Invalid private key error - page 3. | Bitcointalksearch.org

larry_vw_1955

sr. member

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Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on January 02, 2023, 05:25:34 AM

There are a lot of red flags here which make me think this is a scam... I strongly suspect OP has been scammed and there are no coins to recover, but we can at least try.

you may be right. the only thing is this was back in like 2010. i'm not sure how people sold bitcoin back then. maybe it was accepted to just sell the private key and not actually send bitcoin to the person's address. obviously that seems like a really bad idea today and you would think it would seem like one to people back then too but they didn't have all the different wallets and things they do now. so i guess it was harder to create your own wallet/address. there is also the remote possibility that the OPs laptop got some data corruption and the private key is not correct due to that. that's probably very unlikely but i guess it is a remote possibility.

Quote

You can correct me if I'm wrong (since I've never used PayPal), but my understanding is that there is a time limit of 180 days to open a dispute. PayPal are not going to entertain a dispute for a transaction which is in the region of 10 years old.

Well of course they're not going to let someone dispute something that old. I didn't realize this at first but it seems the OP probably would not even have been able to dispute it 10 years ago either since back then I don't think paypal had a digital goods protection. Now they seem to though: https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/news?item=122644 so that would have been another reason to not be using paypal back then to buy btc. scammer's paradise... Cry

no one should be needing to buy bitcoin from someone else using paypal these days though. since they can just buy it from paypal directly.

o_e_l_e_o

legendary

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Quote from: larry_vw_1955 on January 02, 2023, 03:34:51 AM

Maybe we need to take a step back and ask some basic questions like why didn't the OP check the private key when he first got it to make sure it was valid?

There are a lot of red flags here which make me think this is a scam, from the "seller" sending OP a raw private key instead of making a transaction, through to the key containing invalid characters. However, there is nothing OP can do about any of these red flags now, and we can only attempt to work with what he has in his possession. I strongly suspect OP has been scammed and there are no coins to recover, but we can at least try.

Quote from: larry_vw_1955 on January 02, 2023, 03:34:51 AM

If the private key cannot be validated then dispute the transaction with paypal get your money back. post on the forum that they tried to scam you. etc. etc.

You can correct me if I'm wrong (since I've never used PayPal), but my understanding is that there is a time limit of 180 days to open a dispute. PayPal are not going to entertain a dispute for a transaction which is in the region of 10 years old.

larry_vw_1955

sr. member

Activity: 1036

Merit: 350

Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on January 01, 2023, 05:27:54 PM

The invalid checksum is telling you that the checksum is not correct for the key you entered. We already know that is the case because the key contains invalid characters. This does not necessarily mean the checksum contains errors - the checksum may very well be the correct checksum for the correct key and will validate just fine once you sort the other errors.

Maybe we need to take a step back and ask some basic questions like why didn't the OP check the private key when he first got it to make sure it was valid?

Quote

Use btcrecover as I suggested above. If you are struggling with this, then your only option would be to ask a third party wallet recovery service to run it for you. I'd be happy to give it a shot as well, but this will necessitate you sharing your incorrect private key with either the wallet recovery service or myself.

If the private key cannot be validated then dispute the transaction with paypal get your money back. post on the forum that they tried to scam you. etc. etc. if the private key validates and is associated to an address that holds the amount of bitcoin you purchased then what you do is move them ASAP.

Now I do understand that at the time of purchase bitcoin was worth very small tiny amount but it's the principal of the thing. Don't trust, verify.

o_e_l_e_o

legendary

Activity: 2268

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Quote from: Tofee on January 01, 2023, 03:44:44 PM

It starts with 5 but the second character is ‘F’ followed by other characters with two invalid Base 58 characters and checksum error which makes me understand that last four characters are not correct. So, in total the key has the atleast 7 characters wrong and could be more.

It has to start with 5H, 5J, or 5K.

The invalid checksum is telling you that the checksum is not correct for the key you entered. We already know that is the case because the key contains invalid characters. This does not necessarily mean the checksum contains errors - the checksum may very well be the correct checksum for the correct key and will validate just fine once you sort the other errors.

Quote from: Tofee on January 01, 2023, 03:44:44 PM

Appreciate your suggestions and advice.

Use btcrecover as I suggested above. If you are struggling with this, then your only option would be to ask a third party wallet recovery service to run it for you. I'd be happy to give it a shot as well, but this will necessitate you sharing your incorrect private key with either the wallet recovery service or myself.

Tofee

jr. member

Activity: 39

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Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on December 26, 2022, 04:59:31 AM

Quote from: Tofee on December 25, 2022, 06:17:16 PM

This error is showing up immediately on FinderOuter.Thanks for your response. Wish you merry Xmas.

Then you are entering the wrong string in to FinderOuter. If it is showing up immediately, then it means FinderOuter is simply checking the string you have entered and telling you it has an incorrect checksum. It is not actually attempting to brute force any other possibilities.

Here's what you should be doing:

Open FinderOuter
Click on "Missing Base58"
Paste in your private key to the first box
Swap the invalid characters I and l for the missing char symbol (which is * by default)
Ensure the input type is "PrivateKey"
Click "Find" at the top

If it doesn't find your key, if you could then copy and paste here exactly what appears in the box at the bottom, that would be useful.

Thanks for your response. Wish you and all a very very happy New Year 2023. May year 2023 bring peace, prosperity and good health to all.

Regarding the invalid key which I have is as follows.

The result in FinderOuter is “finished fail”.

The key has checksum error along with several characters not at the right positions. It starts with 5 but the second character is ‘F’ followed by other characters with two invalid Base 58 characters and checksum error which makes me understand that last four characters are not correct. So, in total the key has the atleast 7 characters wrong and could be more.

I am frustrated because I purchased Bitcoins via PayPal with my debit card in 2010/11 and least expected to be scammed on Bitcoins then because they were not worth even Pennie’s as of early days.

I tried to sweep key from the key produced by FinderOuter in Electrum but it results in ‘No count’

I feel the entire key is invalid.

If anybody can help me to get contact details of Blackschneider78 who has posted on this forum of having purchased Bitcoins in 2011, via email/PayPal, please do.

Appreciate your suggestions and advice.

larry_vw_1955

sr. member

Activity: 1036

Merit: 350

Quote from: Tofee on December 07, 2022, 09:21:05 AM

This key was received on purchase of bitcoins via PayPal about a decade back. Then, there was very little knowledge sources available online.
I presume more than 400 attempts has been made to hack my bitcoins.

So maybe this is a dumb question but did you ever check this key when you bought it using paypal? If not then i'm not sure why not.

Quote

Since the privkey has not been activated for many years, is there any possibility of keys invalidity?

activated by who?
Huh

o_e_l_e_o

legendary

Activity: 2268

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Quote from: Tofee on December 25, 2022, 06:17:16 PM

This error is showing up immediately on FinderOuter.Thanks for your response. Wish you merry Xmas.

Then you are entering the wrong string in to FinderOuter. If it is showing up immediately, then it means FinderOuter is simply checking the string you have entered and telling you it has an incorrect checksum. It is not actually attempting to brute force any other possibilities.

Here's what you should be doing:

Open FinderOuter
Click on "Missing Base58"
Paste in your private key to the first box
Swap the invalid characters I and l for the missing char symbol (which is * by default)
Ensure the input type is "PrivateKey"
Click "Find" at the top

If it doesn't find your key, if you could then copy and paste here exactly what appears in the box at the bottom, that would be useful.

nc50lc

legendary

Activity: 2394

Merit: 5531

Self-proclaimed Genius

Quote from: Tofee on December 25, 2022, 06:17:16 PM

This error is showing up immediately on FinderOuter.

This must be a typo, yes?
Because FinderOuter will just fail the search after exhausting all the permutations.

Romoe

newbie

Activity: 7

Merit: 1

This python script below can create new valid checksum, It probably won't help much. But you should at least give it a try.

Code:

import base58

key = '5JLUSIY1ap3diK5PP2PIuAtdhyHKqyPTDzccqlHfiMcCGd5s8LM' #change this key to your private key

x = key.replace('I', 'i')
y = x.replace('l', 'L')

bytekey = base58.b58decode(y[0:46] + 'z'*5)[:33]

print(str(base58.b58encode_check(bytekey), 'utf-8'))

I can create the code that specific on your case, but I need more information [ex. how many 'I' and 'l' in your key and Where is it located?].
May be a months or a years, If you tried every possible way but still can't find the valid key, contact me at telegram or email on my profile.

Romoe

newbie

Activity: 7

Merit: 1

Quote from: Tofee on December 06, 2022, 11:56:05 PM

I lost my priv keys few years back and recently found while going through old lap top

Did you find it in an original email or it was in the text file you created?
If you find it in an original email, it's high likely that it's a scam because it's wrong from the beginning.

but if it in the text file you created, The mistake might be that you recorded it incorrectly, for example You may alternate lowercase letters with uppercase letters. (Base58 is case sensitive), The more mistakes you make,the more time it takes to find. It may take an hours to find valid key in 3 letters wrong. But for 4 letters wrong, It may take months or even years to find the valid key [Run on one simple CPU 24hr/day]
In this case, I think the first thing to do is you should try to find the private key form your original email.

Tofee

jr. member

Activity: 39

Merit: 14

Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on December 25, 2022, 05:21:28 PM

It means that the checksum (the last 5-6 characters of the private key) are not valid and do not match up with the rest of the private key. In other words, you still have one or more errors somewhere and have not yet found a valid key.

Is this error showing up on btcrecover? Can you share exactly the command you are running? Does it give you that error immediately or does it perform a search first?

This error is showing up immediately on FinderOuter.Thanks for your response. Wish you merry Xmas.

o_e_l_e_o

legendary

Activity: 2268

Merit: 18507

It means that the checksum (the last 5-6 characters of the private key) are not valid and do not match up with the rest of the private key. In other words, you still have one or more errors somewhere and have not yet found a valid key.

Is this error showing up on btcrecover? Can you share exactly the command you are running? Does it give you that error immediately or does it perform a search first?

Tofee

jr. member

Activity: 39

Merit: 14

Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on December 25, 2022, 06:56:14 AM

Quote from: Tofee on December 24, 2022, 06:56:24 PM

Thanks. I shall try with recover. The invalid characters in the key are ‘I’ and ‘l’. Wish you and everybody on this forum merry X’mas. May God bless all.

And you've tried using FinderOuter with those two character replaced by a wildcard, and it still did not find any valid keys?

In that case, when you set up btcrecover, the firs thing I would try would be feeding with a tokenlist file which contains your private key with the "I" and "l" characters replaced with "%*" (without the " symbols), which is the wildcard for any Base58 character. I'd also include the argument --typos-replace %* which will search for a single typo and try every Base58 character in every other position.

If that doesn't work, then you'll have to start widening your typo search, but you will quickly run in to the limits of what is feasible.

Appreciate your response and suggestion.
After several attempts a new error has popped up stating ‘ Invalid key - checksum error’. I am not sure what it means.
Request if any of the members can guide me how to overcome it. — Thanks.

o_e_l_e_o

legendary

Activity: 2268

Merit: 18507

Quote from: Tofee on December 24, 2022, 06:56:24 PM

Thanks. I shall try with recover. The invalid characters in the key are ‘I’ and ‘l’. Wish you and everybody on this forum merry X’mas. May God bless all.

And you've tried using FinderOuter with those two character replaced by a wildcard, and it still did not find any valid keys?

In that case, when you set up btcrecover, the firs thing I would try would be feeding with a tokenlist file which contains your private key with the "I" and "l" characters replaced with "%*" (without the " symbols), which is the wildcard for any Base58 character. I'd also include the argument --typos-replace %* which will search for a single typo and try every Base58 character in every other position.

If that doesn't work, then you'll have to start widening your typo search, but you will quickly run in to the limits of what is feasible.

Tofee

jr. member

Activity: 39

Merit: 14

Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on December 24, 2022, 09:00:53 AM

Quote from: Tofee on December 17, 2022, 12:23:45 PM

As far as the private key is I feel I have been scammed. The key is an invalid key.

Quote from: Tofee on December 23, 2022, 12:39:38 PM

As per advice from this forum members, I tried to repair the key with FinderOuter but the result came as failed.

Given that you say your private key starts with 5 and has 51 characters (as it should), then it sounds very much like that one or more characters in your private key is incorrect.

Have you tried substituting every character in FinderOuter for a wildcard one at a time and running it? Beyond that, the next thing I would suggest would be to use btcrecover. It supports raw private key recovery. You would feed it your private key, along with telling it to search for x number of typos, and let it do its thing. Note that 3 typos gives around 220 billion possible combinations, while 4 gives around 2.6 trillion, so the process might not be quick (or even possible, if you have more typos than this).

Thanks. I shall try with recover. The invalid characters in the key are ‘I’ and ‘l’. Wish you and everybody on this forum merry X’mas. May God bless all.

o_e_l_e_o

legendary

Activity: 2268

Merit: 18507

Quote from: Tofee on December 17, 2022, 12:23:45 PM

As far as the private key is I feel I have been scammed. The key is an invalid key.

Quote from: Tofee on December 23, 2022, 12:39:38 PM

As per advice from this forum members, I tried to repair the key with FinderOuter but the result came as failed.

Given that you say your private key starts with 5 and has 51 characters (as it should), then it sounds very much like that one or more characters in your private key is incorrect.

Have you tried substituting every character in FinderOuter for a wildcard one at a time and running it? Beyond that, the next thing I would suggest would be to use btcrecover. It supports raw private key recovery. You would feed it your private key, along with telling it to search for x number of typos, and let it do its thing. Note that 3 typos gives around 220 billion possible combinations, while 4 gives around 2.6 trillion, so the process might not be quick (or even possible, if you have more typos than this).

nc50lc

legendary

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Self-proclaimed Genius

Quote from: Tofee on December 23, 2022, 12:39:38 PM

-snip-
Yesterday, I was watching a YT video of Bitcoins in early days of 2009 to 2011 era and the presenter was speaking about P2PK and P2PKH. Since the keys was received in early 2011, I presume the keys belong to P2PKH address.

Unfortunately, that has nothing to do with the private key's invalidity.
It's all about the script type of the transaction of which the P2PK may have incompatibility with some wallets like Electrum.
The private key should work, still valid today, the issue would be failing to sync (find) the transactions if the outputs are P2PK. (Bitcoin Core will work just fine)

P2PKH on the other hand are the common "legacy" transactions that we see today, there shouldn't be any issue syncing those.

BlackHatCoiner

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Farewell, Leo

Quote from: Tofee on December 23, 2022, 12:39:38 PM

Thanks for your response. I received the private key by email which starts with 5 and has 51 characters.

I tried to sweep the key in electrum standard legacy wallet but it gave ‘invalid key’ error.

Can you write exactly what Electrum returns you during import? A private key is invalid if it either isn't correct WIF (e.g., doesn't start with 5, isn't 51 characters, checksum isn't valid etc.) or if it's outside the range of valid private keys (which is between 1 and a little less than 2^256 - 2^32).

Provide some log (or just the specific Electrum error if it isn't just "invalid key"), and we can verify about it being inside the allowed range.

Tofee

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Activity: 39

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Quote from: BlackHatCoiner on December 23, 2022, 11:45:08 AM

Quote from: Tofee on December 23, 2022, 10:14:13 AM

If anybody can advise or suggest me what is the difference between
1. P2PK and its corresponding privatekey
2. P2PKH and its corresponding privatekey.

P2PK stands for "Pay-To-Public-Key", which is when you create a script that pays to public key. P2PKH stands for "Pay-To-Public-Key-Hash", which is when you pay to the hash of that public key, and not the public key per se. When you send coins to an address, you pay to the hash of a public key. P2PK is not used anymore (while it's perfectly valid), because P2PKH is smaller in size, and therefore cheaper.

From standard wallet software, P2PK was never available (and if it was, it wouldn't be recommended). P2PK was used in the early days, because the first Bitcoin binaries were coded such so that the coinbase reward was sent to public key. I don't believe there was a specified reason for this selection.

For example, this transaction is P2PK: 0e3e2357e806b6cdb1f70b54c3a3a17b6714ee1f0e68bebb44a74b1efd512098. (it is labeled as "P2PK". mempool.space usually puts the address there, and P2PK doesn't have an address, but a public key, so it leaves it empty)
On the other hand, this transaction is a P2PKH one, which spends two P2PK outputs: 7940cdde4d713e171849efc6bd89939185be270266c94e92369e3877ad89455a.

If you didn't mine coins in 2010/2011, then your money are sitting in a P2PKH output. It is likely that it's an uncompressed legacy address, which requires a WIF private key that starts with "5".

Thanks for your response. I received the private key by email which starts with 5 and has 51 characters.

I tried to sweep the key in electrum standard legacy wallet but it gave ‘invalid key’ error.
After several attempts to sweep the key in specter and sparrow legacy wallets, I received the same error.
Then I tried Bitcoin core v 23.0 Bitcoin-qt blank wallet and again I get the error of ‘invalid key encoding - error -5’.

As per advice from this forum members, I tried to repair the key with FinderOuter but the result came as failed. I tried Python script posted on this forum but that did not work.

Yesterday, I was watching a YT video of Bitcoins in early days of 2009 to 2011 era and the presenter was speaking about P2PK and P2PKH. Since the keys was received in early 2011, I presume the keys belong to P2PKH address.

I am trying to figure out which wallet would be able to recognize my keys and point me in the right direction.

Once again, thanks for your prompt response.

BlackHatCoiner

legendary

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Farewell, Leo

Quote from: Tofee on December 23, 2022, 10:14:13 AM

If anybody can advise or suggest me what is the difference between
1. P2PK and its corresponding privatekey
2. P2PKH and its corresponding privatekey.

P2PK stands for "Pay-To-Public-Key", which is when you create a script that pays to public key. P2PKH stands for "Pay-To-Public-Key-Hash", which is when you pay to the hash of that public key, and not the public key per se. When you send coins to an address, you pay to the hash of a public key. P2PK is not used anymore (while it's perfectly valid), because P2PKH is smaller in size, and therefore cheaper.

From standard wallet software, P2PK was never available (and if it was, it wouldn't be recommended). P2PK was used in the early days, because the first Bitcoin binaries were coded such so that the coinbase reward was sent to public key. I don't believe there was a specified reason for this selection.

For example, this transaction is P2PK: 0e3e2357e806b6cdb1f70b54c3a3a17b6714ee1f0e68bebb44a74b1efd512098. (it is labeled as "P2PK". mempool.space usually puts the address there, and P2PK doesn't have an address, but a public key, so it leaves it empty)
On the other hand, this transaction is a P2PKH one, which spends two P2PK outputs: 7940cdde4d713e171849efc6bd89939185be270266c94e92369e3877ad89455a.

If you didn't mine coins in 2010/2011, then your money are sitting in a P2PKH output. It is likely that it's an uncompressed legacy address, which requires a WIF private key that starts with "5".

Topic: Invalid private key error - page 3. (Read 1415 times)