Bitcoin Forum

A business associate knows I'm involved with Bitcoin and said that he and his son bought some bitcoins to use to pay for items in World of Warcraft quite some time back....perhaps 2010 or so.

They forgot about them until last year as they realized they could conceivably have hundreds of coins somewhere.

They don't recal any other details other than that they bought Bitcoin.

I told them to search the hard drive for wallets etc.

I'd like to give them a list of files to search for or other clues.

Also -- does anyone recall an early Bitcoin platform involving wow?

Please list any ideas and exactly what might help them search the hard drive.

They may have had them on an online wallet or possibly a wallet program that they deleted.... It'd be a shame to lose all that bitcoin.

If they have had their computer repaired(reinstalled operating system) chances are their coins are long gone.

If they bought them for use in WoW I'm doubtful it was Bitcoin - especially that long ago.  I'm guessing it was some other sort of "game money"

I would have to agree.  I would try work out where they bought them from first. eBay etc.  2010 there weren't too many places to buy BTC with.

Thanks guys.

What is a good search they can do on the hard drive?

search for a wallet.dat file... it's your best bet...

First thing, do not run the OS installed on the harddrive you want to search, it writes stuff all the time, and could bury something that could be undeleted.

Hook up drive to different computer, do a simple search for wallet.dat

No joy?

Then get serious.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_forensics_tools

I have not heard of any virtual items platform using bitcoins to pay for items in WoW. Inspect the hdd carefully for leftover files.

I believe there had been some sites where WoWgold or items could be bought directly in the past, but the WoW devs did their best to have them shut down.

I'm not aware of any which were operating that early. He probably would've been buying in IRC's OTC room or using this forum. It's very unlikely any website's holding them. He likely used Bitcoin Market or MtGox to purchase the coins... maybe the first try at TradeHill if later -- assume any coins which were there are gone. If he mined them, he has better chances since not all mining pools prune user funds out of accounts (but many do, including Slush's where it's likely he was unless solo CPU mining really early on). ETA: I don't think Luke's pool ever prunes, though, fwiw, and his was there right about from the get-go.

Assuming he's on Windows (and if we're talking 2010, he was), he wants wallet.dat from C:\Users\[USER ACCOUNT NAME]\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin -- AppData folder is hidden by default, IIRC, so you'll want to open up the control panel and show hidden folders in the Folder Settings options.

If the hard drive or OS (assuming a normal configuration) were ever wiped, the data's almost definitely gone unless it was very recent. Deleting the Bitcoin client shouldn't have deleted his wallet.