A brand new scam has been shut down in seconds by the bitcoin community. A new, anonymous account on Bitcoin forum bitcointalk attempted to buy old wallet addresses from long-standing bitcoin users. The original post has now been deleted, but can be viewed on an archive site here. Another thread is still active at the time of writing, under a new name. In the original thread, the user ‘walletbuyer’ wrote:

I am paying $5000 USD for old mining wallets that mined BTC. Requirements are:

1) Mined coins between 2008 and 2010 inclusive.

2) Mined at least 300 BTC.

3) Formats accepted are wallet.dat (core) or raw private keys.

4) Your wallet and/or private key addresses must have 0 BTC in them now. You can never use them again.

5) Buying up to 3 wallets that meet the criteria above.

You will have to sign a message(s) as proof. I will then send half the BTC and the other half on receipt and verification of the wallet or private key(s). Or we use an escrow.

I am aware of various 0days such as the Winrar exploit, please don’t waste each other’s time if you’re a scammer. I’m not an easy mark.

Email me at WalletBuyer _AT_ cock.li or PM here. Can use PGP.

Bitcointalk users were swift to link the user to Craig ‘Faketoshi’ Wright, who has recently ragequit Twitter and deleted all his tweets. The use of an old email address appears to have tipped someone off. Bitcointalk immediately called CSW on his new scam, and moderators deleted the thread – though not before some choice insults were hurled.

The thinking goes that Wright is interested in buying old wallets because it would allow him to sign messages from early-adopter addresses, adding weight to his claim that he is Satoshi – something he has never proved, despite stating it many times, and despite the ease with which the real Satoshi could establish his identity. Unfortunately for him, he was not as smart as he thought, and his digital footprint led forum users straight back to him, shutting down the plan in record time.

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