Lost all my Bitcoins?

[ksd5]

I wanted to test Bitcoin's double-spending protection, so I copied the wallet.dat file to another folder. I had 1.21 BTC as my balance, and I donated 0.01 BTC, and then exited the program. I then moved the copy of the wallet.dat file back to Bitcoin's AppData folder, and started Bitcoin.

When it started, it showed 1.21 BTC as my balance, but a second later, it became 0.00.

Is this there on purpose to punish people who attempt double-spending, or is it a bug?

(All my transactions are present in the window. My balance is at 0.00 though.)

[1713903978]

1713903978

[1713903978]

1713903978

[1713903978]

1713903978

[1713903978]

1713903978

[SmokeTooMuch]

hmm that indeed seems odd.
if you still got the other version of your wallet.dat try to use that.

[theymos]

The 1.21 BC was in a single "chunk". When you sent 0.01, you made a transaction with one "in" (the "chunk") and two "outs": one sent 0.01 to whoever you sent that to, and the other one sent 1.20 back to you as "change". This second "out" was sent to a brand new address that you just generated. Since your old wallet.dat doesn't have the keys to this new address, you don't see it.

[ksd5]

Ah, okay. So I guess that my 1.20 BTC is lost forever, unless I try to recover the file with a data recovery tool.

[SmokeTooMuch]

If you want to do that you should do it as soon as possible because every new write-access could overwrite the sector where that file is still stored.

[jimbobway]

I wanted to test Bitcoin's double-spending protection, so I copied the wallet.dat file to another folder. I had 1.21 BTC as my balance, and I donated 0.01 BTC, and then exited the program. I then moved the copy of the wallet.dat file back to Bitcoin's AppData folder, and started Bitcoin.

When you copied the copy of wallet.dat back to the Bitcoin AppData folder, did you overwrite the existing wallet.dat?

This is certainly REALLY SCARY since that's how people do backups.  What is the procedure to do backup and restoring backups???

[ksd5]

Yeah, I just overwrote it. I'm not gonna bother trying to recover the file. It was only 1.20 BTC and I'm not gonna sweat the small stuff.

The wallet.dat now has transactions that don't reflect the current balance, so I'm just going to delete it.

Luckily, I only had 1.20 BTC to lose, but backing up the wallet should be definitely integrated into the client.

While they're doing that, they should build in a way to "bank" your coins into encrypted files.



Well, I guess the BTCs value just got a tiny bit higher.    

[mizerydearia]

A tiny bit now, but in a couple years?  Here's a snippet from my IRC bot.
According to http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html the world population is 6,855,970,029. If everyone had the same amount of bitcoins, everyone would have 0.00306302 bitcoins.  If 0.00000001 bitcoins were equivalent to US$0.01, then everyone would have equivalent of US$3,063.02389176 and the value of all bitcoins would be equivalent of US$21,000,000,000,000.00.

[Gleb Gamow]

A tiny bit now, but in a couple years?  Here's a snippet from my IRC bot.
According to http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html the world population is 6,855,970,029. If everyone had the same amount of bitcoins, everyone would have 0.00306302 bitcoins.  If 0.00000001 bitcoins were equivalent to US$0.01, then everyone would have equivalent of US$3,063.02389176 and the value of all bitcoins would be equivalent of US$21,000,000,000,000.00.

Here's the new link: http://www.census.gov/popclock/

In over five years, the population now exceeds 7B and bitcoins are worth way more than fractions of a cents, in fact, there's virtually a parity with the two abstracts when considering its market cap.

[fuddudle]

A tiny bit now, but in a couple years?  Here's a snippet from my IRC bot.
According to http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html the world population is 6,855,970,029. If everyone had the same amount of bitcoins, everyone would have 0.00306302 bitcoins.  If 0.00000001 bitcoins were equivalent to US$0.01, then everyone would have equivalent of US$3,063.02389176 and the value of all bitcoins would be equivalent of US$21,000,000,000,000.00.

Of course, the percentage of the world population who would actually want bitcoins will probably stay at 0.001 or less.

[EthanB]

A tiny bit now, but in a couple years?  Here's a snippet from my IRC bot.
According to http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html the world population is 6,855,970,029. If everyone had the same amount of bitcoins, everyone would have 0.00306302 bitcoins.  If 0.00000001 bitcoins were equivalent to US$0.01, then everyone would have equivalent of US$3,063.02389176 and the value of all bitcoins would be equivalent of US$21,000,000,000,000.00.

Of course, the percentage of the world population who would actually want bitcoins will probably stay at 0.001 or less.

The percentage of people who own USD is close to 5%, so consider that

[Lazada]

you have your wallet destroying data. You really lost all his bitcoin 

[Nobitcoin]

A tiny bit now, but in a couple years?  Here's a snippet from my IRC bot.
According to http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html the world population is 6,855,970,029. If everyone had the same amount of bitcoins, everyone would have 0.00306302 bitcoins.  If 0.00000001 bitcoins were equivalent to US$0.01, then everyone would have equivalent of US$3,063.02389176 and the value of all bitcoins would be equivalent of US$21,000,000,000,000.00.

When Bitcoin gets cracked it will mostly likely to be worth exactly $ 0.00

[TKeenan]

A tiny bit now, but in a couple years?  Here's a snippet from my IRC bot.
According to http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html the world population is 6,855,970,029. If everyone had the same amount of bitcoins, everyone would have 0.00306302 bitcoins.  If 0.00000001 bitcoins were equivalent to US$0.01, then everyone would have equivalent of US$3,063.02389176 and the value of all bitcoins would be equivalent of US$21,000,000,000,000.00.

When Bitcoin gets cracked it will mostly likely to be worth exactly $ 0.00

you obviously don't understand what 'cracked' is.  Not going to happen.

[HCLivess]

The most retarded aspect of bitcoin, regardless of how safe it is. I am always using just one address and sending everything even with altcoins there. The new multiaddress GUI is so fucking confusing.

[franky1]

lesson to all.. learn your privkeys!!!

save your privkeys as they are the important part. dont just rely on having a wallet.dat file in a second folder.

not only can u mess things up by not copying the file correctly. you can also get viruses, house fires, burglars stealing your PC. a disgruntled employee/spouse putting a hammer to your device.

so learn how to get your privkeys and back them up in a new location..

the reason why the OP lost his coins is because when he sent the 0.1btc out it also takes the 2.0btc with it and returns the 2.0 to a change address.. this change address is saved to the active wallet.dat.
the problem is that if he had a wallet.dat backed up from hours/days before the tx was sent. then the backup wont contain the privkey/pubkey of the change address..

[HCLivess]

lesson to all.. learn your privkeys!!!

save your privkeys as they are the important part. dont just rely on having a wallet.dat file in a second folder.

not only can u mess things up by not copying the file correctly. you can also get viruses, house fires, burglars stealing your PC. a disgruntled employee/spouse putting a hammer to your device.

so learn how to get your privkeys and back them up in a new location..

the reason why the OP lost his coins is because when he sent the 0.1btc out it also takes the 2.0btc with it and returns the 2.0 to a change address.. this change address is saved to the active wallet.dat.
the problem is that if he had a wallet.dat backed up from hours/days before the tx was sent. then the backup wont contain the privkey/pubkey of the change address..

No. Lesson to BTC DEVS - learn basics of end user experience. Drop your Microsoftian attitude, please. It's 2015.

[stingers]

I wanted to test Bitcoin's double-spending protection, so I copied the wallet.dat file to another folder. I had 1.21 BTC as my balance, and I donated 0.01 BTC, and then exited the program. I then moved the copy of the wallet.dat file back to Bitcoin's AppData folder, and started Bitcoin.

When it started, it showed 1.21 BTC as my balance, but a second later, it became 0.00.

Is this there on purpose to punish people who attempt double-spending, or is it a bug?

(All my transactions are present in the window. My balance is at 0.00 though.)

Do you still have your backup intact? Why on earth did you want to try double spend with 1+BTC?

[franky1]

lesson to all.. learn your privkeys!!!

save your privkeys as they are the important part. dont just rely on having a wallet.dat file in a second folder.

not only can u mess things up by not copying the file correctly. you can also get viruses, house fires, burglars stealing your PC. a disgruntled employee/spouse putting a hammer to your device.

so learn how to get your privkeys and back them up in a new location..

the reason why the OP lost his coins is because when he sent the 0.1btc out it also takes the 2.0btc with it and returns the 2.0 to a change address.. this change address is saved to the active wallet.dat.
the problem is that if he had a wallet.dat backed up from hours/days before the tx was sent. then the backup wont contain the privkey/pubkey of the change address..

No. Lesson to BTC DEVS - learn basics of end user experience. Drop your Microsoftian attitude, please. It's 2015.

no one should be backing up their wallet.dats as the change addresses mean you have to constantly update. i would say that bitcoincore needs an easy way to File->save the privkeys as having to explore your program data folders is just silly

[amaclin]

No. Lesson to BTC DEVS - learn basics of end user experience. Drop your Microsoftian attitude, please. It's 2015.

Why should btc devs care about user's funds?