Bitcoin Forum

Looking for anyone who has any super-old wallets where they stored keys and can provide file signatures from keys stored in hex/binary format.

Working on recovering some coin from that era and file signatures would be very helpful.

If anyone can provide them, will be happy to send some coin from the recovery if successful.

First, you should tell or describe the file name of any "file signatures from keys" backup that you have.

Usually, wallets/clients are specific with their backup naming scheme, the file name may ring a bell to some oldies here.
It could also indicate that it may not be related to bitcoin at all since the keywords "signature" and "private key" aren't totally exclusive to cryptocurrencies.

I understand your request is about old wallet.dat files from the era of BitcoinGUI when there were no HD wallets common. Correct?

What exactly is the recovery scenario?
Do you need to scan storage media for fragments of (possibly deleted) wallet.dat files?
Or do you need to repair damaged wallet.dat files?
If you have wallet.dat files: where are those from?

I started my Bitcoin journey somewhere in 2011 and have a wallet.dat file that was created in 2011, but I might not have a backup of the file from 2011 or 2012. This wallet was in use until around 2013 or 2014, then dormant for some years and upgraded to current Bitcoin Core versions somewhere in 2020/2021 and emptied in 2021. That's probably not what you're looking for and I won't give it away anyway.

I might have other, likely unused, wallet.dat files I created, maybe in 2012. But I'm not sure if I haven't touched them with a more recent version of BitcoinGUI or Bitcoin Core when checking if they're really empty or not.


Can't you find what you're looking for in "recoverpy". This Python tool can search for file fragments and private keys on storage media, so in the tool's code there should be hints about data signatures that are scanned.

If you are dealing with an old device or one that has some data, it is best to stop using it and ask a data recovery specialist, create several copies of the file and then you can continue asking questions here.

If the wallet is very old, the wallet file may not be encrypted and you may be able to access the private key by opening that file and search for it, if you can access it you can import it into any SPV wallet.

Do you mean older version of "Bitcoin Core" (which called as "Bitcoin-Qt" or "Bitcoin) when you say "Pre-Core"? If yes, you could just download the older version and generate a new wallet file using it. You can use these links to obtain the older version,

• https://bitcoincore.org/bin/ (https://bitcoincore.org/bin/) for version 0.8.6 and newer.
• https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/code/ (https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/code/) for version 0.1.3. and older

For other version, you'll need to find it elsewhere or compile it from source code.

I simply numbered them.. Not looking at a file and thinking it's BTC trying to recover it, trying to recover keys I know were once on this drive.


Old hard drive used to mine, transferred keys to a flash drive and secondary hard drive, flash drive wound up lost, secondary hard drive that it was also stored on wound up being unrecoverable. Hard drive it was mined on was also inoperable when opening up several years later. Was able to get it recovered after trying 3 different facilities. Trying to recover from drive it was mined on and deleted from. Not sure if overwritten or not.
Yes. Have used a few programs so far, may need to repair, not sure yet.
Not sure exactly what you're asking. I'd assume the version or what I was using. This was 2009.
Thanks for the idea on recoverpy, I've tried a couple programs like that, but not that one yet!
If you don't mind checking and are willing to send something empty over, that would be much appreciated.



Already done, images are distributed for safe keeping and in good hands. Thanks for the good advice, though.
Indeed.



Yes just original Bitcoin. Thanks for the guidance.

Based from the context, this question comes to mind: are those recovered bits from a disk image or similar?

AFAIK, there are ways to identify bitcoin encrypted/unencrypted private keys that are once in a wallet.dat file.
The mostly used method is to look for specific Bytes that's prepended to the private key.

It's what recovery tools like Pywallet has been utilizing to check for potential deleted wallet.dat files and private keys from a drive.
If you want to give that a try, use pywallet's --recovery command: https://github.com/jackjack-jj/pywallet (https://github.com/jackjack-jj/pywallet)

https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/projects-bitcoin/amaclin/
8 years old wallet  ;D

OP is looking for old wallets (clients) and not old wallet.dat files.

I don't know why you're so willing to share yours though, (it's not even that old)
If has any value despite having a strong passphrase, it'll probably best not to share it and delete the link from your post.

You don't really need some empty old wallet.dat files from me or other people. With the links that ABCbits gave here, you might be able to get a Bitcoin-Qt or BitcoinGUI client from the era of your coins. You may need to do some digging here and there, I'm pretty sure you'll find some helpful Bitcoin software archivars.

You can then generate your own empty wallets with random keys, encrypted and unencrypted, whatever suits your needs. Good luck.


If it's not obvious for you: never do data recovery without having redundant backups of the original media. Only work on copies, no matter what. The original media backups shall always be mounted read-only to avoid any possible writing on them that could cause any further damage to the content.

If I have to recover some serious value, I'd make forensic bit-by-bit image copies of the original. If possible check the identity with crypto checksums. The original is then not touched anymore. From the forensic copy, I make another copy. This last copy is then the source copy for recovery destination copies. Goal is to touch the original as little as possible and never loose a redundant forensic copy of the original from which as many working copies for recovery can be spawned as needed.