Bitcoin Forum

Please advice.

I found an old wallet.dat file with BTC X.98  (X number of whole bitcoin pluss .98)

I load the entire Bitcoin Core and start it up.
I swap the native created wallet.dat for my old wallet.dat file.
The balance of X.98 comes up.

I then first make one small test sending to my safe Ledger wallet address (legacy wallet) of 0.0001 bitcoin, where transaction fees are to be withdrawn from amount.
The sending is done in the Bitcoin Core wallet (confirmation set to 2 blocks), but it does not arrive at the Ledger wallet.
But I see that the balance of the wallet has gone down from X.98 to X.96. so down BTC 0.02. But I think maybe thats just some kind of rounding error.

So I make another small sending this time of 0.003.
It get sent, but does not get received.

But this time the balance is down to X.91     so balance is down BTC 0.07 by just sending these two very small dust sendings.
That is USD 4000 of bitcoin just to make two very small dust transactions.

How is this even possible.
Do I have some kind of setting that is eating BTC?
Is there something with my old wallet?
(I have tested multiple old wallets like this, can settings from one wallet transfer over to another and mess things up?)
Might I have been hacked somehow (im on a pretty new MacBook Pro)

its just very weird.

Any advice much appreciated.
Thanks.

You should check (using for example blockchain.com) the progress of transaction - is the transaction visible? pending? confirmed?
If transaction is waiting in mempool for a long time, it usually means that fee is too low. Do you remember which fee you selected?
You may use page https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h,fee to see what is the current fee needed to have transaction accepted (at this moment around 30sat, during weekends it could be 1-2 sat, all depends on number of transactions and number of blocks processed).

Do you have one address loaded or many? Check if you have only one output in transaction or many. Maybe amount which you do not see was transmitted into "change" address (but then should be visible in the wallet) - if this is the case look here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5373169.0

Thank you.
Where do I find my "from" address in my Bitcoin Core wallet.  I have tried to look for it but been unable to find it.

Do not you see it on recent transactions list?
If you know transaction id, you may always get all the information using console:
https://bitcoincore.org/en/doc/0.16.0/rpc/wallet/gettransaction/

or just use blockchain.com explorer to see details in more 'user-friendly' way.

It is, indeed, weird. Select the latest transactions' IDs and search them on a block explorer as PawGo suggests. Unless you don't want to sacrifise your privacy, you can use blockstream via Tor: http://explorerzydxu5ecjrkwceayqybizmpjjznk5izmitf2modhcusuqlid.onion/

The most logical explanation I can think of is that you simply put a really high fee or confused sat/byte with sat/kilobyte.

I think you might be right there about the fees.

I was twinkling with the fees thing, did not understand what I was doing.

It is even possible to mess it up like I have done here, to be charged BTC 0.07 for two tiny sends?

What is the safe way to do this. Thanks.

So this is what I see in transactions.

Somehow this extracted BTC 0.07 from my account. And I do not understand how that could happen.


Status: 0/ubekreftet, ikke i minnepool
Dato: 02.12.2021 14:47
Til: 1...........
Debet: -0.00026658 BTC
Transaksjonsgebyr: -0.00003342 BTC
Nettobeløp: -0.00030000 BTC
Transaksjons-ID: 0...............
Total transaksjonsstørrelse: 257 bytes
Virtuell transaksjonsstørrelse: 257 bytes
Utdatainndeks: 1


Status: 0/ubekreftet, ikke i minnepool
Dato: 02.12.2021 14:40
Til: 1N............
Debet: -0.00097500 BTC
Transaksjonsgebyr: -0.00002500 BTC
Nettobeløp: -0.00100000 BTC
Transaksjons-ID: 8..............
Total transaksjonsstørrelse: 257 bytes
Virtuell transaksjonsstørrelse: 257 bytes
Utdatainndeks: 0


Status: 428130 bekreftelser
Dato: 04.02.2014 13:44
Fra: ukjent

If you don't know how to get the address that is already generated on Bitcoin core you can go to Window>Receiving addresses and then it will pop all addresses generated.
https://i.imgur.com/P4w9In6.png

Copy them all and paste it to any block explorer as suggested above or just go to blockchair.com to check if all addresses have a balance.

If you have lots of addresses you can use this bulk checker here https://bitcoindata.science/bitcoin-balance-check.html to check all balances.

If all of them show nothing maybe the BTC that you talking about was being sent already long time ago and Bitcoin core just syncs and download newer blocks. It's happening to me before I thought that I have BTC in my Bitcoin core but after it was syncing my BTC was gone and a few transactions were added to my transaction history. I confirm the transaction was sent to my other wallet. So it was sent safely to my other wallet.

So I think what happened to you is the same as mine the only difference is you have still the remaining amount of 0.07BTC.

Why not let it run the Bitcoin core first and wait until the bitcoin core is fully synced but if you want an instant result then better go to any Bitcoin explorer to check your wallet address.

First of all, there is a difference between  your original post where you claim to have send 0.0001 versus the logs:

But anyway, based on the logs you posted the two outgoing transactios have a rather small fee attached to them. So fees are not the problem for your "missing BTC". If anything they might be the reason for your transactions still not being confirmed, so not showing up as received on your ledger address.


Really hard to say based on what you shared this far. Any reason you removed the address and transaction-id from your logs you later posted? The problem for "disapearing" BTC is not in the transactions from your log.

Is your bitcoin core fully synced?
What shows block explorer? Any other output address?
Is your input addres emptied? Maybe there was a transfer to change address which is (no idea why) not visible/counted by BCore.

Yes I got one 0 wrong from memory, thanks for noticing.

I assumed it was good protocol to anonymize the actual data.
If posting the actual data is advisable I will be happy to do that if maybe we can figure out some more that way.
Also screenshots I can share (I actually too screen photos with my Iphone)
Please advice, is sharing this ok?

Here is the data, any advice much appreicated.
I do not dare to touch this anymore until I have this figured out.



Status: 0/ubekreftet, ikke i minnepool
Dato: 02.12.2021 14:47
Til: 1NSYBUdbgxbaNCwHa2fuT8bMRTLFAVgCp2
Debet: -0.00026658 BTC
Transaksjonsgebyr: -0.00003342 BTC
Nettobeløp: -0.00030000 BTC
Transaksjons-ID: 0c43ac893141cc633453834b396b3ed29e6daf04e9c750c75c353a7e3f091100
Total transaksjonsstørrelse: 257 bytes
Virtuell transaksjonsstørrelse: 257 bytes
Utdatainndeks: 1



Status: 0/ubekreftet, ikke i minnepool
Dato: 02.12.2021 14:40
Til: 1NSYBUdbgxbaNCwHa2fuT8bMRTLFAVgCp2
Debet: -0.00097500 BTC
Transaksjonsgebyr: -0.00002500 BTC
Nettobeløp: -0.00100000 BTC
Transaksjons-ID: 87ad3fe5bbb440233868eec26a8b4db9c70c57d9c70ce22e0f1c024929426d20
Total transaksjonsstørrelse: 257 bytes
Virtuell transaksjonsstørrelse: 257 bytes
Utdatainndeks: 0


Status: 428130 bekreftelser
Dato: 04.02.2014 13:44
Fra: ukjent
Til: 19FH4RoCdD8e9iGY75qu4CSzR55ps7RnJ9 (egen adresse, merkelapp: Internal transaction 1 Bitcoin)
Kreditt: 1.00000000 BTC
Nettobeløp: +1.00000000 BTC
Transaksjons-ID: 4c7c2b4618517f6ec6d030c3f4d78ae9f9539306b4b357e8a7f02dedec27cc3e
Total transaksjonsstørrelse: 438 bytes
Virtuell transaksjonsstørrelse: 438 bytes
Utdatainndeks: 1

Read this:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5287546.0

At least the transactions from yesterday are neither confirmed, nor in mempool, so from my understanding OP funds are not at risk.
I don't understand why they aren't in the mempool with 9+ / 13+ sat/vbyte and I don't know what is stuck there and made them not get broadcasted.
The tx fees are not extremely big, so I'd expect the missing funds indeed be meant to return to OP's change address if all is good.

The transaction from 2014 is confirmed.

Your new transactions haven't been broadcast yet, that's why your transaction don't show up in any blockexplorer. The fact your balance is going down is likely caused by syncing of new blocks in which past transactions were found spending.

If you do:
What is the height reported?

And question 2:
Is this the address from your wallet with the X.98 balance reported:

Your question number 2.
How do I find the information to answer this question. Is that information in my Bitcoin Core client?

Shown here http://www.herongyang.com/Bitcoin/Bitcoin-Qt-Overview-and-Receiving-Addresses.html

But question 1 is more important :)

I do not remember how it works, but maybe Bitcoin Core is not synced, therefore newly created transactions were not transmitted. The question is at which stage of synchronisation it is. And will it publish transactions when become synchronised?

The transfer won't be submitted to the network until the local client is up to date. Up to this point, the transaction is shown in the local wallet but not in the global network / mempool. So yes it will transmit the transaction after becoming fully synchronized if all inputs needed for the transaction are unspent.

Are you using the GUI Bitcoin Core client, or running commands from the command line?  If you are running the Bitcoin Core client... it should show you at the bottom of the GUI window if it is currently syncing.

Alternatively, just look at the "Window -> Information" menu item... and check what the "Current Block Height" listed is... if it isn't at least 712289, then your client likely isn't synced properly:
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/14/ztxRq.png


Until your client is synced, you won't be able to send any transactions, as the client cannot guarantee that your wallet balance is true and correct.

There's something that's causing your transactions to get rejected from your own mempool.
There are a few reasons and the most common in not-yet-synced client is if at least one of the input of the transaction is invalid.

You can also try to manually broadcast it and see what mempool-related error you'll get:

• In the transactions tab, right-click on one of the transactions, then select: "Copy raw transaction"
• Open the console (Window->Console), then type: sendrawtransaction "Your_Copied_RAW_Transaction"
• And it should return with an error which should be the reason why those aren't successfully sent.

If it somehow proceed, then there could be in your setting that's preventing txn broadcast..

For what it's worth: There are not supposed to be any rounding errors in Bitcoin. It's exact, up to the last digit. If it doesn't add up, something is wrong.

It's possible, but shouldn't happen unless you have many dust inputs (but that's not the case with a 257 bytes transaction). My advice: always thoroughly check the transaction before sending.

You made a transaction from this same address (19FH4RoCdD8e9iGY75qu4CSzR55ps7RnJ9 (https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/b06bbe63c90e6d59610213a11ee203cf78907759ea4c9ac9323a723f0d105ad1)) 11 days ago. What changed since then?

Given that it appears the OPs wallet is not synced, the changes to the balance were most likely a result of the wallet syncing in the background and adjusting the wallet balance as new transactions were found and processed.

Don't make transactions from a full-node client like Bitcoin Core until your wallet is fully synced. You said that you found an old wallet.dat. You opened it and without syncing it you tried to create several transactions didn't you? Let it download the latest blocks and see if those transactions will be broadcasted or not. You haven't lost anything since nothing has been broadcasted yet. Report back what is going on once the synchronization process is completed.   

That doesn't explain the transaction made 11 days earlier. Unless he switched to an old backup after making that transaction. It gets even more interesting if the transaction 11 days earlier was made by someone else (which would mean OP somehow got his hands on someone else's old backup).

I very much appreciate your input and help in this matter.
I am now working to read up on this.
I will definitely report back to you with what I found regardless how this goes.

I found my old wallet.dat files (I actually have some 3-4-5 wallets with some small contents in them) on my own old hard drive, so this is my very own old bitcoin this is.
I do not think anyone else has gotten to it. I am pretty sure it is something I have done wrong somehow in the settings of my Bitcoin Core client, somehow paying massively for the transfer. I dont understand what has happened.
I need to investigate this extensively before I dare open the Bitcoin Core client and the wallet file again (Im afraid my funds will be swooped off my account).

One question.
My plan is to transfer the bitcoin to my Ledger Nano account, for security.
But considering this are old wallets from 2010-2014 I think there might be Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold etc to recoup from these accounts. How would you advice to recoup these extra fork coins. Would that be a two step transfer, first to something like Electrum and then step two to the Ledger Account? What is the good intermediary step to recoup these extra forked coins.

Thank you.

These are some of the possible errors I can think of, beyond what you have suggested.

I do think I have downloaded the entire blockchain as every time I open Bitcoin Core it has to do the last 20-48-128 blocks before it starts up, it seems.

The thing that was sent 11 days ago I THOUGHT was from a completely different wallet.dat account, but maybe somehow it is the same??? I dont understand how this is connected.

Maybe I am somehow mixing accounts up. I have found in my old hard drives 10-15 old wallet.dat files. Some are certanly the same, backups of backups.
I have opened them all by exchanging the wallet.dat file on my MacBook. And then restarting the Bitcoin Core client to see the content of the new wallet.dat file.
And then after looking at it giving the old ones other temporary names like from wallet.dat to walletfromoldtoshibalaptopwallet.dat etc after I have tested them.
Maybe somehow the opening of these 10-15 different wallet files has messed up the entire Bitcoin Core client for me.

Or that what I am seeing is different stages of the same accounts somehow...

For me I cant seem to be able to differentiate them by unique addresses...

I have now bough a brand new MacBook that I intend to setup exclusively for crypto purposes. I intend to download Bitcoin Core to this and try to open only the btc X.98 wallet.dat file on that instance of Bitcoin Core, to see if that works better (but I should not try sending anything as it seems it is the sending that is extracting these massive fees).

I will try to send something TO that account before I try to send anything more off from it.

That somehow the BitcoinCore client is processing things from one wallet.dat file on another wallet.dat file.

That I have somehow done the settings wrong, so that I have changed to 2 blocks and this for some reason comes with massive fees. Or some other error I have made.

The last thing is that I somehow do not understand this Bitcoin, address, account, wallet,  Bitcoin Core,  thing properly. I think I understand it, but I could be misunderstanding the whole account address wallet thing. I see from my ledger that there must be something I do not understand.
I find it hard to understand how to find on Blockchain the content of my Bitcoin account as I see them in my Bitcoin Core client and my Ledger client. It seems to work different from Ethereum. I am quite confused. Can one account have more than one account address???

My apologies for unclear language.

Just make sure that you allow your Bitcoin Core to fully sync before you do anything else with it. Once your new Mac is up and running and you start downloading the blockchain, leave it and let it do its work.

When we are on the subject of Bitcoin forks and how to claim them, I suggest you take a look at this thread that LoyceV wrote > LoyceV's Bitcoin Fork claiming guide (and service) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2836875.0). It will help you with anything you need.

One Bitcoin wallet consists of multiple addresses. Each address can have multiple inputs. You can think of each input as an individual bill. You can have only one bill or you can have 10 different ones. So if your entire balance is scattered around on multiple addresses, you will have to look up all of them on a block explorer to know what you have where. Or just let your Core client fully sync, and you will find out from there.

My advice: In Bitcoin Core, click Settings > Options > Wallet > Enable coin control features > OK.
Then, click Send > Inputs. This shows all addresses with a balance in that wallet.

Maybe.
There's a chance that Bitcoin Core failed to scan the correct balance and kept the spent inputs in your wallet.
I've seen a couple of topics regarding that, usually those who replaced the wallet.dat file.

BTW, what error did you get when you tried to broadcast the transaction(s) via console?

In case you missed it:
Alternatively, if you want to send them no more: use testmempoolaccept instead.
e.g.:

---

Lastly, if it's just because of the "frequent wallet replacement", rescan might do the trick; open console, select the correct wallet: rescanblockchain

Bitcoin doesn't really have "accounts" per se... they're more of an abstract concept that some wallet applications (like Ledger Live and other BIP44 compatible wallets) use... for the wallets that do implement "Accounts", because they are generally HD (hierarchical deterministic) wallets (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deterministic_wallet#Type_2:_Hierarchical_deterministic_wallet) constructed from seeds, they will indeed have multiple keys/addresses for the "accounts".

Bitcoin Core, whilst it is an HD wallet, doesn't use the concept of accounts anymore (that functionality was deprecated a while back). So, with Bitcoin Core, you have your wallet.dat and it holds many keys/addresses. Like other HD wallets, this is generally because it is trying to provide unique addresses for all your receive (and change) activity in an attempt to prevent "address re-use (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse)".


This can indeed be somewhat problem to go to an explorer and work out what your wallet balance should be as you could be looking at 10s or 100s of different addresses with UTXOs etc (depending on how you have been using the wallet).

It's essentially why wallet applications are used... they hold all your keys (and therefore know all your addresses) and are able to track everything for you. The issue you're running into is that your Bitcoin Coin wallet.dat files, being old, are not currently synced and therefore, potentially not giving the correct balances.


This is generally very much unlike ETH, which tends to use the one single key/address for your entire "account"... so it's a simple lookup on the explorer.

Update:

I bought a brand new MacBook Air.
Set up Bitcoin Core.
This took about 8-10 days.

Tried replacing the wallet.dat file with the 3 old wallet.dat files I have.
And now ALL THE BICOIN WAS THERE. Very good. :)
So this is great news, nothing is lost.

So next step.
I did not make any changes to the default Bitcoin Core options.

So I tried one more time to send some Bitcoin out of the wallet.
And the same strange thing happened again.

I had Btc 0.07 in the wallet at the start.
Tried sending 0.014 bitcoin to my Ledger address. This transaction comes up in the log. I set the transaction fee to be drawn from the amount to send.
BUT NOW, then booo, now suddenly the balance shows Bitcoin 0.02
So for some reason, by sending 0.014 another 0.036 is eaten up mysteriously on the balance. And it does not show in the log where this 0.036 has gone.
This Btc 0.036 that is eaten up does not appear in log.

Strange.

Any advice much appreciated.
I will post some screen shots (If I can figure out how to upload photos here)

http://


This is the transaction.
As we can see the fee is taken from the amount.
So the mystery remains why does BitcoinCore draw another 0.036 and where does that go.




Status: 0/ubekreftet, ikke i minnepool
Dato: 13.12.2021 12:51
Til: 12Hek4zrVixeiUbzMiHSwkHyKSyZm24S6v
Debet: -0.01399570 BTC
Transaksjonsgebyr: -0.00000430 BTC
Nettobeløp: -0.01400000 BTC
Transaksjons-ID: 1dd833175a20c8883ee12a904332172f8924665bb6cfb899a1d4a21fcca75b47
Total transaksjonsstørrelse: 257 bytes
Virtuell transaksjonsstørrelse: 257 bytes
Utdatainndeks: 0

Newbies can't post images, only links. You can use for instance imgur.com.

Ok thanks.
Not needed really to post them.

One photo shows Btc balance 0.07
The next photo shows Btc balance 0.02

With the small transaction above as the only thing that has been done on a clean new wallet.
Strange.


4 photos here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ajBmPHLSc2myK__XRoWk6PMqVfc4fGXy8WUbfPUnY0o/edit?usp=sharing

(I've made some edits to your image)
Looks like only those four inbound transactions are successfully verified, the others had issues (indicated by the '?' logo).
If those are all invalid, then your final balance will be 0.5 BTC.

You can try to abandon those invalid transactions before creating a new transaction but make sure that the wallet was scanned properly (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5374853.20#:~:text=Lastly%2C%20if%20it%27s%20just%20because%20of%20the%20%22frequent%20wallet%20replacement%22%2C%20rescan%20might%20do%20the%20trick%3B%20open%20console%2C%20select%20the%20correct%20wallet%3A%20rescanblockchain) when you loaded it.
Or else, it might try to spend a already spent input(s), and also to display to correct balance and transactions.

Make sure that your wallet has a backup before doing this:

• Use "Right-click->Abandon Transaction" to those boxed transactions.
• Then make a new transaction.

Wow. That worked! I just now abandoned those transactions and now new account balance is now Btc 0.5   

As you see these were very old attempted transactions from 2013 that I was able to abandon. I was not aware of this, and this could very well easily have been missed.
So I just "earned" Btc 0.5 (minus 0.07 from before) = Btc 0.43. Nice. A sincere thank you for that.


But, this still does not solve the original problem in this thread.
I think these are two totally unrelated issues.

I think the underlying issue is, your transactions failed to broadcast due to some invalid input(s) or other reasons why a transaction can get rejected by the default relay settings.

And you haven't responded to my previous replies about 'test to manually broadcast the newly created "not in mempool" transaction to your mempool':

The "raw transaction" that you need to copy is the recently created "not in mempool" transaction.
I'd recommend testmempoolaccept this time.
The error message should be the best indicator of the issue.

BTW, none of your screenshots show the sync status (the check at the lower-right corner of Bitcoin Core).
The wallet may not be scanned correctly and those "send transactions" may reappear after a rescan.

Thanks.
I will try to understand what you ask for and respond.


I have tried to make one more transaction.
Here are the screenshots of every stage of this transaction.

The same strange thing happens again.

Wallet had Btc 0.5
I am sending Btc 0.0019 with transaction fee included.
This should bring wallet down to Btc 0.4981
Wallet now goes down to Btc 0.48. 
So an extra Btc 0.0181 has been deducted on top of the correct amount to send (USD 848 at current price)



Advice greatly appreciated.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TRBQt7_ZIvYbvLXA-cgOqPE33l9uUn_TVcD0iu-BF3o/edit?usp=sharing

Followed your advice.
The error message I get when I try to do a raw transaction is this:

17:32:00

bad-txns-inputs-missingorspent (code -25)


(Was I supposed to put the data inside " " or just plain?)

This all is so strange.

I have now tried one transaction on another different old wallet.

Same thing happens, a massive extra charge is deducted from the wallet when I send.

But if I then go and Abandon transaction right away then the wallet balance comes right back to where it was.


Am I paying too little to have the transaction send somehow? Is there a way to pay more?

---

Sorry for being a bit repetitive but I just did one more try.


My accounts starts at Balance Btc 0.170826

I make one small send of Btc 0.000226. I say to have the fees included. I use the default transactions fees of 6 blocks and the suggested fee.

Then I get the confirmation box. I confirm.
(Question: In the confirmation box the Transaction fee is written IN RED. Does that mean there is something wrong? That the amount is too small or similar?)

When I then go to the account Balance now says Btc 0.007597.
So that MORE THAN Btc 0.17 has been mysteriously pulled out of the account to make this small transaction! Crazy.

So I then go to the que and I Abort this send.
Then when I go back to Balance. It is back to the original Balance of Btc 0.170826 again.

Why is the Bitcoin Core almost entirely emptying my wallet every time I try to do a simple send.
And this happens over 3 different wallet.dat files.
So strange. And it seems to be different amounts pulled out every time.

As said,
This happens on 3 different wallet.dat files.
On two different MacBooks two different fresh installs of the latest BitcoinCore.
One MacBook is completely new fresh for this specific purpose, nothing mysterious on it.

Very very strange.


Here are the screenshots of this latest attempt:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1grCt_eeFdtlkiBSJZZeLrlMPTBXWXqzJFNyVGPv-ENI/edit?usp=sharing

I get the feeling something's messed up in your wallet, and getting the addresses might be a good first step. Can you try the listaddressgroupings command tlistaddressgroupings (https://chainquery.com/bitcoin-cli/listaddressgroupings) command (click Window > Console)?
This should show all addresses in that wallet, which you can then check on https://blockchair.com/ to get their balance (if you're willing to reduce your privacy by sharing your addresses online).

I am now trying to send some BTC to the wallet.dat that was created when I sat up the latest Bitcoin Core on the brand new clean MacBook Air.

Once hopefully this Bitcoin reached this account I will try to make a send.



LoyceV
I have a lot of confidence in you. Would it be possible to share the public addresses just with you privately, and not on the public forum.

I expect this to work fine, assuming the problem is with your old wallet.

Feel free to PM me. Or just check the addresses on Blockchair.com instead of posting addresses.

I just did the listaddressgroupings

I got 5 addresses
4 are empty
One with the same Balance as the Bitcoin Core says Balance.  Currently Btc 0.48

---

LoyceV I just sent you a PM with the results, the 5 addresses.

I have tried to look at Blockchain Explorer but cant figure this out.

Please note that I am working on 3 different wallet.dat files with various contents. And in the posts above they are used several of them.


This is strange:

Running listaddressgroupings gives 5 addresses:

Blockchain explorer says about these 5 addresses:

1 address with Btc 1.00
1 with Btc 0.2262   The current value of this address is 0.22626603 BTC
1 address with 0.11000000 BTC
One empty
One empty

So blockchain explorer says Btc 1.3362

BUT:
Bitcoin Core says the Balance is Btc 0.48   (and it became 0.48 after I Aborted some transactions earlier. It started at 0.07)

---

I have now run listaddressgroupings on all my 3 accounts. And checked all addresses against Blockhain Explorer.

And there are discrepancies on all 3 accounts.

So it seems likely this is the problem.

Question is then I assume how to repair these acccounts/wallets/wallet.rar files.

---

I now see that at least ONE address with bitcoin is present in at least two of the three wallets.

Need to go over this carefully.

I found the same results for the addresses you sent me. For transparency, I'll quote myself here:

Just what I expected, for some reason that transaction is trying to spend an invalid input.
It could mean that one or all of your wallet's input(s) is already spent or not available in the blockchain.
It could be all/few of the '?' transactions are actually valid but Bitcoin Core still haven't scanned them.

Next,
If you didn't changed any setting including the first launch set-up, then your Bitcoin Core must be pruned,
yet you just replaced the wallet.dat and not opened them using the menu "File->Open Wallet".
That may have caused the wallet to keep the old status and not properly scanned.
In order for things to go smoothly, you'll need to disable pruning to be able to scan/rescan those wallets.

Double-check if prune is enabled in the settings: "Settings->Options...->Prune block storage to"
If it's 'checked', your blockchain is set to prune and you can't just replace wallet files.

To be able to load different wallet files at all times, I'd suggest you to disable it (that will require you to re-sync from scratch and lots of free disk space (https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/features/requirements#system-requirements)).
After that, you can now swap, open wallet.dat files whenever you want.
But do not just replace the wallet.dat while Bitcoin Core is running, please use the 'open wallet' menu.

---

But if your Bitcoin Core isn't pruned (the prune setting is unchecked),
try to use rescanblockchain in the console while the correct wallet is selected in the drop-down menu of the console.
That will take a few hours to complete and after that, the correct transactions should appear and marked checked in the 'Transactions' tab.

I didn't know this is the current default, but I can now indeed confirm it. That's a weird choice!

I would expect Bitcoin Core to notify the user the wallet is further behind than the pruned blocks.

@tothemoon10: if you have to redownload the entire blockchain without pruning, you may want to increase Bitcoin Core's dbcache first. Assuming 16 GB RAM, change dbcache (click Settings > Options > database cache) to 4096. This should speed up the syncing process.

Thanks.

LoyceV Yes I am able to get the private keys dumped. Got private key dump from two addresses now.
(A bit paranoid as to how to temporary store this private key. Once dumped on screen I probably should consider things compromised and work hard to secure this promptly.)

My new MacBook Air only has 256 GB disk so I have ordered a new WD SSD 1TB hard disk that I will pick up later today. So I might do the entire new download on that disk, this will take a few days again to do this.

It seems maybe trying something with the private keys might be a better option.
How do we suggest to go about it to restore with the private key.

I am familiar with the Exodus app on MacBook desktop, seems there is a way there to import private key there.

My end goal is to move all holdings of Bitcoin to my Ledger Nano S hardware wallet.
I assume I will have to make at least one send transaction for this.
(As I have been working on these 3-10+ different wallet.dat files now for some 1-2-3 weeks using various different hardware (old disks, disk readers, 3 Macs) I probably should consider all of that compromised and get all off to hardware wallet.)

I don't know Exocus, I can only give you instructions or Electrum. It's safest to do it offline:
But since you have your private keys on an online computer already, you might as well just import it into Electrum. Note that there are many fake and compromised Electrum wallets out there, make sure to use the real site: https://electrum.org
It's as easy as this: New Wallet > Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys > make transaction to your Ledger. I'd say start with the smallest fund, send it all (click Max), and pay about $0.10 in transaction fees.

You should make sure you have your Ledger seed words safely stored first, and you should thoroughly check the address (character by character) on your Ledger screen before making the transaction.

If you have your private keys, why do you want to waste your time on Bitcoin Core and downloading the blockchain? Buying new disk etc... Ridiculous.
Just import keys you have into Electrum (or other client), which is much more user-friendly. Your life will be easier...

And yes, you may pair your Ledger with Electrum. Then use option Wallet->Private keys->Sweep, it will prepare transaction which empty given address (key exported) into address in wallet opened (paired with Ledger in your case).

Doc how to use Ledger & Electrum
https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005161925-Set-up-and-use-Electrum?docs=true


Edit:
Ah Loyce, you type so fast ;-)

Sweeping is actually a good way too, maybe even easier than mine :)

Warning: DO NOT ever enter your Ledger seed words into Electrum (or websites, email or cloud storage)! Only use those words on the hardware wallet itself.

Good good.

I think I consider all my wallet.dat files compromised.

I will try this now. Downloading Electrum from electrum.org

Will let you know. :)

I am very happy to tell you it looks like this works. Importing the private keys to Electrum.

I started Electrum and set up with private keys (did not set up a new wallet on Electrum. So I guess this WAS a sweep.)

And was able to send that balance off to my Ledger.

Very nice.

Question,
Should I wait with doing the next bitcoin adddress until Electrum has confirmed the transactions, the send of the bitcoin out of the wallet before I close it and do the next?

When I do the next address. Should I delete Electrum and reinstall Electrum each time (to avoid the same problem that I had with BitcoinCore).

Electrum checks the latest state of your address, it does not need to download the full blockchain - so no, you do not need uninstall and install again later (of course remember about keeping Electrum updated to the latest release).

If you imported address into Electrum and then just send to address known from Ledger - it was a normal transaction, your private key was (is?) kept in Electrum.
The idea was to connect Ledger to Electrum (create a new Electrum walled based on your hardware wallet) so Electrum would know your public keys, but not private (each operation, transaction would require confirmation using Ledger device). And then you may use "Sweep" option to transfer from 3rd party address (your exported keys) into existing wallet (connected to Ledger). Anyway, even if you did not do that and just emptied your old Bitcoin Core address, all is fine.

If transaction is sent to mempool, there is nothing more you must wait for. You may close computer and go to sleep (and just wait for transaction to be processed). Right now mempool is almost empty so if you used fee like 5 sat or more, then your transaction is probably already confirmed.

Importing a private key is not considered sweeping.

That's sweeping :)

It doesn't matter, but it doesn't hurt to wait either. After so many weeks, being thorough is good :)
I'd say confirm the balance in Ledger Live before you continue.

No, you can just create a New wallet each time.

Since we are talking about a relatively big amount of coins, have you checked your Ledger seed to be 100% sure that it's correct and there are no mistakes in it? There are a few ways you can do that. You can restore your device to factory settings, delete your Ledger Live portfolio in the app, re-enter your seed to recover your accounts, and see if it will recover and find the correct address you just funded and its balance.

Another way to check your seed is using the Recovery Check app > https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/360007223753-Recovery-Check?docs=true

The root of the problem you had with Bitcoin Core is the "pruning" setting which avoids you to swap wallet.dat files entirely.
Plus replacing the file without shutting down Core will result with that seemingly successful (but improper) import of wallet.dat.

Electrum on the other hand is an "SPV" (Simplified Payment Verification) wallet which doesn't rely on a local copy of the blockchain.
Your wallet will only connect to the public servers for balance checking,
so you can add keys and get the correct balance without waiting for days/hours nor will encounter the same issue.

Final update on this issue.

It seems everything has gone well on this issue.

I was able to extract the private key for all the relevant accounts in Bitcoin Core, import those privat keys into Electrum, see the actual-real-balance and then send off the bitcoin to the Ledger account.
Great!

Some issues;
It turned out that what I though was different Balances was actually partly the same account counted in several Balances in several different wallet.dat files
So in all it was much less Btc than I hoped, but what was actually there corresponds with what I looked over in my notes from back in 2014 when I saw it last.

How my various wallet.dat files got mixed up I do not know. I feel there is a security issue here somehow. Its up to the technical guys to evaluate that.


The Btc balance I was able to recover in the Bitcoin Core by witdrawing/cancel transactions from 2014 did not actually work. The balance was not affected as those funds were never withdrawn in the first place.

I have not yet done the job of getting the Forkecoins, but I will do that and have gotten good advice on how to.

ALL in all very good, I was able to recover some old stuff. Big thank you to community.

My guess is you made a backup, then another backup and another backup. That creates 3 different wallets, partially with the same addresses. If you ever changed the password of the wallet, new addresses in that wallet were not in your old backup.

Congrats! Forgetting about your wallets for 7 years is a great way of HODLing :D

Congratulations!
You may use findmycoins.ninja to see what are possible fork coins and what would be the current value. And then you may try to claim them on your own or ask LoyceV for his services.

Your screenshots show that your wallets aren't "HD" (Hierarchical Deterministic)
so if you ever made too many transactions after the first backup (used all addresses up to the last key in the keystore), it will contain outdated list of addresses.
Loyce's reply is true except your new addresses wont differ with a password change, it will only happen the first time you encrypted the wallet.

AFAIK, they had been recommending to frequently backup your wallet.dat file back when Bitcoin Core's wallet isn't HD.
That may be the reason why you got multiple copies of the same wallet.

Congrats BTW.