Bitcoin Forum

Hello, guys

I would appreciate any ideas on the following matter with coins kept in Bitcoin core wallet in 2014:
- i've got a Bitcoin core wallet (v 0.8.5) where I kept my coins in 2013-2014 with its final balance aprx 1 BTC (December 2014);
- in January 2018 I've opened a wallet and see former and correct balance (1 BTC), but the wallet is synchronizing with >100 weeks estimation;
- I've made several transactions for small amounts and still waiting for confirmations for >5 days;
- then I decided to go a different way and created a private key (in Jan 2018) in my 2014 Bitcoin core wallet and imported it to Electrum (v 3.05);
- to my huge surprise, Electrum showed zero BTC balance and all my previous (2013-2014) transactions with one exception - it shows a transaction I never did to unknown address in December 2014 with all the coins withdrawal (and it has >200k confirmations). The same is shown in Blockchain.info if importing private key there;
- blockexplorer services also show this transaction, but the coins didnt move anywhere else (my BTC is there since 2014 and didnt move);
- some other blockexplorer services dont show this (tradeblock.com) and show my fresh (Jan 2018) stuck transactions as still pending;
- as of now my Bitcoin core wallet shows the balance and pending transactions.

So, I assume that somehow I lost my BTC, but can not understand how... can it be a cyberattack/ security issue? Just interesting for the future not to make a mistake keeping the coins :(

Your actual problem is almost certainly that you exported the wrong keys from Bitcoin Core.

Every time you send a transaction, Bitcoin core creates a brand new address that it doesn't tell you about (this is commonly called a "change" address).  It then sends the change from your transaction to this new hidden internal address.

If you want to import access to the bitcoins, then you will need to export the private keys for all the change addresses in the wallet.

You can get a list of the change addresses that are currently in use by the wallet if you enter the following command in the console:

@DannyHamilton don't be too harsh, how much different is your post than mine?
in the beginning I was pointing out a possibility of problem creating tx with his unsynced wallet
at the end I mentioned the possibility that it could be in a change address of his core wallet
that's why I asked for txid, most of the time it could shed some light on the situation

@DannyHamilton thanks a lot! That makes sense in my situation! So I can either try to export private key for change adresses or wait for synchronizing to complete, right?

Thirdspace,

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My "basic" address (in my Bitcoin core wallet): 19F1PM2Avy1c7x3qpjcBHxgbXXSACBgRZk

TXID that shows "withdrawal" in 2014 (as I thought): 6f604447614d4cf1d7a773527cd3f78e323e656dc2396f48ef7daf1a70ecca6a

One of the small transaction I tried few days ago (and it is pending): 8ce142b48d88a8177c19e1ba486f18b489a44368b4065f6f14c93261603ad7f3