The Smile I Owe Her

Well, it happened. I broke the one rule that we all preach. I put my seed on a device with an internet connection for one minute, and that is all it took to see all my Bitcoin disappear 10 days later.

The attack was actually sophisticated, and I had no idea initially how they got to me. The mistake is incredibly simple and stupid. But here are the things I know now. Windows OS is a piece of shit and no one should use it, especially when money is going to be more and more online — not just data. With Bitcoin, using Apple is much better, but Linux is just better in many ways, and I had no idea how simple it is to switch. Little too late.

The thing is that losing money is already part of my history. My mother's wealth was about 5M USD, but when my stepdad killed her and the vultures came to help and attack me and my sister, what we got at the end was about 300K. And for today's world, where 2/3rds of the world live on about $5 a day — cry me a river. Yet my mother is gone, and my sister and I had to learn to deal with this world.

That is where Bitcoin came in. This was the thing that could have solved the inheritance problems I faced. I understood that it makes possible the true execution of a will exactly however the deceased wanted, without anyone else being able to intervene. And that was the plan for me when I met my soulmate

. We understood that Bitcoin can heal the world in many ways and can return the values of the family unit. So in that process, with our combined effort and my part of the inheritance, we managed to accumulate 3.5 BTC. Life was good.

But now I am the one who gave my soulmate sleepless nights. I am the one responsible for starting over from €3,000 under our family name. And at the time when nostr:nprofile1qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3uamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dwp6kytnhv4kxcmmjv3jhytnwv46z7qpq369rjadqrp2qkanykpyg39s57q66egyfvuqmkc0cqhslrph7ne4sj2v3x3 is supposed to feel love, I gave her stress. She is exactly 2 months into her next pregnancy with our next child and feels sad because of our situation. I took away her smile, and the days have become a bit more silent during the weeks.

For the previous time I was robbed, I blamed fiat and the psychopaths for inducing it with the 2008 financial crisis. But now I know there are psychopaths in Bitcoin also, and I am to blame. Fiat had very little to do with this, although Windows is not something built with values — it is a system of extraction and exploitation in many ways.

How the hack actually worked — it turns out that deepfakes are much more advanced than I thought. A person I had met many times in real life reached out to have a call, and it was perfectly fine because we knew each other and I saw no difference at all. Yet when I entered the call, they made me install a malicious file that started to extract data from my machine. Little did I know this was not the person at all. Because of the video problems, we had to reschedule the call for later. I never understood during this process that something had been installed or that something was reporting back to the attacker.

I learned this weeks after the fact. Another person told me they tried to do the exact same thing to him — that is how I connected the dots. Until then I had no idea I had not talked to the real person. I just saw at some point that my wallet had one transaction sweeping all the UTXOs into another Bitcoin address, and I knew it was not me. The moment I saw that transaction, I knew I had been hacked and someone else did it.

I was shaking — and not because of the fucking money. I have been there, I lost more money than that, and no one died this time. I was shaking because I am the person who is supposed to protect my family, and I was the one who hurt them this time.

I was the one who wanted to put all the passwords and the seed in my own server in the vault. But in order to do that, I had to import a file with plain text — not encrypted — and that is when they got me. Even if I had the malware running, they might have gotten to my accounts. But breaking the most important rule — the seed should never touch an internet-connected device — that is my stupidity. I shift-deleted the file right after, but it turns out that file is recoverable, and it is one of the first things that type of attack scans for.

On top of all that, we reached out to relatives and close friends for financial help. The thing that breaks Rali's heart is how no one actually helps. For good or for bad, I have experienced this — 12 years ago I learned that people will say kind words but almost no one will take action to help you. Everyone is too busy buying real estate and could not spare anything for us. I knew this already. This is my mess and I have to fix it.

The thing she was hoping for is that someone would take any of her paintings (<https://www.btcfamily.eu/rali>) so we can get some income at this moment. We were not asking for charity — just some sign that someone cares. Only one person showed that he cares.

Now I know that I may never reach that amount of BTC again. But the more important thing for me is to instill confidence and return the smile to my lady.

How They Did It

And for most people reading this, the main question will be: how did the hack work so I can protect myself and not make the same mistake? We all have that in us — caring about ourselves and disregarding others, almost always. Well, here is how the attack works:

- People who have a lot of video material online are the main targets — not because they will get hacked directly, but because they can be deepfaked

- The attacker reaches out to all their contacts asking for a meeting, sending a booking link — the link has a wrong domain

- When entering the meeting, it does not allow you to join via a mobile device; when entering via desktop, it tells you there are problems with the Microsoft Teams SDK and you need to upgrade by entering a simple command in the terminal

- After you do that, they install whatever they need — and then they wait patiently for your mistake

- Do not fall for this, and be very aware when public figures reach out to you out of nowhere (especially via Telegram)

Since then, I moved to Linux, deleted most of my socials, and hardened the security even further.

None of that gives back the 3.5 BTC. But I am still here, and so is she, and so is the child she is carrying and so is our little girl. The smile I owe her — I will earn it back. If you are one of the people who actually care and want to show it, her paintings are at btcfamily.eu/rali . That is not charity. That is just recognizing beauty when you see it.