Bitcoin Forum

I have been having dreams for the past month about BTC and an old computer I had bought Bitcoin on a long, long time ago. I just found said computer in my grandmother's basement. Booted it up and lo and behold, found a wallet.dat file.

I abandoned Bitcoin a while ago as when I tried spending the Bitcoin, I couldn't for whatever reason.

Here is the reason:

Status: 0/unconfirmed, not in memory pool
Date: 4/9/2557 BE 03:53
To: (removed)
Debit: -200.00000000 BTC
Net amount: -200.00000000
BTC Transaction ID: (removed)
Transaction total size: 192 bytes Output index: 0

I have two transactions like this. I need to know how to retrieve these coins. If you are capable of doing this, let me know. I have 11 BTC for you if we recover this.

Here are a few screenshots:

https://gyazo.com/95168f2f5aff31d929ac7ed3652fe198

https://gyazo.com/8261fa6b630b9ad61de264505251d960

https://gyazo.com/e1ce14007cd9b773b98c4865daa8ab2e

There are credit and debit transactions.
Maybe the wallet is just empty...

But I think you should exact the bitcoin addresses from it (pwallet), and check those on any online blockchain explorer like [Suspicious link removed].
If there's any balance there we can help you recovering it given the wallet.dat file is not encrypted or you know the passphrase.

If you need assistance with extracting the bitcoin addresses from your wallet.dat file, please send me a pm. I prefer a chat on skype for example for assisting people because a forum is too much work too keep track of all the things I do.

1) Don't give your Private Key to anyone
2) Don't click to any link that user will send you
3) Follow only instructions from green trust users

Good luck

just checked your images more closely.

There's +200 and -200, so that's 0
then there are couple other + transactions and a bigger - transaction.
Not all transactions are visibile in your screenshot but I suspect the last one at the bottom (not shown in your screenshot) is +5 ?

If so, then your wallet is empty.

That's a seriously messed up date!

Is there any chance this is an altcoin wallet? The highlighted address 12VNcW4eAgcozMWEXLfFm6QsRPwdnsdHCd (https://blockchain.info/address/12VNcW4eAgcozMWEXLfFm6QsRPwdnsdHCd) has never been funded with Bitcoin.
I checked the usual supects (Doge and LTC), but they both don't show anything on that address either.

The ? in Bitcoin Core means "unconfirmed". I think your incoming transactions never happened on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Exactly what I was about to type.
Even 1PReUA2YBkyajXh8eBAB4rc2jeP2RXw3xF that supposedly received 200BTC has never had a transaction in the bitcoin blockchain.
If OP pasted a transaction ID, then we could scour different blockchains for where that transaction is valid.

184Q4QuMUfovpUPPs5ivDuUwbHApNSGSxN also never used:

https://blockchain.info/address/184Q4QuMUfovpUPPs5ivDuUwbHApNSGSxN

Yeah, I suspect the wallet.dat file isn't a bitcoin wallet and loading a wallet from a different coin in bitcoin core will do strange things like that.
I've seen it happend with a friend a while ago.

I don't know about dates but it certainly showed bitcoin addresses and transactions too and none of them were in the blockchain.
Sounds like the same problem here..

Exactly this. You need to try loading this wallet.dat into the correct type of wallet - if not BTC, maybe try LTC or DOGE as suggested above.
Alternatively you could supply us with some of the txid's that the wallet has listed and we can all look for where it came from (simple parse of block explorers).
I did this recently with a different altcoin - tried loading it into my doge wallet and it had a ton of transactions, and eventually I learned it was from a totally different coin and the Doge wallet was trying to parse them.

Good luck.

Have you tried other methods?
Extracting private keys from the core wallet and put to Electrum wallet and checking the amount? Did you check the address from online Bitcoin block explorer sites?
Which version of Bitcoin are you using?

If it is a wallet.dat file it could be for any of the other altcoins that were about in 2014, there were far less than there is now so have a think of what coins you had at that time.

I noticed the same.

The dates are messed up, so there is something "off" about that wallet.  Not exactly sure what.  Perhaps an altcoin, but the user claims that it came from a /bitcoin directory of some sort (in 2014 were there any popular altcoins that were so lazy that they used the bitcoin directory name for their data)?

Also, NONE of those addresses (received to or sent to) have ANY history in the bitcoin blockchain.  It would be interesting to know what the rawtransaction contents are for the earliest transactions "received" at the wallet.  Just to see if their inputs are in the bitcoin blockchain.

Also, the subject line on this claims that these are from 2014.  Bitcoin was more than $300 per bitcoin for almost the entire year. Did the user actually purchase, misplace, and forget about over $75,000 worth of bitcoins?!?

I'm doing what I can to help, but a whole lot of what we're being told here just doesn't add up.

Are you sure it was a bitcoin wallet ? It could be of any alternate currencies wallet, so just try to remember. I had a look at your screen shots and it seems that the wallet is empty as there are high amount of debit transaction also. You can try your luck and be careful from the scammers who are just waiting for the people like you. All the best mate.

How you can determine which coin a wallet.dat belongs to besides trying each one?

the most popular back then was probably litecoin, try that first

It already been checked by LoyceV
stating above :
I checked the usual supects (Doge and LTC), but they both don't show anything on that address either.

which these address isn't on litecoin also. This really put question on my mind since theres no single transaction been found on blockchain.

Load the wallet.dat into the core wallets of Doge/LTC and it will generate an address for those coins using the pairs in your wallet.dat - so it will look like a valid wallet but will act similar to what we are seeing here.
There may be a more direct way to convert between multiple wallet formats but I once loaded an altcoin wallet into my Dogecoin wallet and thought I had found 3-4M Doge, only to later realize it was a different altcoin.

Worth a shot.

Do bitcoin clients and wallets follow the time shown or used on the computer they are installed on? If they do, then I guess OP is probably in Thailand because 2557 converts to 2014:

http://dateconverter.net/thai/2557/?hl=en

Thai years are usually expressed in Buddhist format which would BE 2557 in the example above. To correct it, OP should set his device’s calendar (or time & date settings) to Gregorian.

The wallet is not finish synchronising.  How about you try first to synchronising the wallet, open wallet overnight and wait and see after. It might take a day or two to finish. After  that check the balance in the wallet.

Hey there! Think about if you experimented with any other cryptocurrencies back at the time. Many were forked from the Bitcoin core code. Make a backup copy of the WALLET.DAT that you do not load on any software, just work from a copy of the file for your experimenting.  If the wallet file is from a fork (another kind of cryptocurrency) it's impossible to know for sure that it won't end up getting corrupted.  Of course, do not share the private key or the wallet file with anyone or any website.

Then, as others have suggested, you can try searching the transaction ID and/or the public address on block explorers.  Make sure it's the public address.  Guard your private key just as you would a combination to a bank vault, because that's essentially what it is.

Best of luck with your found wallet!  If you are able to access a wallet with a balance, even if it's an altcoin, we can help guide you to an exchange so that you are able to exchange the balance for your fiat currency, or even better, convert it to Bitcoin.

Best regards,
Ben

since you try to spend it but couldn't that BTC most likely still there, try synchronize your wallet and then see what balance you have

As other people said, you might want to check if the wallet is for another currency, additionally you might want to let it sync up. Finally, you might want to try checking the address in the test net, you might have been messing around the test net and forgot it maybe?