>>510344991It's worse to lose it than never have it. I got sent a bitcoin in 2013 when it was around 600 euro for some web development work. The guy who sent it to me was adamant I set up my own wallet and I just forget about it for a while. I naively created a coinbase account and sent it over, thinking, well I have the option to sell it. Of course, due to greed I couldn't bring myself to sell it. Time goes by and I get an email from someone I knew that there was a new exchange which was giving $20 worth of Bitcoin bonus for those who signed up via referral. I thought, easy money. Signed up. I could even see my balance with this new Bitcoin.
A few weeks later, I woke up to a bunch of emails from coinbase, my wallet on there was emptied. What had happened was even though I used a different password for the exchanges they weren't all that different, imagine like you put "cb" for coinbase in there. The other exchange was a fake exchange, they collected the password in the clear and went on to other exchanges trying to guess your password.
Coinbase back then, there was no two factor. No ip whitelisting or even a fucking email confirmation for a second factor. So the money was gone. At the time, their customer support people were just replying with generic email templates, and I never got an answer. Asked someone in the know at coinbase and they were like they were flooded with customer support requests.
I decided a few years later, when they'd hired a team and all to try again. You know what they did? They just marked my ticket as "resolved" without any explanation, and when I tried to open a new one the form was more complicated, like regarding stolen coins they want stuff from law enforcement before they'll even look.
One thing I did look at from the transaction, was it wasn't a real bitcoin address it went to on chain, it was likely to another coinbase address too.
Now I think that's bad and but my friend lost 5 bitcoin in the blockfi bankruptacy (via FTX).