In October of 2014 I bought .1 BTC, which is now worth around $1,000. Back then it was around $35. I used it to see if I could buy something on the dark web market place. Not because I wanted to buy slave children, but because I wanted to see if this new currency would work.
In 2014, I bought BTC off Coinbase. I transferred the money from Coinbase to a paper wallet and then transferred it into one of the dark web market place websites. Then I lost the password to the website and lost all my BTC. I don’t even remember what website I used.
Is there a way I can still find this money? From what I understand about blockchain technology, there should be a record of where my money went. I can can see where I sent it to from Coinbase, but I should theoretically be able to find out where my money went after I transferred it into the paper wallet and to which market place website I sent the money.
Figuring out my password and user name to the website would be trickier, if that is even possible. Anyone have any suggestions? Is this money lost for good?
I think someone asked a similar question not too long ago. If you transferred your coins to some website, that is as though you mailed them a $1000 bill. That is, they have it, not you.
Bitcoins being completely traceable, it is possible to find out where you sent them. Easy, in fact, if you still have the paper wallet. The “wallet” should just be a printout of a (no-longer-)secret key. Given this, you can calculate the corresponding public key, and then input that address into one of the transaction browsers like blockchain.info. It will show you what happened to it. Then Google for the address where you sent them; hopefully it was not a one-time-use address.
As DPRK said all you can do is search for that receiving address and hope that somewhere on the internet that address is displayed on the website that you’re trying to identify or otherwise somehow linked to it. The chances of that being the case are very low. (actually zero because I just tried and it isn’t)
Remembering the website and figuring out your name and password are pretty much the only hope.
That address doesn’t still have your money, and unfortunately if that address was not publicly announced (which appears to be the case), the next resort would be some big-data mining of the entire transaction history until you do hit an identifiable one and work backwards, which is not a trivial task (unless you’re the FBI or NSA).
A websites not a bank and most would have term and conditions for claiming abandoned funds left there for a number of years. I believe your money may be gone even if your able to recall the website and password.
And of course, if the company you transferred your bitcoins to was a Dark Web marketplace, the odds are substantial that whatever they said in their terms and conditions was just plain a lie anyway, and that they never had any intention of giving anyone back anything, no matter how or when they asked.
won’t help any now … but, you may consider using password-manager … they manage not only passwords but also url’s and other crucial data. choose one that is not dependent upon any certain browser (i.e. a self-sustained program on your device) … and, make sure you d/l it from the developer’s website; instead of some crackpot warehouse such as cnet or others.
What’s silly is that I intentionally did not use a password manager or write down my password so that there wouldn’t be a record of me visiting the website. You have to understand that in 2014 I was using only $35 and did not care what happened to it.