Topic: Need help recovering private key from 2009-2010 - page 2. (Read 800 times)

The transaction to your address took place about half a year before I learned about Bitcoin and I don't know which wallets besides Bitcoin-GUI were common or popular around July 2010. So, lets assume you used Bitcoin-GUI, because I'm not aware of any deterministic wallet around that time. Armory came later and its recovery and chain key did look very different from what you describe.

As far as I remember if you did export a private key of your receiving address then Bitcoin-GUI would've given you a private key in WIF format (not 100% sure about this as I didn't do such things with Bitcoin-GUI in 2011 when I first used it). What you say about your characters doesn't appear as a WIF key, so it might be that you converted it to hex for some reason (maybe as a decoy).

Are you absolutely sure, you don't have any sort of documentation about your "backup"? If not, as a reminder to other readers, stay away from selfmade obfuscation or backup methods without documenting it properly. There's very likely lots of footguns with such approaches.

I don't quite get or can visualize what you mean by "The question marks are sort of spread around the first half of the characters and aren't in the beginning or end." and together with "I stacked they string of characters in a way I couldn't tell if it was two 40 character keys or an 80 character key. If I only use the top line I have a 40 character string with no question marks, but that is an odd length.".

A private key in hex is 64 characters. You have 66 if we ignore the purpose of the questions marks (could be a decoy). You say your hex string starts with "001", so what about if you drop the leading "00" which would give you remaining 64 hex chars and try to use that as a hex private key. Also try your 64 char hex string in reverse! Who knows what "crazy" scheme you invented? No pun intended, just being mildly creative...

I have some other idea if you would explain me in more details what you mean by "The question marks are sort of spread around the first half of the characters and aren't in the beginning or end.".

From what I understood so far, the question marks don't replace any missing hex characters as you say you have all of them, 0...F, in the written characters already. 14 missing characters hidden by the question marks would be a bit too long to remember, except if they hide something like a regular series like ascending or descending hex digits.

When you say you wrote blocks of four hex characters: where do the question marks appear in the blocks where they are?

BTW, what do you get in terms of number of hex characters when you completely discard the blocks which have a question mark in them? Could this give you a mini private key? Hm, I'm just brainstorming, but I find this a bit odd to assume you used a mini private key as that would've required external tools to create one. Not sure how good your memory is roughly 13 years ago.

That's OK DaveF. It happens.

Public apology to @hosseinimr93 when making the post I did a few edits on my tablet and then a few quick edits here and lost the quote reference to his post with the info on the key types.
Since it's not on loyce.club or ninjastic.space with the quote I either killed it it my 1st quick edit (doubtful) or it just never made it in the 1st place.

Sorry.

-Dave

Could be the decimal representation of a private key but the end range can only be 78 characters long.
That FAQ page is outdated by the way, the latest Armory website is "btcarmory"
Another thing is, Armory's first Alpha release was on "Feb 15, 2012", that's 2 years past after you received your Bitcoins.

I'll try to download some old versions of Armory and check if I can find an 80-character private key like described in the old FAQ.
You can also directly ask in Armory sub-board (link) if the new developer 'goatpig' knows about what 'etotheipi' said in the FAQ.

 Hi after reading your post it sounds like a Armory wallet. If you look at how to restore armory backups they are separated in 4 characters. Maybe you use question marks to divide the characters. I would try to restore your wallet with Armory and see if it works. You will need to probably try different settings. Go and read how restore let me know how it works.

If the backup private key was generated from the year 2009 to 2010 I'm sure it was not created from Armory or multibit wallet because these two wallets was announced between year 2011 and 2012.


If it starts with 001 then it's a binary format you might need to covert it to the WIF key format to be able to import it to other wallets like Electrum

It definitely has all the characteristics of hexadecimal. The question marks are sort of spread around the first half of the characters and aren't in the beginning or end. I'm sure I could read everything clearly when I wrote it down so I put the question marks there intentionally. All characters used in hexadecimal are located in the string of characters, so I didn't intentionally leave a specific character or two out and just add those in place of the question marks. I stacked they string of characters in a way I couldn't tell if it was two 40 character keys or an 80 character key. If I only use the top line I have a 40 character string with no question marks, but that is an odd length.

I read this in Armory's FAQ, and opposes some other things I've seen. What kind of key are they talking about here?
"Each bitcoin (or fragment of) belongs to a cryptographic private key, which is an 80-digit number that is essentially impossible to guess. Bitcoins cannot be transferred unless the holder of the private key uses it to create a digital signature authorizing the transaction. A Bitcoin address is a string of letters that let other users know what your digital signature looks like without revealing the private key (it is related to the “public key”)." https://www.bitcoinarmory.com/faq/

Thanks for the information. The public address starts with a 1 and here it is: 1DYFqhdKDkHYytVn66QWKGY4PUebNYH9j9

The character starts with most likely an A or 1, but read another way these are the first three 001.

The private key is in hexadecimal and it should be 64 characters.

Use https://www.bitaddress.org offline on an airgapped device: https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org/archive/v3.3.0.zip

How to use it offline on an airgapped device: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22115/how-to-download-bitaddress-org-to-use-offline

After you open it offline, click on 'wallet details' and input the private key on 'enter private key' space that you see and click on 'view details'.

Download Electrum from https://electrum.org/
You can verify its signature: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/guide-how-to-safely-download-and-verify-electrum-guide-5240594

Open electrum, click on 'import bitcoin addresses and private keys' and paste the private key on Electrum. You will be able to spend your coins.

WIF Private keys start with K or L for compressed, while 5 for uncompressed. I will advice you to use K or L for low fee.

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Using bitaddress offline is for security, becuase the website (bitaddress) is online and you can not trust that.
Airgapped device is a device that its Bluetooth and WiFi card has been removed.
Reinstall the airgapped device OS after making it airgapped to avoid malware.

What character does it start with?


So it sounds like a hex key.

Without more info it's impossible to get you more info.

What is the public address? The one that starts with 1.

Don't post any other info or send any of the private key info to others.

If it's a HEX key it's somewhat simple a process to do.

Go here https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62449902 and follow steps: #1, #1b, #2, #3, #4 and #6 the 64 characters that you have should give you the same address I asked about above and a private key you can import into core.

-Dave

I finally found the backup I wrote down after using Gavin Andresen's Bitcoin faucet. I don't remember if I was using only Bitcoin Core, Armory, or something like Multi-bit. Those sound familiar.

There are 5 bitcoins in the first address and I never moved or used them. The characters I found on my handwritten paper backup are 80 characters, between (0-9) and (A-F). I wrote these in blocks of four characters. Within these 80 characters, I have 14 question marks. So a total of 66 known characters. I'm not sure if I only need 64, 66, or 80 characters total.

I have Bitcoin Core and Electrs downloaded on my Umbrel to start trying the recovery process. I also have Electrum and Armory downloaded.

I'm not sure the best course to go from here to find out what the key may be and how long it should be. I'm not in a hurry and have time to try to figure this out, hopefully with your help.

Offering a full Bitcoin to the best helper.