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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: legkodymov on March 12, 2011, 06:30:57 AM



Title: I've lost 50.04 coins, and recovered them. How could it be possible?
Post by: legkodymov on March 12, 2011, 06:30:57 AM
I've had disk crash recently, which caused wallet loss. I was 50.04 coins on it

But I have backup copy of it with zero balance, so I restored my wallet.

To my supprise 50.04 coins appeared again. Is this really possible? Did bitcoin downloaded my coins from network?

Thank you!
Anatoly.


Title: Re: I've lost 50.04 coins, and recovered them. How could it be possible?
Post by: FreeMoney on March 12, 2011, 06:40:11 AM
All you need to spend your coins is your private keys which are in your wallet.dat file. One copy will work as well as another.

You don't really download the coins. It's more like you download a list of which addresses contain coins and the your software notices "Hey, that's an address I have the key for" and tells you the total balance of all such addresses.


Title: Re: I've lost 50.04 coins, and recovered them. How could it be possible?
Post by: casascius on March 12, 2011, 06:57:14 AM
I've had disk crash recently, which caused wallet loss. I was 50.04 coins on it

But I have backup copy of it with zero balance, so I restored my wallet.

To my supprise 50.04 coins appeared again. Is this really possible? Did bitcoin downloaded my coins from network?

Thank you!
Anatoly.

Yes, and your wallet file has pre-generated keys for future use too.  So that backup could restore future lost coins you have not yet even received, if you were to suffer another crash.


Title: Re: I've lost 50.04 coins, and recovered them. How could it be possible?
Post by: Stephen Gornick on March 12, 2011, 09:55:57 AM
To my supprise 50.04 coins appeared again. Is this really possible? Did bitcoin downloaded my coins from network?

Additional information:

  http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Key_pool

  https://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1414.0