Hey folks.
I'm pretty sure I'm not getting back the BTC I mined years ago, but I'd like to hear some expert thoughts to finally close this chapter.
So here's my story: back in around 2010, I stumbled upon Bitcoin and got curious, so I downloaded 50miner. I ran it nonstop for about a week, and when I saw I had a few coins maybe just two or three, totally worth just a few cents I decided it wasn’t worth the electricity my computer was using. So, I uninstalled the program and just moved on. I still have the password I used to log into 50miner.
Then when Bitcoin skyrocketed, I remembered all of this. I still got that old hard drive, but I formatted it and wiped everything out, even reinstalled Windows and Ubuntu. I tried some recovery software, but no luck in finding the wallet.dat file, so I pretty much gave up on it.
Recently, I was searching for something on a recovery disk from that time and found a disk image file. It jogged my memory that while mining, my PC was being cloned in real-time to another disk using VMware. I’m quite sure the cloning started before I installed 50miner and ended before I formatted the machine.
The files I have are called "disco_duro.vmdk" (that's the hard drive), "wolf.vdi" (I think that's a virtual box file for an OS), and another folder named "maquina" (machine) that looks like it has stuff related to the virtual OS of the VMware machine.
I used diskDrill to look for the files...
Were you a solo miner or did you join mining pool (esp. their own pool 50btc)?
If you haven't withdrawn BTC from the pool for whatever reason, then the wallet.dat you recovered definitely doesn't contain any BTC; you only see balances in the app's GUI. And the login password is useless in this case, as they are currently defunct.
I have read that 50miner was a pool miner, mining in 50btc pool, I don't remember to be given the option to do it in other way.
I have not recovered the wallet.dat file either.
The only thing I have is a virtual copy of the drive where all of this happened, but I'm understanding that if I never withdrew the mined BTC in a wallet.dat file this BTC mined are lost forever, aren't they?
Thanks for your answer!!
You could still use VMware Workstation and/or Virtualbox to mount your virtual storage file and look in the mounted filesystem if you can find your wallet. If you do find it, you can verify if there are any spendable coins. Then you have peace of mind whatever the outcome is.
That doesn't sound like rocket science, at least to me. YMMV.
With some Google or LLM chatbot search, you should be able to find working tools to inspect such virtual storage containers. Of course it depends on your computer knowledge how feasible it's for you.
DiskDrill have this option too, virtual disks can be mounted and deleted files can be recovered. A virtual disk can be opened as a compressed file too, and it is possible to search through its files. I did both things, recovered several gigs of files, compressed files either, and searched for the wallet.dat file, but nothing appeared. Even I searched for the word "wallet" inside documents, but it only appeared inside a .jl file, but nothing related to 50miner or similar.
Also searched for 50miner, key, seed and several words related but nothing useful appeared.
I don't remember recovering the wallet.dat file; I didn't know anything about mining at the time (and I don't know much about it now) and since 50btc is closed there is no way to recover it know.
I think my bitcoins are lost like tears in the rain
Thanks so much for your help!
If you still have the password from 2010, you are a very careful human being, backing up the wallet.dat file wouldn't have been so difficult. Maybe you acted in anger.
If the cloning truly stopped before you formatted the system, then the wallet.dat would exist inside the virtual disk image, it might exist as a simple file on your current filesystem, but embedded within that virtual disks filesystem structure.
if your instinct is firm, you could hire an expert. Mount the .vdi/.vmdk image in a controlled environment and perform a low-level forensic scan of the mounted filesystem, rather than searching the container file directly.
Giving up again?
Okay, let's wait on quantum computers for help
He gave up as he made sure to only back up his login password. He might have managed to log in with a VirtualDisk, but it wouldn't be possible to sync his account to the latest state, especially to restore his balance.
It's worth noting that he was mining through the "50btc" mining pool. His Bitcoins weren't stored locally, but by the pool admins. Currently, it's uncertain whether the admin still holds those Bitcoins for future reclaiming or it was spent on their own initiative making it impossible to claim (here's an example :?topic=2717070.0).
I had the impression you had some sort of usable backup but it seems I was wrong.
This part doesn't quite make a lot of sense to me: cloning a system in real-time with VMware?
I mean I used VMware Workstation a lot to run virtual machines for quite some purposes. Yes, I'm aware this is not the only product that VMware had in its portfolio. Still a bit odd...
Anyway, when you had to use some data recovery tools, it looks like something got corrupted, reasons unknown. Not a great starting point. Take whatever you want from this.
I am, I still have the drivers floppy disks of the first printer I bought, is a sentimental matter I think.
I think it doesn't because I never retrieved the wallet.dat file. At first I thought that, when you install or run the 50miner program, the wallet.dat file was created in your PC but now I know that it wasn't, you have to retrieve it manually because you were mining at 50btc pool.
I can give the 50% of the bitcoins that anyone can find in the vmdk image, the only thing I have is the password of 50miner.
I think even quantum computers can do anything, unless they can rebirth 50btc!
Thanks again.
FWIW, he could try using either generic file or Bitcoin recovery first. For example, pywallet even let you directly scan the image/storage. Although pywallet only scan for wallet file created by Bitcoin Core.
Obviously he should make backup/copy of the image file and mount the image with read-only mode.
When I first read this thread, I thought it was a usual matter of lost backup and wallet.dat file. But after reading @rat03gopoh post, I now understood the real nature of the case. There's no firm hope of recovery, since Op joined a mining pool that no longer exists.
I think Op also agreed to this bitter reality.
I would download VMware, and using a copy of the files, load up the virtual machine.
From there you should look for the wallet.dat in the usual places. eg:"%APPDATA%\Bitcoin"
I did that or try to do it. The last version of Vmware doesn't recognize the old virtual machine. I installed and old Vmware version, from the time the virtual machine was created, but it doesn't work fine on Windows 11. Anyway, it would be useless, because I never retrieved the wallet.dat file, so I won't appear.
Thanks for your help!
So does this mean you never set up a local bitcoin client wallet?
The mining pool would send the bitcoin to your wallet address on your local computer once you had a certain amount of bitcoin in your mining pool account.
If you never gave them an address to send it to, they would just store it online in the pool.
If thats the case when the pool closed, they would have kept the bitcoin.
Unfortunately for you the pool shut down in 2014: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54673.1800
AFAIR from this thread, it's a bit unclear what happened, at least not much useful details were provided.
I did some pool mining in 2011 and 2013 or 2014, but not in a pool any near where OP might have been involved with. It wasn't uncommon for a pool to "authenticate" a miner with a Bitcoin public address as user name and some rather arbitrary password (password could've been "x" because it didn't matter much at all). This Bitcoin address was also commonly used as the withdrawal address for what the miner was credited for his hash work.
So, a miner needed to have a Bitcoin address which they controlled, i.e. had the private key to be able to move funds. Usually you then had some sort of wallet from which you took such a receiving Bitcoin public address.
Depending on the pool there was either an automatic withdrawal threshold or you had to request a withdrawal of credited coins you mined. In the latter case, if OP never did that and the pool is long gone, there's basically no realistic hope, I would say.
If there was an automatic withdrawal threshold and a miner surpassed the threshold, I'd expect that mined coins were transfered to the withdrawal address. In that case you need to restore your wallet which contained the private key of the withdrawal address.