That is true, Bitcoin address doesn't have names attached to it. So before they know the individual, the person might have reach to Foundry first or as what they say on their Tweets, there are a lot who told them about it.

So after the individual has gotten hold of them, the next thing is to verify the address, sign it just like what we do here to prove ownership of the address. After checking and doing their due diligence, then that's the time they have refunded it to the person thru his Bitcoin address.

Based on the second article you referenced a signed and verified message will be the best means to prove ownership of the wallet. But in this case the wallet was already compromised by hackers so Antpool requested for other means to verify the real owner. The owner might have to sacrifice his privacy to prove that he is the owner.

It is possible. Their contacts are publicly known, so it is possible that the person in question contacted them personally, besides, they mentioned that they received numerous messages from across the industry on behalf of the user.

Anyway, its a nice gesture from the Antpool. They could have simply kept the money and distributed it to the miners and no one would have held anything against them because thats their right.

Well done Foundry. This isn't happening anyday and if there's a pool that was able to take it, they'd just play it out as if that's part of how it goes in mining.

There are various ways of proving the ownership of the guy who wrongly sent 8.18 BTC and everyone knows that. Foundry have verified the rightful owner and able to return it, that's already done.

Everyone is happy. Happy new year!

I think the company probably identified the individual through direct contact or external clues linking the wallet address to a person. While bitcoin addresses are pseudonymous, they're not entirely anonymous, especially if someone has publicly associated themselves with an address or reached out to the company.

I assume he  is not novice in bitcoin, thus  wonder how could this happen with him.

His transaction includes OP_Return message ^{with data which are probably of great importance for him}. Does this fact effected the wallet ^{he used} so that it sent the rest to miners rather than to change address? AFAIK, not all wallets allow to use OP_Return in transaction's outputs. There is probability that he constructed the given trx manually and slipped  a cog ^{but I don't credit to this assuming he is experienced user}.

My point exactly, I was curious to know just how come they claimed to have been in touch since, this might have come from a non custodian address obviously. Third party wallets or exchanges wouldn’t allow for such a flaw as the fees are automated based on the network congestion at the time of initiation.

Haven’t gone through the entire publication from Foundry, it’s of note that, they were reached out to by well meaning individuals over the web and possibly people who knows the individual in person. How would they know?The individual possibly would have raised complaints to friends and family.
Good thing is, the user has them excess fees refunded and that’s what we hope to here in cryptos.

I'm not sure of how foundry had managed to contact the victim here, but since it was a massive issue that caught so many attention in the community, you should expect a swift solution. And of course, the victim might have definitely been told to provide evidence like wallet related details. I had even forgotten about the whole thing until I saw this thread. Not sure of how someone could make such a mistake, but I'm really glad the community helped out, and he got his Bitcoin back. We might see something like this again because no one is above mistakes (even though there are somethings that are not meant to be a mistake).


That's just it. What he had as an evidence might have done the talking. And of course, being able to get back 8 BTC, he is probably among the luckiest people in the last month of the just concluded year.

Thank you Foundry! That is why I invest in Bitcoin. The miners and devs are honorable people.




Simple human error, probably a typo. Could be as simple as placing a decimal point or comma in the wrong place.