A student of mine agreed to pay me in crypto recently. Last night she finally got some Bitcoin in her wallet, enough for 10 classes and then about the same amount as her very first crypto investment. She was pretty excited.
I had told her a few weeks ago to try a small transaction first in order to make sure she knew what she was doing, but the movement in the market distracted her.
She happily asked for my wallet address, telling me she'd be ending me extra in USD value because BTC had risen during the day. She tried sending it to me and her Jaxx Wallet asked for a PIN.
"What's my PIN number?"
"How am I supposed to know your PIN number?"
"I can't remember setting a PIN number...did I?
"Did you?"
I frantically searched online to see if anyone else had seen a prompt for a PIN without setting one. No one seemed to have had this problem. So it had to be a bug or she set a PIN and forgot.
"I tried all my usual passwords...nothing"
"Oh man....well there are 9999 possible combinations..."
We searched online for answers and found none because she did not bother to write down her 12 word phrase as I had recommended.
So between her investment and my payment, that $800 (now over $1000, who knows how much) Bitcoin potentially lost forever. I can only hope that it's not a bug and that she just forgot her PIN and that Jaxx Liberty Wallet let's you keep guessing your PIN until you get it right, then she just needs to try 9999 times. If it's a bug or if there is a limit then it seems the money is really gone.
This is why it's super important not to push people to get into crypto and instead prepare them for what they are getting themselves into.
She's really upset right now and says she's only going to trust a bank or exchange with xrypto in the future....which ideally is the opposite of how I hope that she would feel.
I told her that if she tries 9999 combinations and they don't work, not to stress herself out, that I'd share the burden and give her these ten classes half price and pay whenever she wants. If I was doing better than she was financially I'd tell her to forget about payment altogether. I should have sent her a small amount of Bitcoin first for her to play with. I think that is the kind of precaution we need to take when onboarding new people into crypto.
I sure hope she remembers having seta PIN and can get the money cause a few hundred extra in crypto would sure be nice right now, as the markets are moving.
Be cautious guys!
If you have any ideas let me know!
