Post
Topic
Board Wallet software
Merits 6 from 2 users
Re: I found a paper wallet on a beach ... seriously
by
Cricktor
on 19/08/2022, 17:29:29 UTC
⭐ Merited by o_e_l_e_o (4) ,Pmalek (2)
After much consideration, I have decided to do precisely nothing at all with the paper wallet, except to slip it inside the back cover of my favourite book 'Shantaram' by Gregory David Roberts.  There it will stay. I hope the original owner has the ability to remove their coins.
While I enjoyed the diverse discussion in this thread and your decission is up to you what you do, it's a disappointing outcome in my opinion.

Suppose the original owner still has a copy of the private key and thus is still able to move his coins. If he moved them for whatever reason when you check the next time, then fine, story and any moral issues are gone. But what if he doesn't see the urge to move the coins? As you don't publish the public address of the paperwallet, you make no effort to let the owner get aware of his loss. How does that make any later decission of yours to proceed in any way with the paperwallet more reasonable?

If the original owner doesn't have any details to prove his ownership unambigously, then it's almost a lost case for the owner, as I then don't see a way to distinguish pretenders from the original owner. The real owner could tell you the exact amount on the paperwallet and it would be good if the amount uses all 8 digits past the decimal separator. Pretenders could try to guess it based on what you disclosed about the amount (I guess more hits on 0.6BTC, but your 0.6104...ish, might actually reduce possible unspent transaction outputs considerably if 0.6104xxxx are correct). How do you want to separate pretenders from the real owner then?

I get ~120 unspent transaction outputs in the range of [0.61040000, 0.61049999] with the following filtered search request:
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/outputs?s=time(desc)&q=value(61040000..61049999),is_spent(false)#f=transaction_hash,index,time,value,value_usd,recipient,spending_transaction_hash,spending_time,spending_value_usd,is_spendable,is_spent


How much for the book, I love it!  Grin
Nice try!  Cool