Old, formerly used keys / seeds should always be saved, not disposed - page 2.

khaled0111

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Even Satoshi advised against deleting old wallets even if you believe you are not going to need/use them anymore:

Quote from: satoshi on October 03, 2010, 03:54:07 PM

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case? You should never delete a wallet.

A private key or a seed phrase is a few bytes long so storing thousands (even millions) of them shouldn't be a problem.
Wallet files can be a bit large (if it has many addresses and labels) but you don't always have to back them up, you need only to save the wallets seed.

1miau

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Quote from: Findingnemo on April 30, 2022, 05:20:38 PM

Imagine someone sent 10BTC to our address by a silly mistake even though we are too good and want to return we can't because we don't have the access. Wink

Yes!
That's exactly what happened to many people of the early days and I'm sure they will be quite sad for the rest of their life. Just by doing one simple mistake. Undecided

Quote from: Upgrade00 on April 30, 2022, 04:59:10 PM

If you operate an offline backup method (as you should), there is no extra required to store your used addresses and the corresponding seed phrase. You likely still own bitcoins and have a safe area where you store them, you can always keep your previously used mnemonics there as well.

That's true and a very recommended method.
But I'm sure, many people are still at a risk for whatever reason (maybe getting rid of all backup files Huh

) or even some more avoidable mistakes like this guy here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jan/12/in-bits-the-programmer-locked-out-of-his-130m-bitcoin-account

Oceat

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Quote from: Findingnemo on April 30, 2022, 05:20:38 PM

Imagine someone sent 10BTC to our address by a silly mistake even though we are too good and want to return we can't because we don't have the access. Wink

I don't think keeping the private keys of unused wallet doesn't need any extra cost so there is nothing wrong but we should not have too much of secure data to keep so its better to keep all the keys in an offline drive with appropriate details so in case we need it we can access them at anytime we want.

How lucky if someone received 10BTC by mistake.

But in reality that's not going to happen unless of course, if someone knew your address which you could consider saving the private keys/seed just in case someone might mistakenly sent to your old address. Well, it just depends actually if your old address was quite active in the past that do a lot of trading or p2p which is so hard to leave/forget.

Falconer

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No one knows what will happen in the future even if we only have some shitcoins in the old wallet. Of course there is always the best chance of seeing this shitcoin valuable in the future so it's good to consider keeping that old seed or PK wallet safe.

I still keep some PK from my old ethereum wallet until now, maybe long term too. But my first point of keeping it is not for a hope it will be of great value in the future but maybe I can use it again when I need it. It would be great if the shitcoin would have a price, but of course we don't have to spend a lot of money just to keep it safe.

OP, thanks for reminding him again.

Findingnemo

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Imagine someone sent 10BTC to our address by a silly mistake even though we are too good and want to return we can't because we don't have the access. Wink

I don't think keeping the private keys of unused wallet doesn't need any extra cost so there is nothing wrong but we should not have too much of secure data to keep so its better to keep all the keys in an offline drive with appropriate details so in case we need it we can access them at anytime we want.

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If you operate an offline backup method (as you should), there is no extra required to store your used addresses and the corresponding seed phrase. You likely still own bitcoins and have a safe area where you store them, you can always keep your previously used mnemonics there as well.

The chances of one receiving bitcoins randomly to an address they no longer use is slim and making a mistake when sending should ideally not happen, but if there's no cost to save it and there's a potential downside of not doing so, no matter how slim the possibility is; It is best to keep it.

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Surely, you still have some old, already used cryptocurrency keys / seeds and maybe you don’t have any use for them anymore, so you were considering to get rid of them. If so, please wait!

A list of reasons why an irreversable disposal of old addresses and their private keys, seed words or similar may be an action, you might regret later:

If you have ever given your addresses to anyone else to send you a transaction of cryptocurrencies on your address, it would not be unlikely that these people could assume that you still have access to your address and send your some coins AGAIN (for whatever reason). As a result of a misunderstanding, cryptocurrencies sent to your old address would no longer be accessible because you don’t have your keys anymore.
If you send some cryptocurrency to such an old address you own yourself by accident, you would no longer have access, as you would no longer have your private keys.
Even if you have entered your address on any platform as a regular payout address, crypto currencies sent to your address would be lost.
It is quite possible that an airdrop could be made for all addresses holding a certain amount of coins at time x. If you have no access to your wallet anymore, you won’t be able to access and sell such Airdrop coins.
If your address was used to create a signature, for example for your Bitcointalk account, you would also lose all possibilities to verify your ownership by creating a new signature from your address. All signatures generated from your address would be very useless.
In general, you could no longer prove ownership of your address.
Remember: even if you consider your (remaining) crypto currencies on your address are of low value, I would still keep my address in case your coins should rise in value. Applies to Bitcoin as well as Shitcoins.

Maybe even more reasons to keep your old addresses are valid but are not mentioned here for now. If you have some, feel free to share it here.

Reasons against keeping your old keys may exist, for example if your old keys are not disposed and destroyed and someone doing mischief gains access, such as signing from your address, for example, but such considerations are relatively unimportant compared to the reasons to keep old addresses.

Keeping and not disposing old keys is always an advisable consideration.

Translations

Language	translated by	Title
___________________________	_____________________	_______________________________________________________________________
Nigeria (Naija)	Chilwell	Old, formerly used keys / seeds Make we dey always saved am, and not throw away

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