Topic: Early Bitcoin Wallet - Help Needed - Advice Appreciated - page 5. (Read 1831 times)

Unfortunately those two options arent ringing any bells...

Keypass is a form of identification in Australia. Nothing to do with anything other than its similar & it came to mind straight away.

Keybase was around at the time as far as I know.

Keystone set a light bulb off. Quick google of that word & its a hardware wallet. Probs read that recently unless they had an old program for USB's...can definietly explore that further.

After hitting the "key" button in my brain for a coupe of hours that's about as far as it goes.

Going down the "specific" road even further Multibit appears to have the similar interface to the classic Bitcoin Client. Armoury & Electrum just don't look right.

Fairly certain Windows 7 was running on the work computers in 2010. Laptop downloading blockchain Vista. The blue from Window 7 in the "classic" wallets is very similar to how I remember it.

Thank you for your replies John. Been good to have someone to bounce off. 🍻

It might have been KeePass/LastPass or something similar, but you need to remember what kind of program it was.

When you say specific what would my options have been at the time for "cold storage" on USB. I checked the brainwallet list with weak passphases list but a. Not enough coins in the wallets b. Words don't match.

Let's say it was a paper wallet or just program that holds the keys...is there a list of those somewhere. I just need to see the right word most of the time to click ie. Kleopatra.

Private & public addresses were definitely encrypted & I wrote either one of both down on a piece of paper. That piece of paper went in a folder with my name on it. There is a possibility it's still around.

Off topic but is the whole PGP key regeneration possible using 8 words & a password. Base56 is the next thing to pop up on my radar couldnt tell you why but im sure it was used somewhere along the line in whatever process was used.

My understanding is you could get from private & public PGP keys to whats needed using a series of algorithms. Basically starting from scratch to rebuild the wallet.

Slowly starting to explore that avenue & "apparently" it's technically possible.

Was $200 AUD at the time. If you were to do the math then check the dormant wallet list there's only one possibility. One in & zero outs. There's small "dust attacks" but when the coins hit the wallet they never moved.

Trying my very best to give you everything I've got. I know it's a complete mess but it's going to annoy me if I don't give this my best shot.

It's not ALL about the money. It's a little niggle I've had for years. Bitcoin goes down I forget about it. Bitcoin goes up & it's worth rethinking. Will be 4 more years before I worry about it again if I don't say anything now.

If we are talking about the original Bitcoin wallet, then no.
The wallet.dat file contains private keys and is encrypted with a password. Without the file, the password is useless.

It seems that at that time there were no other alternatives, including a brain wallet.

Perhaps you are confusing the year, or used something very specific.
I suggest you recover hdd data, if it's worth it.

Was remembering possible location of USB after watching Tiktok videos. One particular of an old dude finding his drive in a roof space. I did the same but either moved it or it was found. USB had a password protect vault all the files were in that. The 3 weeks of XRP trolling on Tiktok didn't help the situation. Couldn't pick up my phone without seeing a crypto vid. Literally every third video was crypto related.

Longstory short couldn't find it USB. Then not long after a came across someone on this forum that mentioned a series of words that's you could choose yourself & boom those 8 words hit me. Always had the password but nothing else to work with till roughly 6 weeks ago when the USB debarcle started. Thought I'd give I a red hot crack now with what I do have.

I apologise for the multiple posts. Not actually sure how to reply properly but I'll try figure it out. What im doing now is obviously wrong. Never used a forum before. Had to do lots of edits to try make it all read easy.

Look pretty stupid as it is without adding more stupidity to the mix. 😞

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Words were a variation of "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog". I just changed it up a bit cause using those exact words seemed a bit silly at the time. Wasn't to difficult to switch most of the words to my own & take out a word to give me 8 instead of 9 & still have a sentence that made enough sense to "remember".

Also I don't think the "f" bomb is on any of the word lists.

How about 1626 words on very old version of Electrum which can be seen on https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/5883aaf8ca2f79bf694d11ac6b63f5defd2a2c38/client/mnemonic.py?

You should know that you are breaking a forum rule by posting multiple posts in a row, I have reported them to be merged, and rest assured that it is not a serious breach but in future occasions edit the post and write below instead of writing multiple posts.

And after all this time, what made you want to try to recover the coins now?

As I told you, you are not the first, far from it, many people who lost their coins one day when they realize that if they had not lost them they would be multimillionaires they start trying to recover them however they can but 2010 coins in 2024 seems a little late to worry about them.

Tried that. One of the word doesn't compute. Doubt it's was a legacy wallet based error message.

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I tried that & thank you for your reply. My guess is the 8 words I selected were used as "salt" to create orginal PGP keys.

Possible that the wallet I then used spat out a different set of words as a recover/change password feature.

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A reasonably uneducated guess would be from August - November 2010. Cheers for the information not exactly sure what to do with it but rest assured I will definitely explore this avenue. Plan on getting a new computer for everything Github related. That can be done pretty quick once I figure out whats possible with the "older version". Could it be possible that password is enough to recover wallet or am I missing something?

Right now I'm of the belief that regenerating PGP keys using the 8 words I know & password then running algorithms on them to give me private/public addresses which were then somehow encrypted is one plausible way to do it. Could be wrong.

Public address then gives wallet address. Private address gives 64 bit hexadecimal somehow but lets face it I don't really know what I'm talking about just working from what I've read.

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Did that picking random words & using a couple of my words. It hated one of my words. Took it no further.

Thanks for taking your time post. Its really is appreciated. Nice to talk to people that I can bounce off. Limited to how quick I respond. Tried smashing out replies but have to wait 360 seconds.

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Confident words I choose were PGP key related. Done a bit more reading today & now Gnupgp is dinging bells. Problem is I looked at everything at the time. Found the whole principal of digital currency fascinating & had more time than you can poke a stick at to dive down the rabbit hole.

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Big bucks. Think of a massive piggie bank full of $1 coins filled to the brim but in bitcoin. Enough to go around that's for sure. One for you, one for you & more for you. Lol.

Hyperthectically speaking if it was a brainwallet for arguments sake why would I need a wallet.dat. That gives another chance.

It might be from this..

https://login.blockchain.com/wallet/forgot-password

try entering your 8 words and see what happens.

What time of year approximately did you use the client?
You can check older versions here (source code, requires compiling):
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tags?after=v0.3.6

My understanding is Bitcoin Client changed to Bitcoin QT further down the track. The Bitcoin QT interface doesn't look right to me. Wasn't till I found Bitcoin Client interface did the penny drop.

The wallet program that was used MAY have issued some words after creating the wallet as a recovery for password only feature.

My other theory is the 8 words hashed with the password to generate the PGP keys to add "entropy". From what I've read the same keys may be able to be regenerated to give the same PGP's back. Once complete another algorithms can spit out the public & private address for the wallet.

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It's was bitcoin. There was nothing else in 2010 that any coverage whatsoever ever on mainstream media. I read the story on the pizza saga on the Heraldsun website & bought coins months later. All happened prior to Silkroad. Agora may have been the only darknet markets at the time. I never took a look at any of those sites till atleast a couple of years later when BTC went from $30 - $200.

In 2010 they went from 0.003c to 0.03c & then 0.9c by the end of the year. The were no exchanges so I didn't even bother to check the price after I bought them for that particuler year till recently. I just set up the wallet, made the purchase, thought that was fun & left it.

Definitely happened in 2010 when they were worth peanuts. I was 30 years old at the time. Had just bought a 20k car. Had under 10k in the bank & blazed away on a small bitcoin transaction thinking it was no different than blowing it at the pokies.

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I've had a quick look into BIP39. Words don't match the list. If we are talking algorithms SHA256 HASH & maybe secp256k were mentioned. May have everything to do with the blockchain & have nothing to do with anything wallet related.

The whole brainwallet concept may have been used but finding information on the programs from that time is tricky. I'm almost certain it was Bitcoin Client. There is the paperwallet option as well but moving the mouse around didn't tickle my fancy so I did it another way.

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I'm finding this forum tough to navigate. It's the first time I've used a forum. I'll get it right eventually. It's my first time on here. Localcoins may have been used to make the purchase. If it wasn't that it's beats me. We are talking 1000+ coins that cost me next to nothing. Prepared to dish out coins like they are candy if I can just get some help.

The human brain can play tricks on us sometimes, especially when it comes to memories from a decade ago. How can you be absolutely sure that it happened EXACTLY as you described when you yourself admit that you can't remember some key details? It's possible that your recollection of events is slightly off. For example, it would help a lot if you knew exactly which software you used to create your Bitcoin wallet or which website you used to buy coins. Do you have any concrete evidence (other than your memory) to corroborate any part of your story? What if it wasn't Bitcoin at all?

Imho you should think it over again and find better clues about the year, since I don't think that you'll find any wallet in 2010 that was handling words (no matter if seed or brain wallet). All that came later.

And if your story is inaccurate you will get answers on BIP39 and such.
Also, after clearing up what year was it, maybe you remember what wallet you've used; it could be of real help. If it's indeed words-based and local (so I'll cross out blockchain.info), Multibit and Electrum would be the main options, but both came at the end of 2011. I think that only Bitcoin Core was there in 2010 and it had no seed words.

Without better info, the answer to your BIG question is "you don't". Sorry.

Bitcoin core (bitcoin QT at the time) did not use recovery words.
Private keys are contained in the file wallet.dat, and this encrypted file is located in a separate directory from the bitcoin client.
The only chance left is hardware recovery data of hard drive. If you still have it, write me in PM your contact

Yes, countless times.


I have reported the post to be moved to a technical board where they can help you better but from what you tell and a 2010 wallet I think the chances of recovering anything are pretty close to 0.

What amount are we talking about?

I'm sure this topic would have been covered in the past but here goes nothing...

Here's the facts as I remember them...

Two PGP keys were created in 2010. Definitely had GPG4win installed on the computer I was using at the time. And for some reason Kleopatra & PGPtools rings a bell.

On a different computer I recall playing around with a program that could download the blockchain. I was only doing it for giggles at the time & have no recollection if the download ever completed.

Back on the original computer was able to download a wallet program then run it. From there I was able to import the PGP keys to create a wallet which included wallet addresses made from the two PGP keys (private & public) I am 99.9% sure said program was Bitcoin Client.

BTC were then purchased with a small amount of cash from a bank account on a website I dont remember & then transferred to the wallet. All this happened within a few months of the "infamous pizza" story first making the news so it's 100% all happening in 2010.

At some stage I had to make up a password. I do remember it was best practice to make the password a decent length using letters, numbers & special characters which i did & I'm talking 13 plus characters which was considered minimum to have yourself a "strong" password.

I know this password so that is the least of my problems.

This is where things get interesting. At some stage I was prompted to use a series of words...8 being the bare minimum. I'm not 100% sure whether it was in the creation of the PGP keys instead of a email address or if the words were used to encrypted the wallet.

The way I remember it was again best practice to remember the words BUT there is a possibility that the wallet program gave me a different series of words to save incase I ever forgot the password. I'm pretty sure the public & private addresses were also encrypted in this program & there was no particular reason why you couldn't write them down. To me it didn't matter cause the coins were worth nothing but that's beside the point. At this stage I don't have a physical drive with the wallet saved or the piece of paper that anything may have been written on.

Again I know the 8 words I was able to pick myself BUT if any words were given to me further down the track which is highly possible right now I don't have those words. I also couldn't tell you how many words were selected for me nor do I remember any of them.

So after all that nonsense the coins are in the wallet protected by a password on the computer at work. I understand they never leave the blockchain but let's just go with they are on the computer as that's how I understood it at the time.

From there the program & text file containing the 8 words I used were transferred to a small USB & forgotten about for over decade. For context I thought they were on a corrupted drive that may or may not still be around BUT remembered the USB only in the last month.

Went looing for the USB last week but couldnt find it. Might go looking for corrupted hard drive one day but as far as I know it's well cooked. It was pulled apart & in pieces last time saw it after a computer dude tried to boot it & said mate this thing is toast.

As it stands the computer is long gone, the USB drive can not be found, the piece of paper with any address on it may or may not still be around & old hard drive is fried beyond repair.

I'm not overly concerned about a piece of paper to be perfectly honest. This particular avenue is more intriguing & worst case I'll go looking for it if I have to but want to leave that as a last resort after posting on this forum.

Currently I'm stuck on what to do next & before I ask anything I know this is possibly the most ridiculous situation EVER on Bitcointalk so go easy on me. I'm not a Bitcoin guru & never have been...just happened to buy coins in 2010 when I was bored af at work one day & now to me it's just ancient history.

There is no question that this didn't happen in 2010. I've read all the controversy over seed words, BIP39 blah blah blah blah. Honestly forget that stuff in this particular instance...I was there in 2010 & it was reasonably easy to make a wallet the way ive just explained.

"Mnemonic" & "recovery phrase" is about the only possible terms used at the time & it was only for opening a program if you forgot your password. For those if you still debating how it was or how it wasnt it was originally its EXACTLY how I have described it.

Paper wallets were around. Brainwallets were around. That said the program I used has got me stumped. The 8 words I picked confuses the situation even further & I doubt I used an email. If I did I still have access to one of the two possibilities.

This is not a joke either...i'm deadly serious. I also may have the wallet address after checking the dormant wallet list. Can really only be one cause it's the only one that makes any sense.

I've just finished downloading the blockchain. Been through upteen million posts by other people on every forum there is over the past month & still have no idea what I'm doing or what to do next.

Actually not even sure its possible to recover the coins with 8 words & a password. As it stands I'm reasonably confident it can be done so that's why I'm here. Now for the BIG questions...

How do I access the coins... And am I on the right track... And should i bother continuing this quest for long long treasure... 😂😂😂

Ps. My apologies for the lengthy post but had to be done. Would really appreciate anyone that could give me some clues as to what I'm missing or not understanding.