Bitcoin Forum

I've made a transaction, send 1 BTC to adress shown in the screen shot.
I didn't made the second 2.5 transaction, where did my money go?
I have no private key to this second adress where all my spare btc had gone.
After transaction I've deleted wallet.dat becouse I was sure that all my btc are safe at the adress which they have been send to previously.
Does it mean that my btc are lost forever?
I've tried to recover the lost wallet.dat but any of the data recover software can not find it.
Does it mean that when I have cold paper wallet like I did, and want to spend only a bit of it I have to dump another private key after each transaction?
What the hell happened? Am I missing sth? I want my btc back so badly.
http://i1163.photobucket.com/albums/q554/lolatronshik/Beznbsptytu1420u_zpse847c127.png (http://s1163.photobucket.com/user/lolatronshik/media/Beznbsptytu1420u_zpse847c127.png.html)

When using software in a way it was not intended to be used, and keeping track of your own money, it is important to understand exactly what you are doing, and how it all works beforehand.  Otherwise you are likely to lose money.

Whenever you create a new transaction, that wallet creates a brand new address and private key to send the "change" to.

The wallet keeps track of the address and the private key in the wallet.dat file, but does not tell you about either.

If you then delete the wallet.dat file and don't have any backups anywhere, then the bitcoins become permanently lost.

Hopefully you will find a way to retrieve that wallet.dat file.

Have you tried pywallet's recover function?
before anything else stop using the harddrive that wallet.dat was on, plug it in as a secondary drive on a different computer and then try pywallet

I have backup wallet.dat but it is created 1 or maybe two days prior to this transaction.
Maybe it contains private key to this future use adress also?
When I import it it's balance and transactions are the same as on this screen shot.

I've also switched wallet.dat since I've deleted it,  will it affect pywallet for searching only 1 most recent deleted wallet.dat and not the one I am looking for? 

Here's the transaction:
 - https://blockchain.info/tx/f0874707164307c074811620d140898a8914c2376dbf6e460dabf488d93c5a15

It doesn't make sense that there are two transactions showing if you only sent the transaction to one address.   The Bitcoin-Qt client will send change to another address from your wallet but when it does that it will not show as a separate transaction because it is just change back to yourself.    In this instance, it looks like you created a multi-output transaction yourself (e..g, using the "Add Address" button and pasting a second address to send the 2.5 BTC to.)   If that wasn't something you had done then I'm stumped as to how this occurred.

I've never ever in my life used send to many command, even dunno how to type  it properly
chronological order:
1)I've used importprivkey command for my wallet since my wallet.dat was backed up two days earlier, stored in encrypted container on another drive.
2)I've send 1 BTC to the know adress.
3)shut down bitcoin-qt
4)delete wallet.dat from .../roaming/bitcoin
5)import previous (two days earlier backed up) wallet.dat
6)see 0.68 balance and wonder where did 2.5 btc has gone
7)wonder if this can ever happen again?

Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  The previous backup (created 2 days ago):


Should have that address in it.  Unless you've changed the configuration, the wallet should have an address pool of the next 100 addresses it will use.  That address used for change should have been taken from that pool.  This means that the only reason that it should be missing from the backup file would be if more than 100 addresses were used (transactions created) between the backup and the transaction sending to 1Q8tJDZxsiBwNfqkNaCe1GDbKxqtWVCVcx.

If you can't recover the deleted wallet.dat file, you might try running a rescan on the wallet.dat file that the image was captured from

If you just did a normal delete of wallet.dat it should be recoverable from the trash bin, right click, and recover item.

AYFKM?

If using the backup wallet does not work follow the steps in this post:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38004.0

(If you are using windows, boot from a live Linux distro and mount the HD you have windows installed on as the guide says it is untested under Windows).

When Sending using the Bitcoin-QT client there is a green "+" for "Add Recipient" at the bottom.  But if that's not what you did then that doesn't explain it.

simple  ;D

People are trying to help. It's a possible scenario. If it wasn't what you did, then just say so. No need to get angry.

You should NEVER delete any wallet.dat file. If you feel key is compromised, transfer bitcoins to a new secure address but always keep the wallet files. If in future someone (or you) sends bitcoins to that address you cannot recover them.

I don't use QT anymore so can't be sure. Just speculating. Two possibilities:
1. Somone hacked into his computer and transferred the bitcoins
2. This is the change address, and the current wallet.dat is very old

+1 - Keep backups of every wallet, forever!
If you accidentally give someone an old address (for any reason) you can still recover your Bitcoin.

2. This is the change address, and the current wallet.dat is very old
[/quote]

Might be the issue, I've been using this wallet for like over half year or even more, any solution how to fix it and recover coins?

By recovering your wallet.dat, silly. ::)

If you can't, you lost it, sorry.

Thank you for making my coins worth more. I promise you I will not forget you every time I buy expensive stuff that costs exactly 2 BTC  ::)

Good luck retrieving your wallet!

Next time you better use ARMORY by Alan Reiner (aka etotheipi).

Unlike the main client (Bitcoin-Qt), you only need ONE backup EVER!!. 
It doesn't matter how many addresses you use -- they're all derived from the information on that ONE paper backup!

Works also if you forget your passphrase.
Luckily, Armory has the ultimate solution for this: Paper Backups! Use it!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152151.msg1614537#msg1614537
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=97.0