Hi,

For the sake of anonymity I am going to be creating this post as a new user on both Reddit and Medium. I have been keeping my eyes on Crypto for a number of years and have decided to “invest” in Crypto around 2 months ago for the following reasons:

1) I believe in Crypto as a solution to solve many problems in the world which FIAT currency causes.

2) I wanted to make an extra bit of cash to treat my family.

I started off with cash deposit of $ 14000 for 5 BTC, due to the lack of supply in my country I paid a bit more than it was worth at the time.

I started trading on Bittrex and joined some really great telegram groups and made a lot of good friends whom I chat to frequently and share some technical analysis advice on certain coins etc.

I was having the time of my life, talking to like minded people, learning how to tell the difference between alt coins that have potential and what they call “shit-coins”. Learning how Whales create fake sell walls to drop the price etc etc.

On Saturday morning on the 12th of August 2017 I had a look at my Bittrex balance and it showed 6.7 which meant I made 1.7 BTC Profit! I was on top of the moon.

I “decided” that it’s risky to keep all my coins on the exchange and withdrew my original 5 into my BTC Wallet, I waited for the Wallet to show the status as “paid” and immediately locked my PC and went to bed.

I woke up later on Saturday morning excited to see the price movements that has happened since I’ve been asleep, only to notice that my wallet was empty.

I started immediately shaking, sweating and having a panic attack. “Calm down!” I told myself, I could barely move my mouse to the right places as my hands were shaking so much. My mind was racing, trying to calculate how much of what I lost was original starting capital and how much was profits, only to realize that obviously it’s going to be mostly starting capital because I only have 1.7 BTC left.

BTC IN BTC OUT

I remembered that the only way someone could get into my wallet was to have my “seed” which was a bunch of words generated by Electrum (the wallet of my choice). I remember storing half of it on Evernote and the other half in a folder on my C: on a virtual machine that I created which nobody had access to.

I quickly logged into Evernote and looked for place where I could find some sort of log in list of access history and lo and behold there it was! Someone from Germany accessed my Evernote at around 4AM (around the same time that my incoming transaction was confirmed)

“Okay he has half my seed, so what?!? how did he get the other half?”, I asked myself quickly whilst scrolling through various notes on my Evernote notebook, only to notice that I had stored the IP to my VM on my Evernote too. “Okay so he has half my seed, and the IP to my VM, how does he know my log in…. unless it’s… the same as my Evernote!” I thought to myself. I quickly remoted into my VM only to see that the username and password is the same as my Evernote credentials.

I didn’t know who to be more angry at, the guy who stole my coins or myself for being such an IDIOT?!?

Here is my original wallet address:

Here is the thief’s wallet address:

My BTC eventually ends up here:

Here are the mistakes I made:

1) Not using a hardware wallet

2) Storing my seed electronically (Not writing down my seed on a physical piece of paper)

3) Not using 2FA on Evernote

3) Not using a hardware wallet

4) Storing my VM’s IP address on Evernote

5) Storing my seed electronically (Not writing down my seed on a physical piece of paper)

6) Using the same username and password on my VM and Evernote.

7) Not using a hardware wallet

8) Storing my seed electronically (Not writing down my seed on a physical piece of paper)

Anyway, after realizing this loss I was dumbstruck for the whole of Saturday morning. Getting hot flushes, not being able to do anything. I took a Xanax and went to sleep and found that I couldn’t wake up to face reality, I just didn’t want to. Everytime I woke up it felt like too much effort to even check my phone so I’d just fall back asleep again hoping it was all a dream. I slept for basically 24 hours with maybe 2–3 30 minute awake sessions.

I don’t know if any of you have ever had an experience like this but it feels as if someone took a massive run up and then kicked me in the balls as hard as he could. You know when you were a kid and would sometimes get an erection in school? I have a permanent derection after this incident.

If I had to come across someone else’s private key, I would transfer all their bitcoin to a safe place and try to get hold of them so that they can get it back to a new wallet at least.

My advice to everybody trading and investing in Crypto:

1) Don’t store your private key electronically!

2) User a Hardware wallet (Trezor or Ledger Nano S)

3) Don’t use the same passwords everywhere

Anyway the main purpose of this post is to

1) Share my experience with everyone

2) Try to recuperate as much as I can

Now that I’ve shared my experience with everyone, all I have to do is come up with a plan to get my BTC back. I’m going to turn my 1.7 BTC to 5 BTC by December 2017. Stay tuned for this Post, it’s going to be epic!

P.S. I’ve removed my link for donations as it is destroying the credibility of my post. Be Safe Everyone!