Author

Topic: Multibit did NOT plan to rob wallets out of Bitcoin Cash. (Read 138 times)

newbie
Activity: 5
Merit: 0
This type of publication is good, it allows us all to learn and have references to what to do in a similar case, thanks.
 Smiley
HCP
legendary
Activity: 2086
Merit: 4314
Thanks HCP:
your advice and directions are flawless. (amongst a lot of other things, I had a "u" instead of an "a") Thank you so much for your help and persistence.   
You're welcome... glad that you managed to get it all sorted out and that I was of some assistance Smiley
newbie
Activity: 24
Merit: 0

Quote
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- Restore seed in ElectronCash (using BIP39 option and derivation path m/0') using derivation path m/0' to get BCH

Thanks HCP:
your advice and directions are flawless. (amongst a lot of other things, I had a "u" instead of an "a") Thank you so much for your help and persistence.   

U can send  me your name and an address if U like
gezajp at gmail.com
thanks again
GP
newbie
Activity: 24
Merit: 0
My deepest thanks
I'm working with your advice.
thanks
gp
HCP
legendary
Activity: 2086
Merit: 4314
ThankU HCP for your detailed reply.
ONE; The seed I wrote down in 3 different places -- and I used it twice on two different computers and two different OS (WIN/Linux) and they worked  before to reconstruct the wallet.
It's quite possible that as MultiBitHD has been deprecated for nearly 9 months that the network of peers/nodes it was using no longer exists and that is why it can't reconstruct the wallet... Is it showing as invalid in the app? Or not showing history?

Did you try restoring in Electrum? (Need to select "Options -> BIP39 seed" and make sure you use Derivation Path of m/0' when prompted... Note that the ' is very important!)


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Your logic about passwords not working is suspect  -- they work unless they are blocked from working.
I can assure you that I spent hours debugging this issue... The "actual" error is caused because a new field was being included in the transaction object... During the wallet opening the program parses all the transactions that have been stored in the wallet file (it stores all transactions relating to wallet addresses in the wallet file), this new field would prevent the hash of the transaction fields matching the transaction ID (which is the hash of the transaction)... This would throw an exception which was NOT caught in the transaction parsing section, but by higher up code... which unfortunately results in the program returning the very confusing "Password did not unlock the wallet".

Like I explained... It DOES unlock the wallet, it's just that the wallet cannot be parsed properly and the software freaks out Undecided

Did you read through some of the "password did not unlock the wallet" threads here? It was quite a common issue.


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SeCOND: "You need to check your Addresses on a BCH block explorer" -- THAT  IS exACtly whAt i DID, all my addresses, -- and there  is only 0.017 BCH on one of over ten  addresses.   2 BCH is missing= GONE.
So  spending hours if not days to try and reconstruct the wallet would be an utter waste of time  because according to the BCH blockchain except for 0.017 all my  BCH is gone.
Pass. I don't have access to your addresses or seed so I can't comment... All I can ask is, are you sure you checked the "change" addresses for your wallet? Or only the displayed "receive" addresses?


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As for MULTIBIT being clean: if it is as you say easy  to get clean up key words etc etc  to get  private keys then  why didn't MULTIBIT  reveal how to get the private keys from the wallet. If anything they did everything they could to keep those private-keys hidden.
I'm not sure why MultiBitHD made it so difficult to get private keys... It seems to me they "dumbed" the wallet down a lot and tried to hide a lot of the inner workings of Bitcoin from people... However, with the Seed Mnemonic, you can easily retrieve the private keys (assuming you know the derivation path used).


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ALSO: after the 12 word mnemonic key is entered -- Multibit needed a  "bit-stamp" numbers (like "2947/37") to set-up the wallet. You are telling me that  (that is "impossible") these numbers could not make the impossible very possible  by  altering/sabotaging the  mnemonic.
The numbers were simply a shortcut method to reduce the amount of searching the wallet would do during restore... They are a "date" (the date your seed was created in the wallet), to tell the software when to search  for transactions from... The idea being that if your seed was created on 10th August 2016, there is no point looking for transactions BEFORE that date... It decreases wallet restore time and load on the servers.

The numbers are NOT required to restore the wallet from the seed mnemonic.


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HCP -- with all due respect: are you financially connected with Multibit? I maybe wrong but your detailed reply smells of obfuscation.
sincerely
GP
What respect? You are effectively accusing me of being a paid shill... Roll Eyes Undecided

For the record, the answer is no... I am not currently, nor have I EVER been connected with MultiBit... Financially or otherwise.


Also, my offer still stands... I'm happy to assist you to fully restore your wallet... My personal suggestion would be:

- Restore seed in Electrum (using BIP39 option and derivation path m/0') to get BTC
- Restore seed in ElectronCash (using BIP39 option and derivation path m/0') using derivation path m/0' to get BCH
newbie
Activity: 24
Merit: 0
ThankU HCP for your detailed reply.
ONE; The seed I wrote down in 3 different places -- and I used it twice on two different computers and two different OS (WIN/Linux) and they worked  before to reconstruct the wallet.  
Your logic about passwords not working is suspect  -- they work unless they are blocked from working.
SeCOND: "You need to check your Addresses on a BCH block explorer" -- THAT  IS exACtly whAt i DID, all my addresses, -- and there  is only 0.017 BCH on one of over ten  addresses.   2 BCH is missing= GONE.
So  spending hours if not days to try and reconstruct the wallet would be an utter waste of time  because according to the BCH blockchain except for 0.017 all my  BCH is gone.

As for MULTIBIT being clean: if it is as you say easy  to get clean up key words etc etc  to get  private keys then  why didn't MULTIBIT  reveal how to get the private keys from the wallet. If anything they did everything they could to keep those private-keys hidden.
ALSO: after the 12 word mnemonic key is entered -- Multibit needed a  "bit-stamp" numbers (like "2947/37") to set-up the wallet. You are telling me that  (that is "impossible") these numbers could not make the impossible very possible  by  altering/sabotaging the  mnemonic.

HCP -- with all due respect: are you financially connected with Multibit? I maybe wrong but your detailed reply smells of obfuscation.
sincerely
GP
HCP
legendary
Activity: 2086
Merit: 4314
What are the odds that
1/ the key-words stopped  working  
2/ the password does not work
3 / and all the BCH from the Bitcoins are GONE?  
4 / they VERY conveniently ended their support for their wallet around the time of the fork.
Multibit must have planned ahead to sabotage  key-words so that  after the fork they would not work so they could steal all BCH from their sabotaged-key-word wallets.
I cannot see how the  whole scam process could work unless it was  designed into the Multibit Wallet ahead of time.
They can't "sabotage" seed mnemonics... that is "impossible". It is most probable that you have simply written a word down incorrectly... there are a lot of similar word groups like kit, kite, kid, kind etc... Have you tried the seedrecover.py script from "btcrecover"? (https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md) It is VERY good at finding/fixing errors in seed mnemonics... alternatively, if you have the wallet file, you can also try: decrypt_bitcoinj_seed by the same author (https://github.com/gurnec/decrypt_bitcoinj_seed)

The password not working on a MultiBit HD wallet is also a relatively common occurrence. Have a look through some of the threads here. It isn't that your password is wrong, it is just that there was a subtle change in the way transactions were being recorded/parsed that MultiBit HD does not understand... and it generates a very confusing "password did not unlock the wallet" error. It should really be: "MultiBit was unable to parse a transaction and could not open your wallet even though the password is correct".

Checking your MultiBit transactions isn't a good way to check your BCH balances. You need to check your Addresses on a BCH block explorer and see what the current balances are. Unfortunately, MultiBit HD does not provide easy access to "change" addresses and if you had "spent" BTC before the fork it is highly likely that your BTC was on a "change" address at the fork... making it even more difficult to accurately check your balances.

As for the timing of the support being dropped... they had effectively ended most support for their wallet a LONG time before the BCH fork... the final release was actually in March... and there were no changes to the GitHub after that (until they modified the readme on the 27th July when the official announcement was made).

If they had intended to "rob" people, they would NOT have advised people to migrate to other wallets, nor would they have made videos showing how to do it...


I suggest you try either seedrecover.py or decrypt_bitcoinj_seed (as linked above)... if that fails, there are other methods for extracting/dumping private keys from the wallet file that you could then import into a BCH wallet to locate your BCH.

If you need any help, feel free to ask, I'll be glad to try and help Smiley
newbie
Activity: 24
Merit: 0

I have to swallow my words; all sorts of things went wrong and thanks to HCP it was  not Multibit's problem but my learning problemS.
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orig post:
I had 2 bitcoin   in my Multibit wallet at the BCH (Bitcoin Cash) Fork.  After the  AUG 1 fork  I cannot restore the wallet from my key-words that previously restored the wallet  , and my password does not work. The key-words are “not valid” at https://iancoleman.io/bip39/  – I then check all my Multibit transactions on  https://blockdozer.com/insight/ and discover that all my Bitcoin Cash that I should have had from before the fork has vanished.
What are the odds that
1/ the key-words stopped  working  
2/ the password does not work
3 / and all the BCH from the Bitcoins are GONE?  
4 / they VERY conveniently ended their support for their wallet around the time of the fork.
Multibit must have planned ahead to sabotage  key-words so that  after the fork they would not work so they could steal all BCH from their sabotaged-key-word wallets.
I cannot see how the  whole scam process could work unless it was  designed into the Multibit Wallet ahead of time.
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