Bitcoin
all things BTC , Ordinals, and Runes
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lore of the day ā the story of my million dollar bitcoin transaction
it started with a frantic text
bitcoin had been descending from its all time high, and a friend who bought 25 BTC several years before wants me to help him retrieve his assets
if they drop too low his impending retirement will be ruined
back in 2016 he was given a chance to buy casascius physical bitcoin. he was already an avid collector of other expensive itemsāhigh end comics and magic cards mostlyāand it would be an interesting addition
but now, the coins are still cold, and he canāt handle the rollercoaster ride anymore. thereās a lot at stake and he needs control over his funds
the main problem is that he has never used the blockchain before. he has no wallet and a very old laptop that iām not sure will even do the job
he doesnāt feel like he can safely tackle this on his own, and i donāt blame him. he hasnāt slept in days, and wants to cash out right now!
so he drives 3 hours to my house, and we get started
first, i want to onboard him to the blockchain safely, with a spare ledger nano i had on hand for such occasions. so we set this up on his laptop and it all seems fine
next, itās time to import the private keys from the physical bitcoin
i thought there were 25 single coins to import, but no, he pulls out one coin with all 25 bitcoin on it!
this means that if i screw this up i will be losing the full 25 bitcoin and he will have to delay his retirement until he can find that much money again
next problem. ledger wonāt import private keys (only seed phrases) so we had to find an additional software wallet, and i had no experience hereāi was an ETH user only
someone who seemed like an expert recommended one, so to be as safe as possible (for a hot wallet) we wipe an iphone and set it up there, keeping the phone offline unless needed
i have zero experience with bitcoin wallets so it took a minute to learn, but we did a bunch of test transactions, and were finally ready to peel the coin and put in the private key. a huge moment
except noāthe key was invalid!!
was it a fake, all this time? or already redeemed? there should have been over a million dollars on it!
i refused to believe the worst, and felt i had to remain stoic so my friend didnāt have a heart attack, so i quickly googled to see what the issue might be
apparently casascius bitcoin uses a shorter code that is incompatible with normal walletsāa mini key. what a relief! sort of. did this mean we couldnāt get access? was this obsolete technology already? were we still screwed?
okay, time to check youtube. you can learn anything on youtube, right?
honestly, i was shocked my friend hadnāt done this years ago. he would have learned how to check the balance of the coin without peeling it, and perhaps avoided some stress and panic
upon further investigation it seemed the easiest way for us to get access to the bitcoin was to use an older software wallet that could still decipher the mini key. electrum. a wallet apparently notorious for phishing scamsā¦ not by the creator, but by imitators. could this be because the app looks like it was made in 1990, thereby making it incredibly easy to create a perfect replica with zero design skills?
either way, we had a million dollars to rescue and we had to make it as low risk as possible
we ask around and get verification that the download link for the app is safe, wipe my computer to be extra careful, hook it up to wired internet, install the app, then go offline
iām being incredibly paranoid but i just canāt handle the idea of losing my friends coins
it seems we might be ready though. at this point we still donāt actually know the balance of this coin. this single coin my friendās imminent retirement depends on
i read the tiny code and type it into electrum, reconnect to the internet, and hit enter
success!!!!!!!!!! 25 bitcoin!!!! itās all there, and i wasnāt literally shaking but i did almost cry
but we werenāt done
we didnāt feel great about sending a transfer from this weird and untested app, so i click to reveal the full length private key and disconnect from the internet again
itās highly unlikely the laptop would be compromised, but to be safe, i quickly import the new private key to the wallet on the burner phone, and transfer out the $1.1 million in BTC to my friendās exchange account
if it wasnāt so late we may have done another test, or broken the bitcoin into smaller transactions, but my friend was absolutely done so we full sent the 25 BTC all at once
i thought increasing the gas fee by 5x would mean a fast transaction but it was a very high traffic trading day and the transfer felt like it took forever. i assured my friend that this was normal but i honestly had no clue
after the longest minutes of my lifeā¦ all was finally well. the assets were secured
while it turned out to be wise to cash out that day and secure my friendās retirement plans, that bitcoin would be worth about 3x now
itās a good thing i sent some of it to his new cold wallet to be saved for another day 36 replies
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