Bitcoin Forum

Hello to All,
I made a purchase on a website, back in 2009/2010 timeframe, and the seller only accepted bitcoin as payment. I remember a link where a wallet was created from my banking info and I remember writing some keys or passwords down. After paying for the items I had a few dollars change leftover which I basically left in the wallet. Of course, I forgot about the wallet and all this time has passed and I lost the keys I wrote down but I do still have the computer. Doesn't work very well but I have it. I've tried saving the data to a flash drive but have been unsuccessful.  I don't know if the wallet is an online wallet or hardware wallet or what.  My question is how can I find out what and where my wallet is and are the keys recoverable off the hard drive?   I would imagine the few dollars change have grown considerably by now too say the least. I don't mind doing my own reseach  I just hoped someone could point me in the right direction and any advice greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance

You should give more specific information about this, your time frame 2009-2010 was not much exchange.

what the name of the website?

what kind of wallet you are created, name of the wallet (link)?.

Possible isn't hardware wallet when looking at your time frame.

this is my opinion, you should try searching the .dat or .txt file when your HD recovered.

@OP: You should provide the link you mentioned and that may help you what to do to recover your wallet but I agree with droomiechikito  by checking the file of the wallet which most wallet providers file extensions ends with .dat.

Saying that your wallet was created from your banking info means that it was an online wallet. You probably wrote a password the site gave to you to confirm your ownership if you ever needed them in the future. After a decade, that site is most probably gone.

How did those keys look like? Did they look like this?

As for the computer, did you ever save them on a file? Have you formatted your computer since then?

If you had few dollars worth of bitcoins back then, then they may worth millions of dollars right now.

Giving pointers is easy if the details are clear and how we can help with the case of your lost wallet. As you can see, anything that related to bank for wallet recovery is totally a centralized style usually if you are to recover any some sort of wallet is private key is the most used information on retrieval unless your wallet is something special only password can unlock.

Hello there, trying to figure out your problem.
This is your clue now, try to trace the link if you remember using your computer, it presumably you've saved the password or something files in your computer.  For now, we can't guess what wallet you've used back then, but if that is a web wallet for sure it was associated with your phone number and email address and if that is a hardware wallet, try to find the wallet file that must be saved in your computer.

Not to discourage you, but it seems the chances of recovering your wallet are very low.  Everything is on your computer, have dig research might help you.

Ok guys thanks for your replies. So BlackHatCoiner it's probably an online wallet then, and yes I believe the keys did look like the code you mentioned but I don't believe I ever saved the keys on any file. Is it possible they were emailed to me back then or can they still be recovered off of HD?  As far as if the computer was ever formatted; The computer was serviced by the Geek Squad at Best Buy because it was running very slow but they saved/backed up the factory image and all the data that was on it in a compressed zip folder on the HD

If you don't believe that you saved them then no, you can't recover them. Can you remember if you clicked a "back up" button from that site, if it had any? I don't believe that there were sites that emailed you your private keys. If you didn't write the private key(s) on a file or on a paper, then you've lost them.

Uggghhh...  SO do you think I would have any chance with Daves wallet recovery service that I read about on another post here?

It would be quite complicated and there are very low chances. It's most important to know what type of wallet you had used, custodial or noncustodial and the name of the wallet. If the recovery team doesn't know the site in the online wallet case then it's not possible to recover since you don't know any wallet credentials. If at least there is a wallet file without encryption then there are chances to recover the wallet. Try to remember at least the wallet name and what kind of wallet you had used. Otherwise, there are no chances

I believe you're referring to this service - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=239665.0
There's not much to go on to ascertain if it's a legitimate service, the user has some positive feedbacks, but also bump replies from newbie accounts which could be easily faked and poses a huge red flag.

Also, a recovery process would depend on how much information you have about the wallet. If it's recoverable, you could give some details here and the community would direct you on how to go about it, that's much safer than messaging a private individual.

At least you need to have the wallet file or the seed phrase or the private key, if part of the seed phrase is lost that will be better as some recovery service will help you out. But when you have nothing that can help to recover your wallet, I think you need to know the recovery is impossible. Do not believe anyone that will tell you he can still recover the wallet for you because the person will just scam you.

Your coins are probably lost, I'm afraid.

Dave's wallet recovery, while having a good reputation, is mainly for instances when someone has forgotten the password to their wallet file. If you don't have a wallet file, then there is nothing they can attempt to brute force for you.

If they keys were only displayed to you to be written down, then they will not be recoverable from your hard drive since they were never saved on your hard drive. If you cannot find the piece of paper you wrote them on, and you never saved them to a file, then they are lost.

I'm not aware of any service which emailed private keys to its users, but the best you can do is check any email accounts you were using at the time.

It sounds like OP used a online web wallet, the fact is once the website is down and you have to backup of your private keys your coins are forever gone, people should learn the difference between online web wallet vs others, they are more dangerous to use than even paper wallets

It is possible that you don't have a chance to recover your wallet if you did lost your private keys or the file (wallet.dat) and the password which is needed if the password you wrote down is also lost. If you ever save a file and the password in your HD then it may be lost.