Hey everyone! I'm pretty new to this crypto scene, but I wanted to reach out because a buddy of mine recently told me something interesting. He thinks he bought some Bitcoin way back in 2010 and just totally forgot about it. And looking at the current prices, even a tiny bit would be worth a whole lot now.
So, here's the deal. He hadn’t thought about it until now because around 2014 he completely forgot about this little investment. Then he got into a bad accident and ended up in the hospital for a long time, which didn't help him keep track of things. He hasn’t shared this with anyone else, but as a good friend, he confided in me that he’s curious about whether he can still access it.
The tricky part is, he doesn’t remember much from back then. He’s pretty sure it was Bitcoin he bought, and that he paid for it on some site. It was definitely between 2010 and early 2011, though not later.
He told me he doesn't recall downloading any software for it, but he does remember making a payment for something called "Bitcoin".
So, we recently dug through some old computer drives of his, and we stumbled upon a couple of things:
- There’s a text file on a memory stick from early 2011 that has a 16-character string, mixing letters and numbers, starting with a "1" and ending with an "l". He thinks this might be linked to the Bitcoin he bought, but...
In short:
Just 16 characters is far too short to mean anything. It can't even be an address, and for sure won't be a private key. It could be a brain wallet. I doubt that's very likely, but it doesn't hurt to check (on an offline system).
Disk recovery is a specialized (and expensive) job. If you think it's worth it, send the disk to a specialist.
Use Pywallet to search the entire partition for private keys.
This is the tech board. Try to keep the personal stories out, that makes it easier to get to the point.
If it is just 16 characters it's not a public key for Bitcoin because the BTC address characters are around 26-62 long or even if it has some missing characters it's just a public key and you can't use it to recover your wallet.
Since you still possess of the old hard drive you can try looking for private keys for reference use this "List of address prefixes" so that you know what private key looks like because that is the key that you need to recover your old wallet or find the wallet data that contains your old wallet.
Mt Gox account confirmation codes were 16 characters long, and they were operating since 2010.
If they were using a public email system like hotmail, and you still have access try searching the email for the 16 character string.
If you can find the account creation confirmation, it will have their user ID in the link. With the user ID you can look up the balance in the Mt Gox data leak files. Alternatively Mt Gox would have sent trade alerts to the email address
Unfortunately of it was a Mt Gox account, you have missed all the creditor repayment deadlines, and your bitcoin is lost, unless it was withdrawn to a bitcoin wallet. In which case they would have send an email saying so.
In that case, instead of prioritizing file recovery, look for physical backups like private key(s) written on paper first.
And since it's that date, it should be any format of a private key but not any form of HD wallet backup like seed phrase or master private keys.
Also, his "key.txt" file doesn't look anything like a WIF/Mini private key, it even got an invalid base58 character "l" with it.
Since you already tried it as a Brainwallet passpharse, you've already confirmed that it isn't a mini private key.
Perhaps, it's some key string that can get to his account to an old Exchange or web wallet, both don't require him to install any software.
AFAIK all exchange which exist since 2010 or early 2011 no longer exists. But if you count middle or late 2011, ask him whether 2 exchange called "Kraken" and "Bitstamp" remind him of anything.
Bitcoin private key is 256-bit of data. With common format (binary, hex, base58 or base64), it's impossible to fit 256-bit of data into 16 characters. Even mini private keys have either 22 or 30 characters.
Two further questions:
- If he made a web wallet or bought from an exchange back then, which were operational in that time frame (late 2010-mid 2011)? So I could look them up and see if any of his emails still work on these sites, or that key works.
- We're looking for more old hard drives he might have. If I scan the disk images, what text or characters can I scan for that would give me an indication that a wallet or keys are on any of these drives? Somebody on here said look for "name" as it is a field in the wallet.dat, but that is too common a word and shows up alot in a typical Windows installation. I only have a newer wallet.dat created by newer Bitcoin Core for comparison and the "name" field usually looks like this: name*bc1... In 2010/2011, what would it have looked like?
In such cases, you should seek out help from a professional data recovery company and don't try manually because as you said, then hardware failure occurred. Btw I think that Mushai is right, your friend would purchase Bitcoin from Mt Gox exchange. I think he wouldn't have set up Bitcoin Core wallet because it's a little complicated and he would have remembered that.
What do you mean in web wallet? Wallet like blockchain.info? It was created in 2011 as a blockchain explorer and wallet was created in 2012. If I recall correctly, there wasn't similar Bitcoin wallet before.
If you mean wallet generator websites in web wallet, then it's possible that he used one but I think recovery will be impossible and also these types of websites were actually scammers.