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 at his place before sunrise to return the originals. When I opened the front door, I could hear him 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 be a clue that anyone had been in his home.
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, just in case they were something important. And I left.
I wasn't going to rob him right away, anyway.
Noah Greer seemed like a massive waste of time, but I was wrong.
I learned something new.
After I got home and took a long nap, I started googling to see if I could figure out what the QR codes were for.
Turns out, they were sets of Bitcoin seed words. Sort of. The long sets of numbers could be converted into seed words using a device called a SeedSigner. So, I'd found three sets of seed words which meant I found one multi-signature wallet.
I went back to Noah Greer's place again to find his SeedSigner, and I played with it until I figured out how to rebuild his 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:
SeedSigner is a small do-it-yourself Bitcoin hardware wallet, built from a Raspberry Pi Zero, a camera, and an LCD display. It uses QR codes to communicate with Bitcoin apps on a computer or phone.
Also, to be clear: It was not okay to rob him.