Bitcoin Forum

Today I unencrypted a wallet to send some BTC but when I booted up the client some of my BTC coins were missing. ???

Here is the background/technical information:

I had previously used the wallet and not bothered to make a new encrypted backup because I figured I could just use the rescan function.
I only used it two or three times without making a new encrypted backup, so I doubt the key pool ran out.
The version is 0.3.15.4 beta
I did the math on the transactions and it doesn't add up.
The client is on a Windows7 computer.
I didn't create any new addresses.

I have no idea what went wrong and I hope there is a simple answer to this.

P.S. Before you ask I have all the blocks. ;)

Unless you know exactly what you're doing (or are using a deterministic wallet), you need to make a new backup of your wallet after every time you send bitcoins. Otherwise, you may not have the private keys necessary to claim the change from your previous transactions.

I'm missing something here.  Doesn't the wallet key pool prevent this from happening unless you have over 100 transactions since you last backup??

Could you please give me your definition of a deterministic wallet?

Feel free to ask questions or give opinions, I need all the help I can get.

Are you saying when you add up the transactions that the client shows, they do not result in the balance that the bitcoin client shows?  Or are you saying the client isn't showing transactions that you know were made?

Both :o

Please provide clear step by step details of what you did.  It's completely unclear to me from what you've described why you believe that your backup practices had anything to do with this. Did you delete your wallet at any step or restore from backup at any step?

I copied the encrypted wallet.  Put the encrypted wallet back in the safe.  Unencrypted the copy.  Put the wallet copy in an empty client.  Sent some coins.  Wrote down how many coins were in my wallet. Deleted the copy.  A couple weeks later I got the encrypted wallet back out.  Copied the encrypted wallet again.  Put the encrypted wallet back in the safe.  Unencrypted the second copy.  Put the second wallet copy in an empty client with the rescan function.  Updated the block chain and noticed some coins were missing.

Edit: Realized I left some information out and that it could be misread.

Personally I think that nothing should be missing - neither transactions nor btc. Even if you did not make that frequent backups.

Please create a new address to see if the missing transactions reappear

have you made more than 100 sends since last backup? 

You created a new address every time you sent coins and automatically sent the change back to yourself. The first 100 times you did this by sending to an address that was in your backup, but eventually those run out.

try running with -rescan parameter one time using your main (original) wallet, the transactions are saved in the wallet file so if the original didn't see one of them but has the priv key from reserve then it should appear and balance updated correctly

Sorry to hijack, but I'm actually having a bit of an issue getting a transaction to go through.  It's only 1BTC so not a huge deal right now, but I'll be annoyed in the future if 1BTC is suddenly worth $500 or something daft :D

Anyway, I have a secure version of Ubuntu that I use just for my wallet (I'm a Windows guy generally, and Linux confuses me for the most part, but I can just about find my way around Ubuntu).   So the blockchain was halfway through downloading the other day, when I decided to send 1BTC to an address.    Once the blockchain finished (took forever by the way, we really need a way around that) the transaction is unconfirmed.     On Windows it's easy enough to use the rescan option, but I couldn't figure out how to do it in Ubuntu :(

I deleted everything aside from the wallet, and it's in the slloooooow process of downloading the blockchain again.  I'm not confident it'll confirm this time though either.

Is anyone able to tell me how I add the rescan flag to Bitcoin 0.5 in Ubuntu?   I'm not even sure how to navigate to wherever the bitcoin "executable" is located in the terminal to be honest :)

sorry to answer the hijack :) if you know how to open a terminal you're already halfway there, so open one up and type "bitcoin -rescan", minimize the terminal and the client should start after taking a bit more time than usual.
When it starts you should see "lost" transactions and balance updated correctly. Close it gracefully from the menu and when you see the prompt again in the terminal window you know bitcoin has closed completely.
Now start it from your usual icon and enjoy having resolved the problems.

Thanks Para.  So there's no need to navigate to the bitcoin directory?  Is Linux smart enough to just understand the Bitcoin entry no matter where I type it in a terminal?

actually yes, but only if you installed bitcoin from an ubuntu ppa (repository) through a packet manager (apt-get for ex.). If you compiled bitcoin for yourself or downloaded an already made binary you will have to navigate to that dir before launching. To fix that just copy the binary file to "/usr/bin" and you should be able to launch it anywhere.

If you have Bitcoin on your desktop, do "cd Desktop", then "cd whatever your bitcoin dir is", then "./bitcoin -rescan".

Thanks guys, I'll try that when I get home.   

Yes, if the pool isn't empty. But if you've never sent any bitcoins, the pool will be empty. (The client creates 100 *extra* keys when it creates a key for a transaction.) Because these rules are complicated to understand and easy to get wrong, I make my advice clear and simple -- unless you understand the rules exactly, always backup your wallet after sending.

A deterministic wallet is a wallet that generates new keys in a way that is repeatable, rather than creating random new keys. With a deterministic wallet, there is no need to back it up after sending because the new keys it would generate can always be regenerated based solely on the previous wallet.

That was never true, at least not since there was a pool—prior to 0.3.23 the pool remained empty until you hit the getaddress button for the first time. Since then, however bitcoin fills the pool instantly on startup even if you've never gotten an address out of it.

Are you able to find the transaction for the coins you sent in block explorer? (I don't need to see it, but if you can find it we can check to see if you have the keys for the account used to collect the change from that transaction).

Also, as others asked— how many times did you send+ hit getnewaddress since you made the encrypted copy?  A few or potentially as many as 100?

No.

The original wallet is gone, and I tried rescanning the unencrypted wallet multiple times.

I've sent coins before.


I found it. How do I check if I have the keys?

0.3.15 is pretty old, and the way you're spending from a copy of the wallet is, I suspect, confusing it.  Pieter updated the wallet code to handle transactions with partially spent outputs a while back.

Try upgrading to version 0.4.1 or 0.5 and running -rescan and see if your missing bitcoins reappear.

Updated to version 0.3.21-beta and all my coins reappeared!!! Hurray!!! :) :D ;D Thanks everyone!!!

Good to hear :)

As for my issue, nothing I did got that 1BTC to confirm.  I rescanned the wallet several times, and I redownloaded the blockchain again (takes about 30 hours, horrible).   It just wouldn't confirm.

I ended up restoring my backup of the wallet and that txn has now gone (as expected, as it wasn't registered anywhere).   Whatever, I'll chalk that one up to randomness, and I'll remember not to issue a transaction midway through the blockchain download in future.