Bitcoin Appeared in A Bitcoin Core Wallet

Ok. Long wind-up here: I've been interested in running a node for a while. And I've set up bitcoin core a few times on a few different machines... Not a total noob. I wanted to run a node on a old dell optiplex that I bought off of ebay. I wiped the OS, reformatted the drives and installed Linux. Out of curiosity and a challenge I installed Bitcoin Core using terminal commands (I don't know anything about Linux or terminal commands, I just used Grok). The blockchain began to sync and everything looked like it should. I left the machine for days while syncing continued. I checked the Bitcoin Core program tonight and I saw a substantial amount of bitcoin in the wallet (over 1BTC). I have no explanation for this. I looked at the transaction history and it gets ever weirder. The transaction history has dozens of transactions listed. Starting in Aug of 2023 and ending in March or 2024. There are outgoing and inbound transactions, however, it looks like most/all of the outgoing transactions were UTXO consolidation. Its like I have access to an already utilized wallet. I believe the odds of this happening are beyond absolutely astronomical. That leads me to believe that this could be some scam? None of it makes sense and thats the really unnerving thing about it. Has anyone experienced this before or something like it? Any ideas on what may be happening? submitted by /u/wondabread24 [link] [comments]

Jun 9, 2025 - 13:28

Ok. Long wind-up here:

I've been interested in running a node for a while. And I've set up bitcoin core a few times on a few different machines... Not a total noob.

I wanted to run a node on a old dell optiplex that I bought off of ebay. I wiped the OS, reformatted the drives and installed Linux. Out of curiosity and a challenge I installed Bitcoin Core using terminal commands (I don't know anything about Linux or terminal commands, I just used Grok). The blockchain began to sync and everything looked like it should. I left the machine for days while syncing continued.

I checked the Bitcoin Core program tonight and I saw a substantial amount of bitcoin in the wallet (over 1BTC). I have no explanation for this. I looked at the transaction history and it gets ever weirder. The transaction history has dozens of transactions listed. Starting in Aug of 2023 and ending in March or 2024. There are outgoing and inbound transactions, however, it looks like most/all of the outgoing transactions were UTXO consolidation.

Its like I have access to an already utilized wallet. I believe the odds of this happening are beyond absolutely astronomical.

That leads me to believe that this could be some scam?

None of it makes sense and thats the really unnerving thing about it.

Has anyone experienced this before or something like it? Any ideas on what may be happening?

submitted by /u/wondabread24
[link] [comments]