Having a bad day? Do not worry: There are people out there who are doing worse. Kerem Albayrak, a Turkish crypto enthusiast, will tell you all about it.
In his Reddit post, Albayrak recounted a misfortune which, according to his words, cost him $170,000 worth of Bitcoin. At some point in time, Albayrak decided to purchase “a new 27 inch iMac for our new office,” but received a lot of critiques which is why he opted for a Macbook instead. Then in an order which is not so clear-cut Albayrak went on a holiday, did some shopping, attended a supercar conference in London (because he is into cars). What is clear though that he had a bad feeling about the whole thing all along. And that he successfully managed to return the iMac to the store. That is when the peril struck.
“My wallet was newly transferred onto a Blockchain wallet created on the iMac after I had an incident with an offline wallet and got scared. I used auto generate password by apple with no iCloud to backup the keychain. When creating it i took a screenshot on the iMac of the recovery phrase which is also now gone,” Albayrak says.
In a panic, the investor called Apple support and even stood under the Apple store in search of a delivery truck with the iMac. However, an employee later informed him that it was formatted as it’s the standard return- refund procedure.
Tears, pain and sorrow conclude this post.
Just do it
Albayrak’s story is an unfriendly reminder of one overarching universal truth that a crypto trader needs to learn by heart:
USE a hard wallet!
Without a doubt, Albayrak’s story — regardless of whether it is fully authentic, slightly exaggerated or even made up — is painful to read, not only because you immediately feel the torture he is going through but also because just about anyone might accidentally become its protagonist. Carelessness, negligence, complacency and ignorance are usually the reason why.
Redditers were fast to lambast Albayrak for basically everything he did and/or considered doing. Indeed, he should not have taken screenshots of his passwords and store them on his Mac and smartphone. His regret about not transferring the information via iCloud is also wrong since it is simply unsafe.
The only right thing he should have done was to acquire “a hardware wallet and physical copies of backup seeds in at least two locations,” as barnz3000 rightly put it.
The same piece of advice is applicable to all crypto traders who trade online and use hot wallets. It is hardly a novelty that hackers fancy attacking exchanges. MyEtherwallet alone neutralizes 40 hacking attacks a week — more than banks listed in Fortune 500. Coincheck, Coinrail, Bithumb were all subject to malicious attacks that deprived crypto traders of millions of dollars. Some like Bithumb have reimbursed their customers but others, like BitGrail, are not so willing. Only those who stored their funds on hard wallets managed to stay on the safe side all along.
Thus, whether you are a Turkish car enthusiast with lots of crypto or a regular trader, make sure to do your research on what hard wallets are out there as well as take basic precautions to secure your funds by sharing less private information with others.
