins in this case - the money is lost. Binance is a custodial exchange - they don't give users access to the private keys and they generally don't help people recover coins sent to the wrong address. This is for security reasons, as no individual support agent would have access to the keys needed. I am sorry I cannot help you recover your lost coins, but I hope you have a good day otherwise and learn from this experience.
Hey, hello, Chaintutes, I'm new to crypto, and I believe I'm being scammed because I can not withdraw my money from a platform because they are asking for me to pay them income tax before I can withdraw. Is this true, and if so, is this normal?
This is 100% a scam. Most fake trading scams operate this way. The money you've already sent them is *gone*, there's no getting it back. DO NOT send them any more money no matter what they say. File a police report.
Sorry, that doesn't make sense. IP addresses have nothing to do with key generation. They may be using other methods to *steal* keys off of insecure devices - which is why you should never store a seed in plaintext on a PC or mobile phone. This wouldn't be a brute force attack though (which is trying to guess all possible keys), this would be another class of exploit.
It looks like it to me. I've never heard of them, they claim to have multiple locations (which is highly unlikely, this is a very niche area of expertise). The only two LEGITIMATE companies I am aware of is CipherBlade (I know the founders) and CipherTrace. I would be very suspicious of anyone else at this time, especially if they claim to work with small-value cases (below around $50,000 USD) or have any "guarantee" of recovery.
