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Topic: unspendable receiving address created in multibit (Read 879 times)

hero member
Activity: 1470
Merit: 504
The address where the change was sent is listed in the "request" tab in the original Multibit wallet file. That address is not included in the private keys exported by Multibit.

The private keys to that address simply aren't there. There is 0 possibility that I missed it as I cut the keys from excel file and pasted them into a new key file. All of the keys in the file have been accounted for. I've exported the keys to the original wallet several times and opened them in parallel in excel to confirm the entries are identical.

What could cause Multibit to skip the keys for a change address? I've never seen anything like this either...
legendary
Activity: 2296
Merit: 1014
im worried after reading this stories here, im using multibit also and im scared now to be true
newbie
Activity: 37
Merit: 0
Check my answer here:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bug-multibit-created-a-change-address-for-my-transactions-but-no-priv-key-552429

and see if you can export the Private Key for the address that contains the BTC and get them off that way.  good luck.
hero member
Activity: 1470
Merit: 504
I'm helping a fellow member here recover his coins which appear to have been sent as change to an unspendable address...

The wallet file is filled with several Multibit generated addresses and a few which were imported. He deposited .5226 BTC in his wallet and then 11 hours later spent .0241 BTC; the balance appears correct however the change is unspendable.

The .wallet file is not password protected because adding a password delivers the following error:

The adding of the password to the wallet failed. The error was "The key pub: cannot be successfully decrypted after wallet encryption so aborting wallet encryption.".

I started by exporting the private keys from his original .wallet file. The key dump reports a success and confirms the balance is equal however the private key for the change address used in this transaction isn't included in the export for some reason.

I created a new .wallet file and imported the .key file; the balance reports 0 after the wallet sync is complete and the receive address which the change was sent is now missing from the list of receive addresses.

I moved the .key file into excel and used conditional formatting to highlight duplicate private keys. The results isolated 10 duplicate entries in his .key file.

I removed the duplicates and created a new wallet file. After importing the new key file the balance is still 0 and the change address is missing.

I found the private key for the original deposit address and imported the key by itself to a new wallet; the entire balance was sent to 1AdHAc4kYrMzwijP75b4qp4xqP3ZRuFqL1 leaving a 0 balance in the original address, but in the original wallet file, the .0241 BTC transaction was sent to 1NXsTsFSAvitkaRUTe9kxkLNANBRryJQeQ and the difference of .4985 BTC is still showing as available. Attempting to spend these coins results in a triangle with 0 peers accepting the transaction.

It appears as if Multibit doesn't own the private keys to the change address it returned the unspent outputs to.

Here is the wallet address where the initial deposit was made https://blockchain.info/address/18c7UU2WsZ1khfNWrgAnbsU7UxmH24J6Ej

Here is the wallet address that received the coins https://blockchain.info/address/1AdHAc4kYrMzwijP75b4qp4xqP3ZRuFqL1

Any help is appreciated.
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