How did SCAMMERS steal $284 MILLION from someone last week?

How did scammers steal $284 million of crypto from someone last week? I'll walk you through it. But the big news is you don't have to worry about that because if you're doing what I tell you to do, then you are not susceptible to any of the types of attacks that people who lose this kind of money are getting uh getting scammed by. If you use a bit key, bit ke uh website bitkey.world bit ke.w. If you use a Bitkey, you are not susceptible to these type of attacks and scams. So, you can rest uh with peace of mind and sleep well at night. But not everybody's using Bitkey, including this very, you know, not quite bright person who lost $284 million. So, what were they using? They were using a traditional hardware wallet, probably a ledger. It could have been a Treor or something else, but probably a ledger. Um, and so they had this hardware wallet and the scammers I it has the details have not been released, but uh it was a scam that I can tell is similar to the other scams they do. So I'm going to tell you what scammers historically have done in this situation and almost certainly in this case that the scammers actually did the same thing and trick the person the same way because generally these scams work the same way. Okay. So, a problem with Ledger and Treasure and Cold Card and all the other uh hardware wallets other than BitKey is they have something called a seed phrase. And back in the day, a seed phrase was actually a valuable tool until they came up with technology like BitKey. But Bit Bit Key made the need for a seed phrase obsolete. And so, uh you don't need a seed phrase anymore. And there's a massive downside with a seed phrase, which is if hackers or scammers get their hands on it, they can take all of your Bitcoin, which again, you don't have to worry about that because if you're using River or Coinbase, they don't let you ever see the seed phrase. And if you're using Bit Key, it doesn't even have a seed phrase. Uh, in fact, Coinbase and River don't have seed phrases either because they use uh directly private keys just like Bit Key does. So, um, if you're using all of the services I recommend, this will never happen to you. But anyway, so I'm going to give you the hypothetical scenario here of almost certainly what happened. So, this guy's sitting there and he gets an email or a text message or a phone call saying, "Hey, you know, we are from Ledger, the company, and it looks like your device, you know, may have a glitch or a bug or may have been compromised, but you need to reach out to our technical support service, and we will help you upgrade your device. and then we will uh you know you'll be safe and secure again. Now of course these people are hackers and scammers and they plan to steal this guy bit this guy's bitcoin which they were ultimately successful in doing. So this guy receives this email or text message or phone call probably an email and thinks oo I have a ledger um you know if there's some security vulnerability on my ledger I should be worried about it and so he does whatever the email tells him to do. So commonly what the hackers or scammers will tell you to do is they will try to get you to move the Bitcoin to a different ledger device that they know the uh the seed phrase on. Typically the way they'll do this or or a mobile app. They usually use the trust app trust which is like a crypto wallet like software wallet uh that you can have like on an app on your phone but it has a seed phrase. So uh what they do is they reach out. Typically, they do this live on the phone because it's hard to get somebody to follow these steps unless uh a human is guiding them through the process. So, a scammer reaches out by phone pretending to be technical support from Ledger and they say, "Hey, sorry about this. Your funds, we just don't want you to lose all your money, you know, and so what what we're going to need you to do is we will move the Bitcoin from your Ledger device to the Trust Wallet on your phone, and then we will uh restore that uh bitcoin to the the ledger device after we update the software to make it secure or something like that. Now, and here's the important part. What they do next is so the guy downloads the trust wallet and instead of creating a new wallet, which is what he should have done, well, what he should have done is not be using any of this, he should have been using bit. Um, but if he was going to use the trust wallet, he should have generated a new wallet where only he knew the seed phrase. But of course, that's not what the scammers want because then they can't steal his Bitcoin. So, inevitably, what they do is they say, "Hey, we're going to give you a seed phrase, a super secure seed phrase to put in the Trust Wallet, and then you can move your funds over to the Trust Wallet, and then they'll be all secure while we update your Ledger device." Now, of course, if a hacker or a scammer knows a seed phrase, they have access to all the Bitcoin that is stored on that device that has that seed phrase, which is why you should never ever ever ever give somebody a seed phrase. And you're never going to because none of the services I recommend even let you do that. So, I have saved you from the ability to screw this up by never recommending any products or services that would even allow you to screw it up. So, I'm not going to give you a defective product that lets you screw it up, and I'm not going to recommend products that let you screw it up. But again, a lot of people are out there recommending Ledger and Treasor and Cold Card, uh, not realizing that people screw this up a lot, and it's a huge problem. Okay, so the guy sitting there on the phone with tech support, he follows orders and he enters this the 12word seed phrase into the trust wallet and you know everything looks fine. Then he moves his Bitcoin over to the trust wallet and the moment it pops up on his trust wallet, boom, he sees that a transaction has been initiated to move it to a different address because as soon as he moves that bitcoin to the trust wallet again, that trust wallet now has the seed phrase that the hackers already know, which means they have access to that wallet just like he has access to that wallet. And boom, he loses all of his Bitcoin. Now, that's probably the way they did it. And then obviously they're not going to follow through and pretend to update his ledger because there's no point at that point. They've stolen all his funds. They hang up the phone, it's over, and they go party. Uh the last time this happened was also for just about $283 million. So two different people have had been scammed in the last year for almost the exact same amount of money. Uh the first time it happened, they used a compromised Google account to compromise his Gemini account and they sent all $283 million straight from Gemini all through all sorts of Bitcoin mixers and stuff like this to try to, you know, cover their tracks. Um but anyway, the the the team that did that, they all got caught. But before they got caught, they spent like six months partying. I mean, blowing they were blowing like $500,000 a night in nightclubs. I mean, just ridiculous. They'd walk into a nightclub with hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend, do all the VIP stuff. Anyway, they were just blowing this guy's money, and ultimately they I think they burned through most of it or all of it uh before they got caught. Uh but anyway, in that case, uh uh it was a Gemini account, and the Gemini account got compromised and uh because he gave them the hackers his, you know, username, password, and two-factor authentication and they stole all his Bitcoin. So, in this case, um, again, it was a hardware wallet, uh, probably using a seed phrase, probably using something like the Trust app, which again why I don't recommend any of that stuff, uh, because you can screw it up that way, and I would not recommend anything you can screw up that way. Um, there's more sophisticated attacks. Also, um, they could have told him he needs to enter his seed phrase on a makebelieve website like ledgerpro.com. The actual le Ledger website is ledger.com, I think. But they could have sent him a fake website and told him to enter his seed phrase on that website and then as soon as he enters the seed phrase, they immediately take all his Bitcoin. They could have gotten him that way. They could have shipped him a ledger device, a replacement device that already had a seed phrase that they knew on it. Again, you don't have to worry about this with BitKey because this is impossible. The way BitKey works, it doesn't use seed phrases. So, there's no way for the attackers to know something in advance. Um, and Bitkey is designed where that sort of attack's just not possible. Um, but anyway, so uh, so they could have shipped him a ledger device, but usually they don't want to do that because then you can track, uh, the shipping origin and stuff in the mail. So, usually they don't ship you a replacement device as part of the scam. Usually they try to get you to enter your seed phrase. either they get try to get you to enter your seed phrase in a fake website uh that pretends to look like the Ledger website or the Treasure website or the cold card website uh or they try to get you to move your Bitcoin from Ledger uh to a website uh or a mobile app where they give you the seed phrase and therefore they know it and therefore of course they can steal the funds and people are just a lot of people don't understand how seed phrases work and so they don't realize that by entering a seed phrase their own seed phrase in someone else's website, they are giving up access to all of their Bitcoin or by being given a seed phrase that they are entering in a mobile app or a ledger device and then moving their Bitcoin to that address. They don't realize that they are basically transferring their Bitcoin to the attacker. But again, you don't have to worry about any of this because the way Bit Key is architected, it does not use seed phrases. It's not even possible to be compromised that way. Now, certainly a hacker or a scammer could try to sweet talk you into transferring all of your Bitcoin from Bit Key into some address that they control, but that's way harder to do because again, you almost have to have the seed phrase concept in order for these attacks to work. If somebody calls you out of the blue and says, "Hey, I'm from Bitkey Technical Support. There's an issue with your Bit Key. I need you to transfer all of your Bit Bitcoin somewhere else." You're probably going to say, "That sounds like a scam." Like, why would I do that? So, the concept of a of a seed phrase introduces all of these angles for the hackers to use and the scammers uh that that leverage a seed phrase. Essentially, a seed phrase is the perfect tool for a hacker or a scammer to use to get your Bitcoin because they can either trick you into using one that's already been compromised or they can trick you into giving up yours, which means yours is compromised as soon as you enter it online or whatever it is they're trying to get you to do. Um, so the easy solution here is don't use seed phrases. Don't use products that use seed phrases. Keep your Bitcoin secure in BitKey regardless. guy's out $284 million, which is a ridiculously large amount of money. And again, my advice would have been this was not necessary. This guy did not need to lose $284 million. It was completely and totally unnecessary. He should have moved that Bitcoin to Bit Key and he should have kept that bit key in a safe deposit box at a bank. In this case, the part about it being at a bank didn't even matter because they got it over the internet, which you know, 99.999 some, you know, ridiculously high percentage of attacks are not in person. It's an attack over the internet leveraging the internet, phone calls from pretend tech support people and uh you know, emails from scam websites and spoofed email addresses and all that sort of stuff. But again, BitKey just solves all that. So, please, if you're using a ledger or a treasure or a cold card or anything other than Bitkey for your long-term Bitcoin storage, please use a Bit Key. It shields you from accidentally shooting yourself in the foot a million different ways. It shields you from getting hacked. It shields you from getting scammed. It's just a product that is brilliantly designed to keep your Bitcoin in your control for the long term. And I'm not aware of anybody that's ever bought a Bitkey. And I know a ton of people that that use Bit Key. I'm not aware of anybody with a Bit Key that has ever lost any Bitcoin or ever been scammed or ever been hacked. It just solves all that. It's just a brilliant solution. It solves all that. So, Bit Key, Bit Keys recommended. Uh this guy could have spent $150 on a Bit Key or $99 if it's on sale or $80, $79 if it's on sale. And uh at the same time as it's on sale, you use a discount code like WBD for what Bitcoin did or stories like Natalie Brunell's coin stories, you can get an additional 20% off. So regardless, you can get a discount on it for 20% whether it's $99 or $150. But even at the full price, this guy could have spent $150 and saved $284 million.