Just to make sure the OP isn't getting any false hopes: Coding Enthusiast is using a different way of saying what i've said before: OP could brute force his passphrase if he has an idea what it might have been... If it was a completely random passphrase, it's still allmost impossible... Bruteforcing the actual private key is impossible (well, theoretically it's possible, but in reality it's not)

yes

Looks like it's a really nice tool... I wouldn't run it on an online machine without reading the actual code tough... Also, like i already said: this tool is perfect for when you're missing 4 or 5 characters... Running it with 44 missing characters won't do you any good...

Sorry to be the barer of bad news, but that's still not nearly enough to bruteforce your key in finite time... Really... Unless you suddenly find another 40 or so characters in the right sequence, i would just stop with the path of trying to bruteforce the actual private key, and concentrate on the phrase you used to generate your brain wallet.
I know you said you don't remember, but even if you don't remember your odds are better than the odds of bruteforcing a private key with so little of the key known to you.

Don't get your hopes up tough... Your odds are very small either way.

EDIT: since it doesn't seems to sink in, here are some numbers from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vanitygen
Vanitygen is a tool that iterates over private keys, derives the public key, hashes said key to form the address, then sees if the address matches a predefined regex.
It seems to max out on:
GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER (48x64 cores) Grid(384x256)   2002 Mkey/s

So, basically, if you run a super-optimised tool on a GPU you can create up to 2.002.000.000 private keys/address pairs PER SECOND.

Now, you're missing 52 - (1+1+6) = 44 characters.
So there are 58⁴⁴ combinations that can be made with 44 unknown characters out of a characterset of 58, and 8 known characters to form a compressed key in WIF

Divide those two, and you end up with billions of years needed to bruteforce the key...

The breaking point is somewhere around 9 unknown characters:
(58⁸ keys)/(2002000000 keys/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day) =~ 1 day to bruteforce the complete keyspace
(58⁹ keys)/(2002000000 keys/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day) =~ 43 days to bruteforce the complete keyspace
(58¹⁰ keys)/(2002000000 keys/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day) =~ 7 YEARS to bruteforce the complete keyspace

So, even if you have 10 GPU's, and you find a tool that's twice as fast as the once i posted benchmarks for, and you only need to scan 50% of the keyspace, missing 10 characters will still take you more than 2 months to bruteforce... Now let it sink in you're missing 44 characters instead of 10, and you don't have 10 GPU's laying around, you don't have an optimised program, and you might have to scan allmost 100% of the keyspace...
Trying to remember what kind of phrase you might have used is your only option mate... Really... Even if you have no clue, it's still better than trying to bruteforce a private key...

To be honest, that only reduces the searchspace from "super duper incredibly totally impossible" to "super incredibly totally impossible".
Scanning the keyspace is a big no-no... It simply cannot be done in finite time, at least not with only 4 characters that are known to you... If you'd be missing 4 characters it would be something completely different.

Your only option is to dig deep and write down whatever words you might have used as passphrases around that time... Think about passwords you haven't used in a long time, names or dates or addresses that might have mattered to you in that timeframe... Then find a tool that iterates over these words and maybe add some variation to them. The brain is a terrible source of entropy (source for that quote is unknow, but it's not mine), so it should be far easyer to remember the passphrase than it is to bruteforce the actual private key given the first letter and 4 characters in the middle... The first letter isn't that important anyways...

By the looks of it, the OP generated a new account, posted the identical question in 3 subforums and left as soon as he got an answer out of one of them without closing any of the 3 identical topics he made...
It might be a good idear to let this one rest, it looks like the OP isn't coming back anyways...

With 4 characters and no idear which sentence you used to create your brain wallet... I don't like your chances to be honest...

There might be some tools to help you brute force those brain wallets, but they're really slow... You'd need a pretty good idear about which sentence you might have used to have a shot at bruteforcing tbh...
The fact that you know the address might help a bit while bruteforcing, since the tool you use doesn't have to check for unspent outputs once it generated an address, it just has to match the generated address to the address you have on file... Still, i don't like your odds...

There are indeed some limitations on findmycoins.ninja website. I to have noticed that, for some of my addresses, it doesn't work.

Some googeling around turned up https://someone235.github.io/btc-forks-balance/ (i did not test it tough)
Here seems to be a list of forks (also, untested): https://forkdrop.io/ but you'll have to find explorers and convert addresses manually

Or, if you care to mess around with some code, i once wrote this tool: https://github.com/mocacinno/mocacinnoforkchecker
However, i wrote it like 3 years ago, and never gave it an update, so it probably won't run out-of-the-box anymore (it's possible the hardcoded explorers went offline, or the format changed, or you no longer have python 2.7 available, or...)

In the end, except for one or two of the biggest forks, it probably won't be worth your effort to claim these forks... Most of them are worth pennies...

That being said: do make sure you don't start importing private key(s) into altcoin wallets to claim those forks BEFORE emptying out your BTC wallet! Some of those altcoin wallets are "fake" and collect your private key(s), other chains have problems that might cause issues on the bitcoin chain... So avoid problems by emptying out your bitcoin wallet BEFORE even making an attempt to claim those forked altcoins

euhm, isn't that the site that scammed you by not releasing your funds unless you payed them 10% of your balance to "unlock" your own money?
In that case, you are not really trading, you are just being scammed... So no, it's not better to use with your mobile phone, it's better to remove all apps related to this site from your phone and step away... They scammed you, there is no reason to visit them ever again, unless it's to take a couple of screenshots/recordings to go to the police.

You don't need to verify their ip address, you need to save their ip, try to contact their hosting provider and DNS provider, go to the police to report you've been scammed and fill in the google safesearch forms... That's all... Don't log in to "trade", they're not going to pay you anyways (at least, that is if this was the site you were talking about, the one that forced you to deposit more money before they promised you'd be able to withdraw)

That's basically what a double spend is... The fact the outputs used as input for above transactions were also used for a different transaction, and this second transaction ended up in a block in the longest chain (the one with the most work) is the explanation of a double spend.

This being said, a double spend with an output with a fiat value of ~$20 is probably just a coincidence, not somebody deliberately trying to bring the price down.

Well, you can go to your local law enforcement agency.... In most cases: the local police station.
This being said, most police officers won't even know what you're talking about, so the odds of actually getting your money back are slim to none.

But, if you don't open an official police report, you miss out on the tiny chance of getting your money back if they ever find the guys who did this... If there is no report, law enforcement will never know you were scammed... Don't get your hopes up tough!

You can help others by opening a proper scam accusation (following the scam accusation format that's been described in the sticky post in this subforum) and maybe report it to google safesearch aswell... That way you might help some other people, but it won't make you get your money back i'm afraid.

Consider it a very expensive lesson... Tough luck

you have been scammed.

As a rule of thumb: if anybody asks you to pay them in order to receive money you're due, it's a scam. Think about: they owe YOU money, they're holding money that would legally belong to you... Why on earth would they ask you to send them more money in order to "unlock" funds you legally own if it wasn't to scam you?

Think about a FIAT equivalent: you're standing on the street and somebody you have never seen before asks to borrow $100, and promises to meet you in the same spot after 1 week to return your $100 and $10 intrest.
The next week, you're standing on the agreed upon spot, the guy appears but instead of giving you $110, he says: "i'm currently in possesion of $110 that belongs to you, but i don't trust you, so you'll have to give me another $20 and let me walk away... When I come back, i'll give you the $130"... Mind you: you've never seen this bloke before, you don't have his phone number, you have no way of tracking him down... Do you think many people would fork over another $20? Why would crypto be any different?

Thanks for finding the source
I haven't read the article, but if your representation is correct, i can sum this case up pretty easily:

• An article that has been written without detailing the exact methodology or exact figures is making certain conclusions.
• Fudzilla (what's in a name) used this article to write a second article using their conclusions, without even quoting the first article (which already didn't give enough details as it stands)
• OP posted a small part from the fudzilla article

After a second quick glance, i already saw a discrepancy between OP's statement and fudzilla: fudzilla claims (without proof) that transacting 1 BTC costs $76, they're not talking about cost per transaction, but cost per BTC.

Once again: i'm not saying these numbers are wrong, i'm just saying that given these articles, there is no way to verify these claims... Our community usually operates using the slogan "don't trust, verify"... No numbers, no calculations => no trust... Sorry... Doesn't mean those numbers are wrong, just that i don't trust them at face value.

$1000, $500, $100, $50.... Those are just numbers TBH.... Let's see HOW you find these numbers instead of being generous while still guessing lower numbers.

I'm not saying the number in the article was wrong, i'm not saying $50 is wrong... I'm saying that, without any sources, $50 is just a number, it has no meaning whatsoever. As long as you're guessing, why not guess a transaction costs $0.005... Why is that guess worse than $50? I haven't seen any real calculations, my quick glance at the article made it look like the writer is just pulling numbers out of thin air, then proceeds to use them for a lot of calculations (full disclaimer: i just quickly scanned the article)...

Start with the current difficulty. Using this difficulty, you can get a rather good estimation of the current hashrate.
Then estimate the mix of ASIC's that would be needed to reach this hashrate. You'll have to get the biggest ASIC producer's numbers: how much of which model have been sold over the last 2-3 years?
Then, you'll have to find out where the biggest mining farms are located: are they using "leftover" energy produced by hydropower (energy that would otherwise go to waste) or are they using energy produced by burning coal, or maybe something in between?
What happens with the leftover energy? Is it recuperated? How about old ASIC's, are they being recycled?

Then, you'll have to study FIAT: how much trees are cut down, how much cotton, how much energy is used in the process of transporting raw materials, making paper, printing paper, distributing, running bank offices, making vaults, filling ATM's.
Then, look into the server parks that are needed by big banks...
Then, you'll have to find a way to compare FIAT energy costs with BTC transaction costs... The amount of FIAT being exchanged for goods and services on a daily basis VS the amount of BTC being exchanged on a daily basis, and their respective energy costs.

Finding an exact answer to this question is probably complex enough to fill a 4 year phd program, so i'm not even going to try a back-of-a-napkin estimation

I've quickly scanned the article... They're talking about "the research rapport" without listing any sources.
At first glance, this article looks like just a bunch of numbers thrown together tbh.

In reality, nobody knows how much electricity is being used, and which source is used to generate said electricity.

Everything depends on which exact mix of ASIC's is running at any given moment, and which energy mix is being used to generate the electricity for each of these ASIC's (coal, nuclear, wind, water, biomass).

Also, in order to be fair, to the total energy cost of solving a certain amount of blocks  (and the sum of the outputs off al transactions therein) should also be compared to the total energy cost of an equivalent amount of FIAT... I mean, the whole process of designing, printing, transporting, banks, ATM's, checking, destroying, servers managing bank account,... they all use a lot of energy aswell...

I have never observed anybody getting banned for presenting verifiable truths, and i've been here for a while already... Since it's impossible to proof nobody gets banned for telling the truth, i cannot present said proof.

I've seen people picking fights with the admin, i've seen scammers, i've seen people getting involved with all kind of shady behaviour,... I haven't seen anybody getting banned for this.

I HAVE seen people that got banned for plagiarism, for doxxing, for relentless trolling and spamming, for threatening with physical violence... But not for telling inconvenient truths.

Since you ask, i can only assume you got an (alt)account that was banned?

In the end, every company has the opportunity to be their own processor... I've setup a webshop that uses my own btcpayserver and uses the nomiddleman woocommerce plugin that uses an xpub to derive new deposit addresses. The store sells physical goods, so the store owner already has the name and address of their clients, i see no need to ask for extra KYC info.

On saturday, i bought some stuff from an online webshop owner that actually manually generated an address and mailed it to me... Pretty artisanal, but it worked flawlessly... Better that way than losing clients due to bitpay i guess

You always have the option of installing electrum (verify the signature) and use electrum with your ledger nano S instead of that dreadfull "ledger live".

My ledger live is always giving me problems... Errors... Sync issues.... So i switched to electrum instead. This only works to manage your btc wallet tough, not many altcoins have a working electrum clone i'm afraid.

In order not to create any confusion, i wanted to add that the "never expire" option is for electum's internal accounting only... Addresses do not expire, people can still fund an address even if electrum "expired" the payment request... It's just for electrum's bookkeeping, it has nothing to do with being able to use an address or not.

The address is the easyest.... In the request tab, you should find the uri, but not everybody will be able to use this uri, so the address is easyer.

By the way, don't make a poll to ask a basic question.