So, I recently stumbled upon an old Bitcoin wallet from about 7 years ago that I had set up on Bitcoin Core. I initially deposited a small amount around $40, and now it’s worth over £136.
I managed to find the root key for the wallet and went through the painstaking process of downloading the entire blockchain, which took days, only to end up staring at a zero balance.
After that, I extracted the BIP39 and imported it into Electrum. Same story, still showing a balance of zero, but it did indicate some transactions shortly after I created the wallet.
It seems the funds are still sitting in this other wallet (link), so they were never actually stolen.
I’m curious how this could have happened. Assuming the funds weren’t taken, is it possible that I made a mistake during the initial download of Bitcoin Core, which could have led the funds to end up at another address? Also, could there have been multiple wallet addresses in my Bitcoin Core wallet that I should still be able to access?
This seems backwards to me. There's no way to extract a Bip39 seed phrase from Bitcoin Core. If it was a Bip39 wallet you would have been able to use Electrum to extract the private key from a specific address and then import that into Bitcoin Core. Or, you could have used the extended private key from Bitcoin Core and use that to import a HD wallet into Electrum, but that's not Bip39...
Do you have a 12-word seed phrase, and are you sure it's Bip39, i.e. not an Electrum specific seed phrase?
ETA; 7 years is a long time, are you sure you don't have another wallet to which you may have moved the funds?
Root key? What do you mean by root key?
As far as I know, the only wallet that uses the term "root key" for the backup is Armory.
What do you mean by BIP39? Do you mean a series of meaningful words?
If so, you have a seed phrase and you should take note that bitcoin core doesn't support seed phrase at all.
Hi
I`m referring to the root key, i.e efkj abhr xxxx xxxx xxxx (chnged digits) .... 18 blocks of these 4 digits. This is what i had to regain access to my armory wallet.
I went into export keys on this to get the PrivBase58 address that i entered into electrum & blue wallet and im certain this is my old wallet showing this transfer that i never made
Not sure what happened did funds slip into another wallet address because i made an error, its not moved since 2018 so wasn't stolen, is there anything i can do?
Check if you see the address holding fund in Armory.
If you could find your address, copy the key in front of "PrivBase58" and import it electrum.
If you couldn't find the address you are looking for there, check "Include unused (Address Pool)". Armory may not know that the address is used if it's synced properly.
Yes.
No.
I would assume Armory's root key restores all addresses it ever used.
Which address is your in your wallet: 1A56jABzc62Nchh7JSkU9zW9H2BDXHvmiG or 1Cvoe4whXCKB7hL9KJEZHvT22Hdiitz26H?
Armory can't know which addresses have received fund, if it's not synced.
If OP's wallet is not synced properly, chances are he/she has an used address which Amory isn't aware of. If that's the case, the solution is that OP check "Include unused (Address Pool)" when exporting the private keys.
So according to Armory my address to receive BTC is 1SvoeQUWoEEgyiPmTmj8eXjWTWzfzXNtX.
Isnt by the name unused wallet mean there's nothing in there?
I did discover an electrum seed phrase that i wrote down 7 years ago that i typed in a new electrum download & again brought up 0 bal. I cant remember which brought up the wallet i gave earlier PrivBase58 address from armory or seed phrase that i entered into electrum & blue wallet.
Would a 2018 seed still work on a 2024 electrum download?
All i know is i didn't deliberately send it anywhere, its not a kings ransom but would be nice to access my $140 or whatever its gone up by in the last week.
Admittedly i didn't really know much about crypto back in 2018 so probably made a mess of things unfortunately.
Trivia: Electrum has been keeping backwards compatibility with its seed version.
Old seed from 2011, anything after v0.34 will work on the latest Electrum version and will derive the correct keys/addresses.
So Yes, your 2018 seed phrase will work on Electrum version 4.5.8.
Finally got access via electrum wallet using a seed i had on a flash drive
However when trying to move funds to my new wallet I'm getting super high gas fees warning, if i remember correctly i think it said 40% or something crazy like that.
Is this normal is there anyway to reduce this
At the time I am writing this post, transactions can be included in the blockchain with the fee rate of around 3 sat/vbyte and you shouldn't have to pay a high fee for your transactions, unless you have a big number of UTXOs in your wallet.
Did you receive the fund in multiple transactions? The more inputs you have in your transaction, the more fee you have to pay.
How much was the fee rate you were trying to make your transaction with?
Have you changed the default denomination from mBTC to BTC or using the default?
Because if you're sending in "mBTC" but intended to send an amount in "BTC", the actual amount would be as low as the transaction fee resulting with that warning message.
e.g. If you intend to send 0.01 BTC and typed "0.01" in the send tab's amount but the actual unit is in mBTC, you're actually sending "0.00001 BTC".
With that even a small fee of 400sats would be 40% of that amount.
First: there is no "gas" in Bitcoin. It makes it sound like you're talking about a centrally controlled shitcoin. Bitcoin has transaction fees.
If you have many small inputs, you should read my topic on consolidating small inputs. Currently, about 1.8 sat/vbyte should be enough to get a confirmation.