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Hi I bought 200 worth of btc today and then sent it to my electrum wallet on windows. From there I sent it to my electrum wallet on tails. I hadn't used my wallet on tails in over a year and didn't realise it was an older version (2.7.9) The tails wallet is stuck on synchronizing. The transaction from today is showing up in history but the amount and balance are zero.

I cannot find my seed anywhere. I found two but they were different wallets. I can not update it now without my seed, I think I know the answer already but is there any way I can fix this. I cannot afford to lose that money. If anyone has any idea could you help me out please

That's because versions older than 3.3 don't synchronize anymore. What you need to do is update your Electrum to the latest version.

Try going to "Wallet" -> "Seed" to view your seed.

Thanks for the reply. I've tried to see my seed that way but it is asking for my password. I have tried every password I have ever used and it's telling me they are all incorrect..

I can see the transaction on the wallet which is strange surely that wouldn't show up if it couldn't sync?

Hm... that's bad. I'm pretty sure you need this password to send your coins anyway.]

Didn't you write down your seed somewhere when creating the wallet?

You can see the transaction you received today? What happens if you try to send them?

The old/outdated wallets don't connect to the official servers. They may or may not sync (depending on the servers), they may show phishing links, they are a risk and should not be used.

If you don't even know your password, then even if it'd sync, you will not be able to spend your coins. So you better try harder about that password, get the seed and install an updated wallet.

You can make a backup of the wallet file via file menu > save copy or by copying the file on disk (http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#where-is-my-wallet-file-located). You will still need the password to spend the coins though.

Did you really mean 200 btc or 200 mbtc? 200 btc = nearly $2 million at current prices.

He said 200 worth of BTC. So, I will assume it's dollar or pound or any other fiat currency.


And seems like OP stuck because he does not know the password.

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You can see the transaction you received today? What happens if you try to send them?
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Yeah I can see the transaction but the amount and balance of it are zero. I'm so annoyed at myself for being so stupid and not checking everything over first.

Seems like I've lost the money if I can't remember my password or seed. Is there no way to update electrum in tails where by my wallet will still be there?

I've never used Tails, so I don't know how it works, but on other OS, you don't lose your wallet file when you update. This may not be the case on Tails though (due to all this stuff with persistent storage, etc...), so in any case, just backup your wallet file before doing anything. IIRC, you can find it in the .electrum/wallets folder.

For what reason did you first send coins to Electrum (Windows) and then from that wallet to Electrum (Tails)? This is completely unnecessary and you pay fee which you should not pay.

Now you have big problem, your coins are locked in Electrum wallet because you lost password&seed - and only chance to fix this is to search for that data. I think you have seed and password stored somewhere, and your best chance is to try find that data (probably you write it on paper) by looking for documents / papers created in time when 2.7.9 version is released and date is 2016-10-17.

It is also possible that you have that data stored on some of your devices, so try to search files / folders by date, and it is worth to try check any USB sticks that you used in late 2016 and after that.

You can update electrum on tails as per this guide: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/tails.html

How did you set up your wallet on tails in the first place ?
Since you didn't use it for over a year, i assume you have your wallet file on the persistent storage ?

Anyway, to send your coins you either need 1) the wallet file (which you have) and the password or 2) the mnemonic code.
Without one of these two, your coins are unfortunately lost.

Do you remember anything at all regarding your password ? Can you narrow it down ?
If the search space is small enough, you might be able to bruteforce the password. Without cloue, however, that's not possible.

No password no seed seems like a dead end to me. Sure you can upgrade your wallet, but it will still ask for the password to send the coins anyway.

The rogue servers might be sending you the sync data, but they would reject any broadcast and just show you the phishing link...

PS. 200 (USD) worth of BTC would be something like 0.021 BTC.

OK so it seems my only way out of this is to figure out my password. Because I'm an idiot I only use a few different passwords or variations of them on all sites. So I'm going to go home and try all of these and check them off one by one, but in saying that when I set up tails and my wallet I used different passwords compromised of certain words. Is there any programs out there that could try brute Force it for me??

It could be a bit easier considering it's my own password and I could supply a list of words that are probably in there but I don't have any experience of this.

If anyone can help me get the password I'll gladly send you 50 euro in btc. It's not much but it's something.

Considering the current status of your situation, I think you need to start accepting as a lose.

In the first place, I don't understand why send funds to an address that is unused for over a year. Seems unusual because it's common for us to check anything properly before sending our hard worked funds to any destination.

Don't know if those brute force recovery groups are true to their service. Hiring them is risky.

No passwords, No phrases= I don't know what magic we can do to bypass these.

If you're sure it was one of your standard passwords/combinations start a spreadsheet and list all the possibilities, then copy/paste them into the login screen.  Be very careful asking for help, don't send your wallet file to anyone who you don't absolutely trust.  The best way is to tackle it yourself.

Worst case scenario there are password hackers who can help, @LoyceV (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=459836) might be able to help you.

Could it be a different derivation path was used?

You could contact Dave from https://walletrecoveryservices.com/, I've never used his service, but from what I've seen, he's helped many people in similar situations.

I have no experience doing this, but I've seen "btcrecover" memtioned many times. Just to be sure: make sure to run it offline on a backup only.

Just an update on this. I got in touch with Dave a week or so ago and he emailed me today saying he had managed to recover the password for me and I got my BTC back.

Would highly recommend him for anyone else in a similar situ!!

Glad you get it back. Now you have to do is to keep your BTC or your private keys/ seed in a very safe place you had on your home.