Bitcoin Forum

Hello, everyone!

 :'( Please help in my weird situation :'(:

I had some amount of satoshi/bitcoin in spring 2018 (all blocks took ~140Gb).
Ballance was correct in bitcoin-core ui (v. 0.16), I encrypted and backed up the btc-wallet.dat. Its size 1328 kb.
Today (15 of November 2020) I removed all blocks, reinstalled bitcoin-core (v. 0.20), and re-synchronized all blocks (took ~333Gb).
After synchronization, I have default wallet.dat in the root directory, its size 1448 kb.

When I choose to use another pasted to the root wallet - btc-wallet.dat, then bitcoin-core starts rescanning (needed ~90mins):
2020-11-15T22:31:31Z init message: Rescanning ...
2020-11-15T22:31:31Z [btc-wallet.dat] Rescanning last 282497 blocks (from block 374599)...
2020-11-15T22:31:31Z [btc-wallet.dat] Rescan started from block 0000000000000000005fb267cc42dc8630668db3cd1f6a484374fbb4a5ccfc22...
2020-11-15T22:32:31Z [btc-wallet.dat] Still rescanning. At block 507124. Progress=0.509806
...
2020-11-15T23:54:31Z [btc-wallet.dat] Still rescanning. At block 655890. Progress=0.996076
2020-11-15T23:55:19Z [btc-wallet.dat] Rescan completed in         5027754ms
2020-11-15T23:55:19Z [btc-wallet.dat] setKeyPool.size() = 2000
2020-11-15T23:55:19Z [btc-wallet.dat] mapWallet.size() = 0
2020-11-15T23:55:19Z [btc-wallet.dat] m_address_book.size() = 1

When rescan is finished, the size of btc-wallet.dat becomes 1056 kB and the wallet has 0 balance without in/out-coming in 2018 transactions :o. Looks like this file (btc-wallet.dat) was overwritten by the bitcoin-core :-\.

What I'm doing wrong and how to fix/return/read my funds.

I will be appreciated for any help, thanks in advance.

How are you putting the wallet file in the directory? How are you specifying to Bitcoin Core to use that file? Please post your bitcoin.conf and any startup options that you are using.

Hello, achow101
thanks for your reply.

I just copy and paste btc-wallet.dat to the directory where located default wallet.dat and blocks folder, then select it from drawdown list in the bitcoin-core ui.
I did not change the default configuration after installing bitcoin core and blocks synchronization, therefore my bitcoin.conf file from the same directory with wallet.dat, btc-wallet.dat, blocks folder is empty.
Please take a look the image: https://ibb.co/BNsJyg8 (https://ibb.co/BNsJyg8)

Curiously, your debug said it was rescanning from block 374599 (~15th Sept 2015) (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/374599)

but then said it was actually starting the scanning from block hash:

Which is actually block 505160, from ~20th January 2018 (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/0000000000000000005fb267cc42dc8630668db3cd1f6a484374fbb4a5ccfc22)


It's possible that it might not have correctly scanned everything it needed to find your "btc-wallet.dat" transactions. You could try forcing a rescan using the rescanblockchain command in the console window in the GUI... Note that this will likely take 2+ hours given the previous rescan took 90minutes).

If it still doesn't find any transaction history/balance after a full rescan, then it's highly likely that you have the "wrong" wallet.dat... That is to say, the "wallet.dat" file that you encrypted/backed up in 2018 was not the wallet.dat file that Bitcoin Core was actually using and/or that had your bitcoin balance :-\

I ever had this situation when imported an old wallet.dat into the Core, I removed wallet.dat then importing an old wallet.dat, get wallet rescanning and got 0 balance. but, in this case, my balance gets appears when I close-open wallet then "getbalance" in the console.

If nothing happens, you will try what ETFbitcoin said above, "dumprivkey address", then deleting all wallet.dat, open again core then "importprivkey" to ""getbalance" command in the bitcoin core console.

I experienced something similar. Some time ago, I moved the Bitcoin Blockchain data to a different hard drive than before. I just realized that the Balance in my Bitcoin Core wallet is 0, but I believe there is still some Bitcoin there.
I tried to use "getbalance", but it still doesn't work, I'm currently trying "rescanblockchain". If it still doesn't work, chances are I will try to import the wallet's private key ("importprivkey").

https://i.ibb.co/whQ26VJ/55989041.png

I know everyone focuses on the "balance"... but what about the transaction history? Was there anything showing in the history? ???

Hello everybody!

I have also a old wallet found back on my old extern hard drive that have no password key lock and im sure there was a very littlebit bitcoin on from mining in around 2018 what i transfer to this bitcoin core walled. And believe it or not the size of the old wallet.dat have also a size of precisely 1.448 KB the same walled size of the person that made this topic i have made 3 backups made to be safe and try my luck to if it will work with bitcoin core im currently download the whole blockchain first it will take 14 hours and try it..

But what i will say is that i have doubts about this walled size orginial it have also 1330 kb size when it placed in the folder 1.448 kb i have the idea somewhere that i have back in 2018 also (maybe) copy and backt-up the wrong wallet.dat :-[ i have the idea that this wallet size (maybe) back then in 2018 a standard empty walled was..

I will try everthing after the blockchain is download and is complete and i will tell you..

I'd suggest you to create your own topic if you came across an issue with the recovered wallet.

To start a new topic: click the board where you want to post it: Bitcoin Forum > Bitcoin > Bitcoin Technical Support (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=4.0)
Then click "new topic" button at the left side of the screen ("CTRL+F" to search if you cant see it).

OMG i have fixed my problem it was not a bitcoin walled but a bitcoin gold walled :o ;D
the bitcoin and bitcoin gold core wallet looks very the same so as people cant see transactions or value look then of it not a bitcoin gold walled is!!  ;D ;D