Bitcoin Forum

Hi, I had to reset my PC but I had backed up the private key and passphrase. Before resetting I bought a VPN service with the bitcoin and then I reset my PC. I tried to restore the wallet and had done so successfully. I had spent 0.06 BTC on the VPN and now the rest of my bitcoins are gone, it says they have been spent. Is there anything I can do to fix this? Thanks

Can you please give more details, at least the address? The Bitcoin transactions can be easily tracked.
Also the type of wallet you used could help.

You should have kept the wallet file though, it would have made the things much easier...

This is the address where the rest of my coins went to 18rnXzMAzrD5wiR4Go91TPNJWVhhnnxnrh. Also I am using Bitcoin Core. Is there anything I can do because my wallet was encrypted and I never spent the rest of my coins :(

SOOO... basically, you got one input of 0.1068098 BTC on 12W7RgjugzpULqwfq1tCzdU89LZnvVvJVw in transaction 1a9312d4e241fdede59aa4f436957f202c1672d3ebf6548d26d6510a31940b85

You created transaction 5b8ac337977fb158ae33e65640be6ad93dcc374d335f0c3c48980d8e866b35be with the previous input and created an output to 1HsZznSdPsthijT6NGnC6n5YKj7icg5CpY  and to your change address 18rnXzMAzrD5wiR4Go91TPNJWVhhnnxnrh

Now, you've backupped your private key, but did you backup your wallet.dat??? I can only guess here, but if you really exported the private key for address 12W7RgjugzpULqwfq1tCzdU89LZnvVvJVw, but didn't backup the private key for address 18rnXzMAzrD5wiR4Go91TPNJWVhhnnxnrh, nor backupped your wallet.dat, you no longer have the private key to controll address 18rnXzMAzrD5wiR4Go91TPNJWVhhnnxnrh i'm afraid...

In short, bitcoin core isn't a deterministic wallet. It generates a random private key/address pair each time you send change to yourself (in reality, iirc, it calculates about 100 pk/addresses in advance).
wallet.dat holds these private keys for you. You can export one of them, but if you don't export all of them, you might lose coins.
Best thing is to do a regular backup of your wallet.dat, that way you're sure all your private keys are backupped.

Back to you, OP, if you want your coins back, you might try file recovery software... Shut down your pc, unplug your harddrive and see if some of the previous files are still stored on your HD. If you're lucky, you can find the old wallet.dat, altough there is no guarantee.

altcoinhosting gave a pretty clear view of your situation.
For safety reasons the wallets use more than one address and you need the private key the other address too.

The only way you can recover your money is to try to recover whatever you can from your old wallet.dat, which may still be somewhere on the HDD.
But since it's only 0.03931807BTC, it may be cheaper to just buy those coins... sorry...

Pre 0.13.0 this is true.  As of 0.13.0, it has HD functionality, just to be clear.  He didn't say what versions be was using, but if he created the wallet.dat with 0.13.0, then it could be HD - seems unlikely though.

I'm using the latest version of bitcoin core, also 12W7RgjugzpULqwfq1tCzdU89LZnvVvJVw was the only key in my address book so just backing that up doesn't save my coins?

Then you should be using 0.13.0. However, you did not backup the wallet, so you did not backup the master private key. Most good wallets will not reuse the same address, and many do not tell you what the change addresses are. You *WILL* have change addresses. It is not good enough to backup the addresses that you know about because you *WILL* be using change addresses that you do not know about. You must backup the entire wallet. Since you have not, your Bitcoin is lost. There is nothing that can be done about that.

Please stop spamming and read the thread before you post.

If you have the private key or paper phrase would help to recover your wallet or else if you use the wallet which is synced with the online view like electrum or bitcoin core means you could able to recover your bitcoins.

You are telling that you have backed up the private key and passphrase, then when reinstalling the wallet did you copied the same passphrase of the previous wallet or you just installed it, because if you are using the previous wallet passphrase then it will reload the previous wallet details, if you have not used your previous wallet passphrase then obviously it will create a new wallet for you. So just check with it

According to his statement he backup all the private keys and passphrase so i think he can still recover it just use the private key and install in electrum for faster sync if you install it again in bitcoin core you should reinstall the bitcoin core and fully sync it before you can seen your balance of your account..  so my suggestion better to install it in electrum instead so that you can not wait for syncing..

Yeah I used the same passphrase, ill try it with electrum then