Damaged people damage people.
It's how the world works.
— Not A Worker
It was 3am by the time I left Doug's house, with his keys in my hand. After going home to make a copy, I was back before sunrise to return the originals. When I opened the front door, I could hear Doug snoring. It easy to slip in and out, unnoticed.
With my confidence renewed, I headed back to Noah Greer's house to search for his Bitcoin seed words. I had plenty of time since he was out of town, so I made coffee. There were already coffee grounds in the trash. Adding more wouldn't tip him off.
I searched the house from top to bottom, but I couldn't find his Bitcoin seed words.
I did find four QR codes. One was for the password to his wifi. Thanks for that, bro. The other three were weird sets of numbers, like this:
191315320863050204451342140204171629183913850015
I also found a child's crayon drawing, stuck to the fridge with a huge magnet that said "Daddy."
"Oh, fuck. He has kids?" How did I miss that?
I went through his calendar and old facebook posts again. His wife left him and moved to Denver, to be closer to her family. He wasn't there for a family reunion. He was visiting his kids. To make matters worse, his ex-wife got remarried. Noah's kids had a new happy family that he wasn't part of. Brutal.
And here I was in his shitty house to steal his Bitcoin.
Winners win, losers lose, and thieves thieve. It's how the world works.
Look, I never said I was perfect. I know I'm damaged. Damaged people damage people. But I decided to pass on doing further harm to this loser. At least for now.
I rinsed out the coffee mug and took pictures of the QR codes, mostly out of curiosity. And I left.
I wasn't going to rob him right away, anyway.
I learned something new though. After I got home and took a long nap, I started googling to figure out what the QR codes were.
Turns out, those three QR codes were sets of Bitcoin seed words. Sort of. The long sets of numbers could be converted into seed words. I found three sets of seed words which, through trial and error I learned, meant I found one multi-signature wallet.
Yeah, I know. It sounds complicated. The gist of it is this: Each set of seed words is a key. To rebuild a multisig wallet, you need multiple keys in the right order. This idiot labelled the QR codes for his keys 1, 2 and 3, so I knew the order they needed to be in.
Thank you, YouTube, for info and tutorials.
Once I restored his wallet, I saw that he'd been depositing Bitcoin into it twice a month for years, so it made more sense to let him keep adding to it while I debated whether or not it was OK to rob him.
Editor's Note:
To be clear: It was not okay. None of this was, or ever possibly could be, okay.