Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I am a bit in worry. I saved my Bitcoins on a few paper wallets last year. Now I changed my mobile phone and was going to transfer my blockhain app to the new phone. So I opened my wallet on the PC and what the hell I can´t access it anymore. That is really strange cause I am sure I know the password but yet I can´t access it. Becaue I remember that I accessed it a few months ago with the same password as I try now.

The good thing is, I can access my wallet through my old smartphone. Since I have no clue about paper wallets (just followed an tutorial) I wonder, can I restore my bitcoins without the password for the blockchain? As I said, I have access from my old smartphone. So the plan is to reactivate the bitcoins and save them on a new paper wallet and notice my password for the new blockchain.

Or did I lost my Bitcoins now?

sure you can. just import/sweep the private key of whatever address that have a balance on a new wallet.

Puh that sounds great. Is there a tutorial for this somewhere? I have no idea how to do that  ;D

depends on what wallet you're going to use. but just search for "how to import private keys on xxx bitcoin wallet" and you'll find it. it's very simple and easy to do.

You didn't say what wallet you were using, or what wallet you want to import your private key into.

If you want to use a blockchain.info wallet there is a tutorial on how to import a private key here.

https://blockchain.info/wallet/paper-tutorial

If you want to use a multibit HD wallet there is a tutorial on how to import a private key here.

https://multibit.org/en/help/v0.4/help_importASingleKey.html

Most wallets let you import a private key, and if you want to use a different one just ask here and someone will be able to point you to a tutorial for it.

I think I will use blockchain.info again. Thank you very much. I really thought I´ll lost the Coins. I wonder why the password does not work anymore? Since it is impossible to change the password I don´t think a hacker changed it?

maybe you got it wrong? yes, you can't change or recover your password on blockchain.info.

edit:
browsed around and found this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=859936.0).

As I understood, I need to create a new wallet (on blockchain.info) and import the private keys from my paper wallet? I always thought I need my smartphone to reactivate them. So as I understood now, I can let the coins on the old paper wallet and do not need to activate and transfer them to an new paper wallet? When I want to activate them, I only need to create a new blockchain wallet and scan the private keys?

There is no any activation of your private keys. All you do is that you will import your mnemonic seed or private keys (I don't know what blockchain.info gives you but I think this is a mnemonic seed of 12 words)  into a new wallet. This can be new blockchain.info wallet again, Multibit, or any other wallet that supports mnemonic seed importing. I think you can even use mycelium for Android for example!

Ok great, then I let everything as it is.

If you have access to your Bitcoins on your phone then just create a new wallet and send all you Bitcoins to newly created wallet.also don't keep your Bitcoins in one place. :)

Problem is, he doesn't know the password or the password is not working ergo he can't spend the balance.

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Import private keys/sweep keys don't require the password afaik, as I have done that to several addresses and put into my blockchain.info wallet.

If i read correctly he said he has access to his wallet using his phone,so i think he can send the Bitcoins to new address unless he has setuped double password and has forgotten that.

The last thing you can try is restore using wallet backup(it's sent to your email address wherever you make changes on blockchain.info)
tutorial: http://goo.gl/hHozo0

Well we can backup our paper wallet You can also create a paper wallet backup. To create a paper backup, after logging in click on the Paper button in the lower right corner. You will be prompted to re-enter your password for security reasons. When the paper backup displays, you will want to print the entire page and save the paper backup someplace secure, like in a safe. Ensure the paper wallet file is deleted from your computer once you’ve printed it. For a paper wallet, you will not need a password to access the keys. Well then u can restore ur back uo again
Ps-sry for bad english

I found the password. Strange now it worked...

I think BTc is still way too risky (hacker) and complicated. Thats the reason why people don´t invest. Just imagine, I had the coins on my blockchain wallet and would really have lost the password. So all my money would have been gone.

One could argue that you should have stored your password on several places and that if you want to store Bitcoins you should do it yourself and not trust on third party services :D

Speaking more seriously, this isn't an issue of Bitcoin, but of the human nature... we tend to forget passwords, seeds, backups, mnemonic phrases (and we tend to make them very insecure) :)

If one has serious amount/investing a lot of money in bitcoins then should consider buying  a hardware wallet.

If you have a paper wallet, that means there's a private key printed on there right?

Just make a new wallet (doesn't matter which one, mycelium, blockchain, armory, any one you like) and just scan the private key(s) from your paper wallet and all your bitcoin will be accessed that way.

I do want a hardware wallet, the problem is with the current bitcoin price, buying a hardware wallet is the difference between buying a wallet and buying another bitcoin.

You can buy ledger(Ledger HW.1) hardware wallet for 0.05 BTC. it doesn't have a display screen but it does the work. ;)

So I created a new wallet and imported 10BTC from my paper Wallet to my new blockchain. It had 10 BTC on it. I then sent the 10BTC to my BTC-E account. So is that paper Wallet dead now? Or can I sent the 10BTC back to the same old paper wallet again?

It's not "dead", but you should just create another one.

The benefit of using a paper wallet is that your private keys have never been on a connect device and that means they're pretty safe, if you already expose such keys in a connect device you should archive the keys and use a new 'virgin' one. :)

Thank you. I understand. The thing is, it was just a test to see if and how to reactivate those Bitcoins. The thing is, there is a date printed on the paper wallet (not sure if that will really count). And we in Germany have to pay no taxes if we hold the BTC longer than 1 year. Thats the reason why I asked if I can use the old wallet. Because the coins were stored in March 2014.

In that case I assume what matters is the date you bought the coins, you should have some proof of that, a receipt maybe, if not, use the transaction date, you can check it in any block explorer.

The address generation date is irrelevant.

This is a interesting way to tax Bitcoin... any reason why they taxed it like that? In most countries Capital gain TAX only come into affect, when you sell the coins. They

do not take the period into account for that calculation, only when you profit from that purchase. They will never receive any income tax from Bitcoin, if they do it that

way, because everyone will just hoard for a year.  ::)

Thanks Pedrog. Will check that out.

@Kprawn
I don´t really know why and how. I only heared that if you make profit with Bitcoin, you have to pay taxes. But if you hold the coins for more than 1 year then there will be no taxes on the profit too. Of course all that is only when you transform your Bitcoins to FIAT. At least thats my infos I have. Maybe things changed.

this is a nice topic to know about it. if you get chance to transfer the amount to your new account then make it happen and then leave the account like that. but its better to remember the passwords always for the future.