Topic: Lost Bitcoins in Bitcoin Core wallet - what now? - page 2. (Read 359 times)

You haven't pointed out any problems with Bitcoin or Bitcoin Core. When you "send" bitcoin to another address, until the transaction has been secured in a block, it is not final no matter what wallet you are using. It is a really bad idea to delete you wallet until the transaction has gone thru, and given how small the wallet file is, it could be preserved indefinitely just in case. What if someone (or yourself) who had sent coins to that wallet in the past accidentally reused an address? That bitcoin would be permanently lost if you did not keep a backup of your wallet/keys.

your first mistake, you should never delete your used wallet for whatever reason.

it will get to destination someday, provided it was (re)broadcasted successfully until confirmed

now, you just need to remember what was your transaction id or destination address
so in case the tx dropped by the network you can re-broadcast it manually until it gets confirmation
that would be your only option in case you cannot recover your wallet file

Did you use a deterministic wallet ?  If you have the pass phrase, you can reconstruct it.  If you don't, and you don't have a back up of your wallet, then that is utterly profoundly dangerous in any case.  What if your hard disk was dead ?  What if your computer didn't boot any more ?

So in any case, you should have, or a back up of your wallet file, or the pass phrase of the deterministic wallet, written down somewhere. 

That said, once the transaction is broadcast, your wallet doesn't matter any more in reality.  Once your transaction is in the mem pool of other nodes, indeed, you don't need your original wallet any more ; unless the transaction gets eliminated because of too low fee.

Assuming Mac or Windows, wouldn't the deleted file just end up in Trash or the Recycle bin? (Even some linux distros have a similar concept.) Since this was so recent, it should probably still be in there. Or did you very specifically configure the computer to totally delete the file (or... did you empty the trash yourself too...  )? Because that's usually not the default.

Your best chance of finding back your wallet.dat is turning off your computer right now. Don't start it again, unplug your disk, plug it into another computer and run data recovery software from there.

You can't blame Bitcoin Core for your own mistakes. What did you expect to happen after deleting your wallet? That's the one thing you should never do! In fact, you should have done the opposite: create several backups of your wallet.dat.
If you held several coins, you're looking at tens of thousands of dollars, and (depending on how long you've owned them) several thousands of dollars in Bitcoin forks. To claim them, you need your wallet!

Enter the receiving address in the search field on blockchain.info. If the transaction doesn't show up, it won't confirm. If it does show up, it depends on the fee you used whether or not it will drop from mempool before it gets confirmed.

Do you have the TXID or the recipient address? You could follow your transaction that way, It probably got sent but just didn't get confirmation yet as you used low fees and since the amount is big, I suggest using pushtx.btc.com to accelerate it, It should get confirmed within minutes.

~Okay then, so I've had some bitcoins in a Bitcoin Core wallet which I sent to an online wallet. This is how it happened:

- Bitcoin Core was opened
- synced and up to date
- I sent Bitcoins using the built in features and used twice the minimal transaction fee
- Confirmation message popped up and they were sent
- I went and deleted wallet.dat as I no longer needed this wallet
- Thought popped into my brain that made me wonder how do these bitcoins reach their destination
- I realized bitcoin technology is really bad
- Now I am worried about my bitcoins

Its been a good 10 hours and they are yet to reach their destination....

Does anyone know if they will get their eventually? Or have I just lost a couple of coins?

I've later read somewhere on the Internet that the Bitcoin Core client should be kept open so that it keeps rebroadcasting the transactions, but since I've deleted the wallet thinking everything would run smoothly, I am unable to do so.

I've never really looked into bitcoin technology all that much but now that I've come across this I can't help but mention that the original idea was good, though mass scale practicality, this is a fail coin... just look at how torrents work... this pretty much sums up how transactions in the network work. I just hope I ain't as smart and the coins will come through sooner than later, although I can't help but see how impractical bitcoin really is in the real world.

PS. Bitcoin Core sucks big time, especially for something that has been around for so long and has grown in value so much, it misses so many end user features, things that every crypto wallet should have in order to be effective for real world use.