If there is no formal complaint by anyone to the authority about his missing wallet and it get to you and you get access to the account then it yours,  you don't have to feel bad about it, it's just your lucky day, withdraw and enjoy,  if not you someone else would've done the same. If its a stolen wallet or through Fraud then it's illegal to posse things that's not yours legally.

Have seen case where a mum gave her late child bitcoin wallet phrase to her lover as gift, and he using thr fund to look after the lady, anyone can happen.  If am to be in that situation I'll wait for days before I'll withdraw the funds just incase I find the own of the wallet.  Taking things that us not yours is not a good character.  I know his fancy, it can't happen,  we can only speculate.

But if we're to stick with reality, we all know that it's difficult to tell whether the owner is dead or alive. A person's wallet doesn't tell much about the actual owner... It might be dormant, but that doesn't mean it has been lost. And, I'm of the opinion that such a wallet shouldn't be touched at all. It's not in our place to do charity work with someone else's money. If you're to make donations to charity, and the true owner or next of kin eventually figures it out, you should be expecting a crazy lawsuit.

Just like I said before, it is better not to put the law to test because the law can bite harder than we ever imagined. Anything that wasn't legally or willingly given to us is definitely not ours.

Ethically speaking; taking someone else's Bitcoin wallet which one has no right to; is unethical, and I consider it; fundamentally as a crime. From a legal standpoint; while I am not entirely familiar with the laws in other countries, but in my own country; taking someone else's wallet is illegal, and falls under the provisions of the Law on Electronic Information and Transactions. So, I think in other countries it might be similar.

By the way, I am not convinced there is a scenario; that would allow someone to easily guess another person's phrase or key of the wallet; if such a scenario were to exist, I am certain it would require highly super advanced computational capabilities.

I don’t think the person broke any law. You are free to make guesses and if it turns out that your guess brought up a wallet that has assets in it, it’s not your fault. All you have to do is delete the guessed words that brought up the wallet, because it is not your own. This is just the right thing to do on a normal basis.

Such person is not allowed to tamper with with the asset found in the wallet, it is not his own.


I think this is exempted, the owner of the bitcoin didn’t drop the seed phrase carelessly. He went about guessing phrases, which he were not supposed to do. Since it was a deliberate attempt from that person to guess phrases of wallets that might have assets, it will be considered stealing if he claims those bitcoins.

How would he know if the owner of the bitcoin is dead? Since there are no facts stating that the owner is dead, the bitcoin doesn’t belong to him. Even if the owner is dead, the bitcoins are not his. Touching it will make you a criminal.

He is not in any danger if he can move the coins around without taking it to centralized exchange. Because you can’t trace him, the owner know nothing about the person. I don’t even consider it as a jackpot, because he is stealing and hurting someone else. Hitting a jackpot doesn’t have to be stealing from someone else.

It's stealing money of other people and certainly it's illegal but we can not know about people who do that.

If they could find Bitcoin private keys of other people and stole bitcoins, they are very technical and will surely know how to move stolen coins, cash them out without getting caught by governments and victims.

Like big hacks in cryptocurrency industry with allegation goes to Lazarus hacker group, exchanges, companies and individual victims have yet not been able to get their lost coins back. It's impossible.

With blockchains especially Bitcoin blockchain, coins stolen are likely lost forever and chance of identifying hackers, and arresting them is not too high.

Exactly, police are not the same everywhere, but one thing I am 100% sure of is that there are at least a few policemen in every station all around the world who are notorious and involved in dubious things, but their percentage is higher here, so that's why I would never go to the police.

Because crypto was not legal for so long here, and before 2026, if someone lost crypto to fraudsters, the police would first ask why you are involved in an activity that is not legal, and then they would scare the shit out of you unless you give them something. I have heard several kinds of cases coming from Nigeria too.

There's no such a thing like a guess work in this situation. No one get's access to a private key or seed phrase by guessing.

I have read a post in the legal board where someone proposed anyone can claim ownership of bitcoin that has stayed for decade without activities. He cited one controversial situation where abandoned property without owner eventually gets a new owner.

This example is better because it said one already guessed the key.

To me, guessing the key of such fund and using it; is like someone erroneously sending coins to your address and you refuse to return it.

Just because you were somehow able to access my coins doesn't automatically make them your own, stealing is stealing however way you want to phrase it, the question should be about whether you will be able to get away with it than whether it's a crime to take the coin.
Right now I'm imagining that my lock has a fault, and someone uses the wrong key to try and open it and it worked, that doesn't automatically make everything in my house their own, it's still counts as breaking in as long as I didn't give you the keys or didn't give your permission to enter.
Sure it will be more difficult to make a case with crypto but it's still the same principle, just because you were able to luck in on someone else's wealth doesn't make it yours.

Basically that large of amount it could survive me in my entire life, but of course if ever this happen I will secure first the basic needs for me and my family or even in the future like having a land, house, and all of the things needed in a day to day basis to survive and next is of course like we have right now investment in crypto, seek other way to earn beside from crypto such as an investments, that create a good cashflow to my wallet. But we know basically that there is small percentage only right now most of the people preferred being secured with their wallets.

Honestly, I wouldn't touch the coins immediately. First thing I'd do is make sure the private key is actually valid and find out what the legal situation is. A wallet holding $1B+ BTC is not something I'd casually move around lol.