Topic: Early Bitcoin Wallet - Help Needed - Advice Appreciated (Read 1040 times)

8 words & a 13+ character password back to generate a wallet 2010 all within 6 months max of the pizza article showing up on the Heraldsun website. 

Show me how to regenerate the same wallet & as soon as I access it I'll transfer you a couple of million dollars worth of BTC quicker than you can blink plus pay the tax component the "shit" useless goverment in your country wants on the capital gains or tax on the gift so you can clear that money straight into your account down to the very last cent. After that we can celebrate together if you want anywhere you want at my expense.

That is the crux of the situation & right now ive got nothing else to work with. It's doable as far as I know...how beats me. Could be nice & simple or it could take a lot of trial & error. Look at it this way...everyway possible is worth a shot.

I don't need the cash right now to be honest & probably never will. Pretty happy with my current situation. Money is not what this is about. Its a little niggle/riddle i've have in the back of my mind that's been bugging me for ⅓ of my life. I just would like to give it a go to try & solve it. Still got 10 - 20+ years worst case scenario to figure it out. One thing i will say is if I do look like kicking the bucket I'll post the 8 words & password on this forum before I go in hope that someone one day gets those coins.

Not much else to say right now other than if you are ever at the Goldcoast with a pocket full of cash Little Truffle Dining & Bar is a great place to start for a nice dinner.  

I do appreciate your reply. Just got off on the wrong foot my friend & i apologise for the confusion. Would have been nice & easy to find the Scandisk USB with the keys & the given words but it didn't happen. If it did i probably wouldn't be on here telling my story. I'd have much better things to do with my time.

IIRC, BIP32 (hierarchical deterministic key derivation) has been introduced somewhere in 2012 and BIP39 (representation of wallet entropy by mnemonic recovery words and a specific scheme to derive the master extended private key for further BIP32 derivation) was proposed somewhere in 2013.

Armory wallet introduced a different way to provide a deterministic wallet and likely was earlier than BIP32 and BIP39, but I don't know exactly when Armory showed up with their deterministic approach. You might find such details in this forum's Armory board.

I have some doubts that this happened how you recall it, simply based on the timeline of wallet technological progress.

It's already problematic when you can't recall or have no documentation of what kind of wallet you used. Was it an online wallet or was it some locally installed software wallet?

I'm not sure if e.g. the online wallet of blockchain.com was one of the first to provide recovery details in some form of words or so. Very doubtful to have happened already in 2010.

Some guy, user Tyke, compiled a book and timeline of Bitcoin's history:
The Bitcoin History Book 2008-2024 [Paperback/Hardcover/eBook]
See if you find some timeline clues there.


Do you have these details available to you? (I'm not asking to disclose them to the public here, of course.)

For 2010 I can't quite believe this to have actually happened as you say. There were no offline or online wallets that used normal words to represent a wallet or being able to recover one from those words in 2010, IIRC.


I understand your frustration, but it's your duty to gather the pieces and details and present them in a concise manner. That's what I criticized when I wrote it's a mess here how you present your case. Think about it, why should those with some knowledge do the hard work for you to sort the details, to find clues, omit your distracting personal details when those have nothing to do with your case.

It's OK to annouce that you won't be able to respond for a certain time, if that's the case. Your other personal stuff is irrelevant and off-topic here. It's just noise and may distract readers and put them off to to deal with your case.


Do you have any documentation or notes about this purchase? On which website did it happen? Anything that could provide clues how and where you might've received the purchased coins? You must've transfered fiat money for the trade. There weren't too many exchanges in 2010 to buy coins. (Don't remember when something like localbitcoins was a thing.)

I'm far from being a role model for proper documentation, but I still know how and to which pool I mined my first bitcoins back in 2011. I still have the wallet files and the software used. I know what I did with my coins from the beginning of my Bitcoin journey in 2011 until today.

And because I had to recover my wallet from a dying harddrive, I learned a lot in this process which I simply didn't see and know about wallets and how Bitcoin works in particular. I just used the Bitcoin node and wallet client software in 2011 and was far from any decent understanding back then.


My suggestion for any progress here from other knowledgable forum members:

• gather all bits'n'pieces and details you have, you might need to search more in what you have on storage media and whatnot else
• sort your "shit" in a presentable manner, that's your duty, not ours
• try hard to classify what can safely be made public and what you shouldn't disclose to avoid someone else stealing your coins (helpful newbies here aren't trustworthy by default; it's your choice whom you want to trust)
• human memory is a tricky thing, it's not uncommon to associate things from different times to one narrow timeline when memory is fuzzy and due to years past and no specific need to recall details precisely (also due to lack of technical understanding, no offense)

Im pretty sure the next thing you should focus on is to get the harddrive of the PC (the one running the operating system) secured into a forensic image, and then examine the image with tools able to parse the information below.

For a given timeframe in 2010, i would spend some time looking into:

- eventlogs
- browser history
- searches
- applications installed
- files opened etc.

As you dig into it, some pieces of the puzzle may start to appear, and use this information to move further on with the examination.

So that said could I have been givem 12 random words to open wallet in 2010 whether it be encryption related or forgetting password related?

Pretty sure I was given the words after creating the wallet plus saved them to a notepad file & was there in 2010. Does that make me a historian. 🤔

I actually can't believe how difficult it is get anywhere with this. Seem to be spending alot of time on the semantics rather than taking the key information & trying to do something with it.

Might aswell ask again cause haven't really seen a decent response yet...

Do you know if there was a way to build keys using 8 words & a password... I've founds ways to do it but nothing has generated a pre-existing old wallet yet.

After that once keys are built are you able to tell me why they can't be used to regenerate the wallet...

I'm no original Bitcoin client software historian, but I highly doubt what you say here and such false claims don't help this topic. Prove me wrong with some descriptive source links of your claim!

Let's level the discussion ground. When we speak of Bitcoin Core, we mean the original Bitcoin node client software, develeoped by Satoshi Nakamoto and further developed and evolved from there by other Bitcoin Core devs. This is what we call Bitcoin Core today, in early years it wasn't called Bitcoin Core yet.

To my knowledge the early Bitcoin client software didn't have encryption to secure a wallet, wallet and private key encryption came later. A wallet encryption passphrase could be anything, words or a continuous string of "symbols". Symbols meaning anything you can type in.

Private keys in old legacy wallets were random not deterministic. The concept of an HD wallet which derives its private keys deterministically from a random hdseed key also came later. The original Bitcoin client software never uses mnemonic recovery words until today. You always had to backup the wallet file or jump through some hoops to save and restore the hdseed key of an HD wallet to recreate it without a backup wallet.dat file.

We probably need to define what legacy is specifically if it's important for the ongoing discussion. For me a legacy Bitcoin Core wallet is a pre-HD wallet, i.e. a wallet with a non-deterministic keystore full of unrelated random private keys.

Mate you try remembering what happened 14 years ago using 8 words & a password to make keys then optop of that exactly what you did to make your first ever transaction.

I've already explained its even harder to remember when the first 4 years are all mixed together after the use of darknet markets. Think you'll find most people have trouble remembering finer details after a few years pass let alone over a decade. Obviously haven't read the whole thread & just jumped in too throw in your 2 cents. We don't have 2 cent pieces over here anymore you know why... Cause they are useless.

Riddle me this...why would anyone bother posting "a hoax" like this just for the sake of it cause i'd love to hear your response.

I'm on here asking for help to solve a mystery. You know problem solving. Have you ever played a game of Cluedo before cause its similar to that or are you just missing the clue component altogeather. Could have been as simple as a paper wallet back then but also could have been a very early Bitcoin Client wallet.

Real old Bitcoin Core legacy wallets had a 12 word encryption phrase to temporarily unlock the wallet. Not a recovery phrase so for those of you still stuck on that particular topic now we can move on.

Give me a break. Unbelievable.

GPG keys were never imported into the Bitcoin client. It's never worked like this
In 2010, and for some years later, GPG developers refused to support Bitcoin key pairs. Specifically, the EC curve used in Bitcoin (secp256k1) was not implemented in GPG, and the GPG developer forum discussed adding it, and chose not to

For whatever reason, you've invented this very specific technical detail, but got it so wrong that your entire post is an obvious hoax

It's not that I don't believe you, its just that in 2010 about the only way to generate a bitcoin address was with the bitcoin client software.
8 words and passwords weren't really a thing as far as I can tell.  bitaddress.org, brainwallet, paperwallets websites, online wallets etc weren't online in 2010.

About the only thing online back in 2010 was New Liberty Standard, MtGox, Bitcoinmarket and the other sites mentioned in this thread https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/which-method-do-you-use-to-buy-bitcoin-for-cash-1800

You can use the wayback machine on archive.org to see what these sites looked like in 2010, to see if any if them jog your memory.
eg: New Liberty Standard   https://web.archive.org/web/20100528074505/http://newlibertystandard.wetpaint.com/

Bitcoinmarket mentioned in this article with screen shots: https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/ronan-manly/dawn-of-bitcoin-price-discovery-2009-2011-the-very-early-bitcoin-exchanges/

I could be possible that whatever site you bought the bitcoin on sent you a pgp encrypted wallet file. I read that somewhere, but I have no experience in how any of these sites worked except for MtGox.

Anyway have a nice holiday.

P.S. also have a read of this: https://cryptoassetrecovery.com/posts/how-can-i-figure-out-where-i-created-my-bitcoin-wallet

I just don't get why it's so hard to believe that I didn't buy the coins in 2010...pretty comical really. Don't actually know what else to say about that particular topic so not even going to bother trying to justify it anymore.

Tried searching on Duckduckgo using the custom date range & couldn't find the story either. For content on the website I'm sure they would have been drawing their articles from other sources & just like you said doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Everything else is relevant & will definitely check it out. Super interesting that PGP keys are mentioned. Think you can rule something out then boom new information pops up then round & round in circles we go again. That bitaddress I've seen pop up a couple of times aswell but haven't checked it out just yet.

On a side note this has been doing my noodle for far too long. Going away to the Goldcoast for 10 days early next week & don't plan on thinking about wallets for the entire trip. Even going to give the one in my back pocket to the misses & say you deal with it I don't even want to see it.

Still toasted after the Coldplay concert last night aswell. Need a break. 😞

There were sites around back in 2010 that allowed you to by bitcoins eg, New Liberty Standard, Bitcoin Market, MtGox
Some discussed here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/which-method-do-you-use-to-buy-bitcoin-for-cash-1800

You would have needed a bitcoin address for them to transfer the bitcoins to.

Usually you would download the bitcoin client software and use that to generate an address that the coins could be transferred to.

Otherwise there were online address generators such as bitaddress that allowed you to make wallet addresses and print out paper wallets. They mention a PGP public key.

Here's the earliest version i can find in archive.org that works.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130420072538/https://www.bitaddress.org/bitaddress.org-v2.4-SHA1-1d5951f6a04dd5a287ac925da4e626870ee58d60.html

That way you could have a bitcoin address without ever having downloaded the bitcoin client.

They have a brain wallet generator, but that wasn't added until 2012 so unless the herald didn't report on the pizza buying incident until later maybe your dates are off? Memory can sometime be inaccurate. Earliest article I can find on the heralds website is from 2013, but of course that doesn't mean they didn't report about it earlier, just that it's no longer findable on their website. https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/bitcoin-fervour-goes-viral/news-story/ea5cfc758513db09169163ea94067cab

Otherwise there were online wallet services like blockchain.info (now blockchain.com), MyBitcoin https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MyBitcoin , Instawallet https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Instawallet etc

Do you have access to the email accounts you were using back then?
Searching them might find some clues as to what sites you might have used.

That's definitely plausible. Been on that track for the last couple of days & have alredy seen that same page. Just not so sure its going to be that simple. Been trying to figure out what algorithms were used in 2010. Ive always thought it was Base58. Not sure what that program uses in that archive. Orginially I thought the 8 words were "salt" or to "hash" the password which to me seems slightly different for same end results rather than password just being a 9th word tacked on the end.

Maybe you used the 9 words (your 8 words and the password) to make a brainwallet?  

https://web.archive.org/web/20120514114100/http://brainwallet.org/

Well it made the Heraldsun website which I was paying for at the time while using Supercoach for the AFL.

Haven't used computers since 2012ish. No need got a phone. Pretty certain there were torrents floating around re. Bitcoin plus the White Paper so not out of the question for anyone to take interest.

Had all the time in the world back then to read whatever I liked ie.certain handbooks & whatever else looked interesting plus had two computer joints within 30 meters of where I worked. If I need something just walk into to either one & say yo what up can you help me with basically whatever.

Got two computers now cause I can & thats what I want. Alienware 15 R3 has been annoying me due to its weight. Asus ROG Strix is on sale at JB so thought bout time to start rocking a new computer. Pretty fresh aswell I might add. Now one for offine & one for offline. If there were ever a scenario where this was ever needed its pretty safe to say I've got it sorted & that makes me a happy little Vegemite.

Could not give a fat rats in relation to the Armoury wallet but cheers for that. Might leave that another 14 years to bother opening cause thats got nothing to do much other than it was found. Also counted the 8 words using my fingers before typing them in so mate it happened exactly how I've described it. Also used some site that tested the strength of the password. All done by following a dummies guide. Knew at the time it was big joke & crazy to buy but didn't phase me one bit. Finally why mine when you can just buy for $200 & be done with it.

Pretty funny stuff when you think about it & you have been very helpful by the way. 😂

All that said do you know if there was a way to build keys using 8 words & a password... After that once keys are built are you able to tell me why they can't be used to regenerate the wallet...

Check this out IT guy. Think it proves you can generate keys with 8 words as passphrase &:password as salt. I had it back the front....

https://brainwallet.io/

Yeah I am with this guy, you have confused your self a bit with fairly basic stuff and terminology.  You also post anecdotes that aren't needed and prove nothing other than to I feel convince yourself.  You mention things that you have either heard someone else say from their experience or read from somewhere and have taken it as your own experience.  

No one cares what you remember or know about events, we were all there too and doesn't solve your problem.  I myself was mining BTC with GPUs, so thats 2010. BTC started in 2009 and I heard about it from an unlikely source, but I was working in IT at the time with some computer scientists and they told me about it.   The tech hasnt changed THAT much.  

It beggars belief someone with who lacks basic fundamentals and knowledge about computers in general and btc would even be looking at BTC back then as this site was the only one around and it was created by satoshi himself and he has posted here, but you claim you bought it after "hearing" about the btc pizza guy which was in May of 2010 and it didnt make the main stream media news, it was just news on this site at first when it happened as the exchange/convo and agreement happened on here. People were sending btc for fun all over the place on here and selling it which came a little later on. Lots of people selling BTC on here if you look, like some people were asking for 20 bucks for 1000 btc around the same time etc and no one bought it.  

MT Gox came online in March 2010, Silkroad was 2011 and Agora was 2013.   So your telling us, you bought btc in 2010 after the btc pizza incident, transferred it and then never touched it again ? but then you claim to have used silkroad and agora etc later on, so what did you use then ? Cant have been the original account since you cant access it and coins never moved since buying.  

Install armory already and try and import your screen shot, its all you can do. You didnt need a new computer to do that, its a 24mb download.   If you created this paper wallet on a website, its the same as using the qt client, its just quicker and you get access to both the keys for that account without needing to download anything else. Most people downloaded the client and ran the node, and still do which keeps the keys in their wallet.dat file.  Paper wallets are created basically the same way as every other account, there is nothing mysterious about it.  There were no seed or mnemonic words until 2013.  Seed words, mnemonics, secret words are all the same thing. It what was used to recreate the account from the blockchain. Basically the words are the human readable version of a sequence of random words that stores the data required to access or recover cryptocurrency on blockchains or crypto wallets.   I feel your are not going to be able to rebuild the wallet with random words that arent a part of any recognized word list, as they are very specific words and not random made up words on the spot and nor could you choose which ones you wanted, never ever worked this way.  

Anyway good luck.

Coins "live" and move only on the blockchain, never anywhere else. The purpose of any wallet software or hardware is to hold and manage public (watch-only) and/or private keys, with latter to sign transactions, so that you're able to move coins for which you've appropriate private keys. Additionally a wallet shows you the balance of all coins your private/public keys control. Very loosely summarized...

If you want to entertain yourself with learning some Bitcoin knowledge, feel free to hop over to https://learnmeabitcoin.com, great site to scratch the basics or deep dive to serious technical stuff and more!

The Blockchain.info was first announced on Aug 30, 2011:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/blockchaininfo-bitcoin-block-explorer-currency-statistics-40264

However, Blockchain.info was initially founded as a block explorer and blockchain analytics website.
The Blockchain wallet was launched in Beta on Dec 1, 2011:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/blockchaininfo-bitcoin-block-explorer-currency-statistics-40264.msg636996#msg636996

Quick search suggests Blockchain.info was founded in 2011. Not sure of the exact date or month but I do know Silkroad was first seen in February 2011. Both sites were formed after the orginal $200 AUD purchase  The reason I would have seen the linked site in 2011 is after hearing about Silkroad. As far as im aware there was no reason to purchase BTC in 2010 whatsoever other than just for finding the concept interesting. I never made another purchase till late 2013 - 2014. By this time it was ridiculousy easy. Open MtGox account. International transfer straight from bank account online. Bitcoins hit the wallet. No mucking around with keys no nothing. Everything else including the website you have linked comes later. Need to go back even earlier.

What I'm struggling to understand right now is after keys have been generated & money has been transferred how would that be registered on the blockchain in 2010 without the use of the Bitcoin Client.

Untll I get my head around the basics properly & can explain myself properly unfortunately my posts are going to be confusing. If anyone out there could make a simple summary of what's been discussed so far that would probably be helpful to readers. Ps. Got new Asus ROG Strix today...looks nice. 😁

If indeed it is an old blockchain.info wallet, you would need to be searching for files called wallet.aes.json 

Definitely not going to rule the above link out all together at this stage. I did straight away when mnemonic was mentioned expecting it to be something to do with word lists that dont contain all of the series of words I picked myself.

It's certainly old enough to consider being within 18 months of the orginal first purchase (estimated date of September 2010). That's site does mention 2012. If anything the rubics cube & even more so the "love bitcoins" logo are the familiar component plus the simple basic text fields.

Was then able to watch the video aswell. That's some seriously classic stuff right there. Would not be surprised if I have seen that before. Actually pretty amazing that it still exists. 

Thanks mates. 😊

First post I made was just spewing out everything I can recall from 2010 - 2014 era. Feel its necessary not to edit that post & just use it as a reference as they key information is there regardless if its a bit of a mess. Its jumbled simply because so much time has passed. I now understand the difference between private keys & PGP keys. I must confess it did take some time relearn everything again but I'm getting there slowly. I just needed to get down in text exactly what I could recall regardless of whether it sounded ridiculous cause where else could I possibly start.

I am by no means bitcoin technical. Just feel into it in 2010 after reading the infamous pizza guy story & purchased $200 worth of bitcoin. What I did with those coins & the private keys still remains a mystery. Latest theory some sort of brainwallet that was converted to a paperwallet that could be printed. I know I used 8 words & a password to create the wallet. I also know these crucial pieces of information...nothing is missing like similar scenarios I've read.

The folder for the PGP keys are just a series of text documents that I'd saved from people on darknet markets along with my own PGP key & for some reason an Armoury wallet VERY similar the one in the pic you sent. It reads identical but the format is slightly different. I assume it was a single transaction or even a refund when MtGox collapsed. Both people I've been speaking to on email are solid guys not looking to scam me in any way shape or form. They have been very sincere & actually very helpful.

Thank you for taking the time to respond by the way & I apologise for the confusion. Yesterday I had my old Alienware M14x laptop checked by the local computer dude in hope that it could be used for some Github related test run of one particular program in an offline environment once factory reset. Turns out there was a graphics card or motherboard issue so in the end he pulled out the harddrive for me & the rest of the computer got binned. Random drive is a backup of that particular laptop. A blue Seagate Plus Portable Drive again 1TB.

I've decided I'm going to buy a new Asus ROG Strix (for online) & factory reset the current Alienware 15 R3 (for offline). Its been a bit of a pain to get two computers side by side but I'm working on it. Happy to post pics of the PGP keys & Amoury wallet (minus key details) so everyone can see I'm not making any of this up. It's the real deal I assure you.