I've been posting on reddit's /r/Bitcoin since before the block size limit increasing hardfork proposals started and I haven't been critical of the moderation policy of keeping discussion of altcoins and forkcoins (and their client software) out of /r/Bitcoin. This is because it makes sense to limit /r/Bitcoin to strictly Bitcoin, to save time, help prevent confusion and distraction, although I personally am also fine with filtering the content myself. We know that sometimes there have even been clear attempts to manipulate public perceptions through organized or fake votes and comments, and we know at least some of the motives behind such manipulation. Perpetrating altcoin pump and dump scams (a.k.a. shitcoins) is just one such motive, which I hope most participants here are by now well aware of.

That said, even under stricter moderation, discussion of the mechanisms of forks and the consequences of such has, naturally, not been deliberately restricted, to my knowledge. Yet I am now seeing some of my comments on this subject disappearing, while deceptively still being shown while logged in to reddit with my account. This has completely deceived me into not suspecting anything untoward until I discovered it by chance days later. I've seen no notification of any sort about the covert deletions, and there is no visible trace of the comments on reddit when not logged in to my account, even days after the comments were posted. I find this completely unacceptable. It's deceptive, subversive, underhand, unaccountable.

This has happened to me twice within a period of 5 days (and I don't post often). Here's the first example:

The topic is the so-called User-Activated Soft-Fork (UASF) which is a proposal of very little substance in terms of code and little specifics in terms of theory and rationale. One thing certain about its current form is that it can easily lead to a split of the blockchain, and thus the currency, into two.

The context is this comment by /u/etmetm, to which I replied:


I stand behind what I've written completely. I'm ready to explain, expand on and defend everything said, if someone is interested. That is, in an environment where my words can actually reach people.

P.S.: There seems to be some automatic moderation policy on keywords on /r/Bitcoin. I don't know which words this covers and why such action has been taken by the moderators. This has prevented me from posting this verbatim on /r/Bitcoin. Additionally, a modified version of this seems to have been deleted at least once manually by a moderator (judging by how it was not deleted for at least a few seconds after submitting).

Edit: Note I did not post this topic to this section originally. I find it just a little weird that moderator mprep decided to move my topic from Other > Meta to Economy > Marketplace > Service Discussion.

Doesn't this introduce incompatibility problems due to the different Windows and UNIX/OSX end of line character(s) standards?
It looks like users are going to want an option to set the EOL standard used.

No. When Electrum 1.x generates a seed it's always 12 words (13 with version 2.x) even if there are many zero bytes. Some have tried to generate shorter seeds outside Electrum and then use them in Electrum, but that's a different matter.

You are right, the standalone version doesn't write or read these files from its own directory (just tested).

When you said "the latest version of the code" I thought that it might be the source you are asking about, that's all.

With an older version of Electrum (1.9.7) present I tried running the standalone executable v2.2 and had the same issue. Then I installed it from the setup executable (in a separate directory, keeping the older version intact) and it still wouldn't start. It turns out that when I renamed the file \Electrum\config (under AppData or wherever it is located, depending on OS) it was able to start normally.

There was and still is the portable version 2.2 binary. It says "Standalone Executable". If you want to compile it from source, maybe there are instructions for that in the source files.

I was looking at an older version and assumed it's not much different in the latest. I checked version 2.2 now and now I think I know exactly what your wallet is. You created a new wallet, clicked "Restore a wallet or import keys" and then it says "Please enter a wallet seed, a master public key, *a list of bitcoin addresses*, or a list of private keys." and you entered just an address - so it is an imported address that you can watch, but the private key is not there. (In older versions it is possible to have one watch-only wallet with imported private keys in it that you can directly send from, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.)
So, you need to find the private key for that address. Perhaps the address came from a paper wallet. Perhaps you have that somewhere. Try to find it.

1. So I should have asked you this so that we can determine for sure if this address came from Electrum or not:

Open that watch-only wallet where the address is in and click on the 'Receive' tab. Now find where exactly that address can be found. Is it under the "Main account" branch or is it under "Imported" (do you have an "Imported" there at all)? If it is under "Imported" then it must have been generated outside of Electrum, but then you most probably have the private key there in the wallet and you should be able to send the bitcoins from that address. Otherwise (if it is under "Main account"), it was generated by Electrum and you need to find the seed or the normal (not watch-only) Electrum wallet. When you create an Electrum wallet it shows you the 12 word seed and asks you to write it down somewhere. On the very next step it asks you to type it in again, to make sure you have it. So how did you get through this step? Also, are you sure the wallet you have is watch-only and not a normal wallet (find the address that you sent the coins to and try right clicking and then click "Send From" and see what shows up)?

2. You can use an address generated outside of Electrum by importing its private key. But you say you are unable to send from this address, right? This makes me think that the address is probably not imported. Otherwise it means there is some other issue at hand that we haven't determined yet (we'll go into that if the answer for point 1. above is "Imported").

3. It is possible that you went through bitaddress.org's address generation and then imported the private key that is immediately displayed there. Then you should be able to send from it and the 8-word thing remains unexplained. It is also possible that after the address generation on bitaddress.org you clicked "Paper Wallet", then "BIP38 Encrypt" (this is usually how many people generate encrypted paper wallets) and then entered a passphrase (perhaps the 8 words). Then you may (should) have printed the wallets or kept other copies. But then importing that into Electrum would have been somewhat complicated (you would have gone through something like this: http://www.thecleverest.com/importing-bitcoin-from-a-paper-wallet-into-electrum/ or you imported only the address and not the private key, which is also complicated, as far as I know) so I think this is unlikely.

4. So one explanation for the 8 words could be that they are the passphrase for a BIP38 Encrypted private key (see 3). Another explanation could be that they are the passphrase for some encrypted Electrum wallet.

5. I assume that by "regular access to the wallet" you mean when you had the normal (not watch-only) wallet that was destroyed when you reformatted your disk, is that right?

By the way, it may be worth it to try data recovery on that reformatted disk. There are a few topics in this section that go into details about that.

I'm not sure that that is the case given that, as I understand it, you can see the address as a receiving address in Electrum and you can see its balance in Electrum but at the same time you are unable to send this balance (points 1 and 2).

Try to answer these questions:

1. First think of the address you sent bitcoins to. Did you have more addresses written where you found this address? Any other context (notes, past transaction history, etc.) to this address which may help you be sure what this address is from?

2. In your first post you assumed it is an address from an Electrum wallet. If that is so then you would (or at least should) have saved/memorized what you need in order to recover the wallet - 12 word seed and/or backup copies of the wallet file. Are you sure you don't have any of this?

3. What other kind of wallet could this address you sent your bitcoins to be from? Think of what wallets you may have used on your phone. What web services/wallets have you used?

4. Now about the 8 words. It is clear that those 8 words are something other than an Electrum seed. Do you remember rolling dice, flipping coins or manually using a wordlist or something like that to get these 8 words? If so, the 8 words could be an encryption password, web service password or a brainwallet (like https://bitaddress.org/ and https://keybase.io/warp).

5.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that. What password is that? Is this just for the Electrum wallet you generated by entering the 8 words when you were trying to recover your bitcoins?

Johoe, both your and blockchain.info's willingness to reimburse is laudable.

However, I hope you make sure blockchain.info really handles this properly. I hope you observe at least your own interest and ask blockchain.info to at least report to you what portion of the money they've used for reimbursements (ideally you should have only reimbursed blockchain.info for proper reimbursements they have already completed and proven to you). For one thing, very often in situations like that some portion would remain unclaimed for whatever reason. If it turns out that there are unclaimed coins after the proper owners have been notified and a long time has passed, those coins would more properly belong to you rather than to blockchain.info.

Blockchain.info should not profit from their own mistake. It would set a bad precedent if that were to happen.

I'm writing this just for the sake of justice and good business practice. I hope you understand.

I've talked earlier to Eskimo via private messages because there was a restriction for me as a new user to reply here, but now I am able to publish it here, which I think would be appropriate:

Eskimo told me in response (in part):
and also asked about data recovery.

To that I replied with the advice that the chance of success can be maximized with the help of someone with good experience and tools for data recovery who would need to have access to the physical disk or computer to do their thing. I also proposed a plan that is somewhat less ideal but perhaps simple enough to try on one's own for searching for and recovering a deleted file or a string pattern. I mentioned the fact that files in restore points are stored with compression (on NTFS partitions) which complicates searching for string patterns.
I also mentioned the Previous Versions feature in Windows 7 (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/85679-previous-versions-restore-files-folders.html) which relies on restore points, but should in theory be better suited to finding out definitively whether there is an older version of a file in an existing (not deleted) restore point or not, compared to reverting the whole system using System Restore.
I did not receive a reply to this message so I was wondering what has happened regarding the wallet.

Now more questions come to mind that I didn't think to ask earlier, but which might just lead to a breakthrough. When you first created the wallet in Electrum, in the first step it shows you the seed in the form of 12 words. It asks you to write them down somewhere and you have to have done that or copied them or memorized them, because in the very next step it asks you to enter them again, just to verify that you've completed the previous step. How did you complete these steps and is there any chance that you have those 12 words written or stored somewhere?

Originally posted as a private message, reposting here for future reference:

I have to ask you, is it possible that you moved the file to, e.g. a flash drive, a CD, a ZIP or other archive inside the same disk, or encrypted it or printed it or anything like that? Is it possible that you saved the electrum wallet file after all (by the way, the default name for Electrum wallet files is "default_wallet", not "wallet.dat")?

Did you try the Previous Versions feature in Windows 7: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/85679-previous-versions-restore-files-folders.html ?

Are you sure the .lnk file you recovered is a valid .lnk file (when you right click on it and then "Properties" it should display the path where the original .txt file was)? Could it perhaps actually be the .txt file with a wrong extension (you can try to drag the .lnk file and drop it over Notepad and it will open its contents)?

I see that you have R-Studio, so I will suggest one good way to quickly search the entire disk for the contents of your .txt file using that program. This way it searches both deleted files and existing files (you can use that to also search the 16GB of recovered .txt files). Open R-Studio and right click on your disk or partition (e.g. C:) and then click "View/Edit...". Click "Find" and enter a pattern in the "ANSI" field. Ask yourself are you sure that you have exactly "Elec 2" in your text file and not e.g. "elec 2" or "Elec 2:" or "Elec2". When you decide what pattern to look for it would be better to make the pattern as long and unique as possible, so that you get fewer false positives. Try to also remember if you are sure that "Elec 2" is exactly at the beginning of the line and if you pressed enter immediately after it. So if the right pattern is exactly "Elec 2", preceded by a new line and followed by a new line, you can add the newline characters using the HEX field. Newline in text files created in Windows has the HEX code 0d 0a. So the whole pattern to enter in the HEX field (for the pattern: *newline*Elec 2*newline*) is this:
0d 0a 45 6c 65 63 20 32 0d 0a
Be careful when you've edited both "ANSI" and "HEX" fields, because it has bugs and it changes the HEX codes of newline sometimes. Make sure that it says "0d 0a" where it is supposed to before you start the search.
Then check "Match Case" if you want to search for the pattern with capital and small letters exactly as you've entered them.

I don't use Windows 7, so I don't know whether the Notepad you used might have saved the file in Unicode format. You can open Notepad now and click File->Save as... and see at the bottom of the window - does it say "Encoding: ANSI" or does it say "Encoding: Unicode" or something else? If it says Unicode, then your file might have been saved as Unicode and then you should enter the pattern in the "UNICODE" field in R-Studio instead.

This search has one limitation - it will not be able to find text that is in files that are compressed or encrypted (including NTFS' compression and encryption - for example, files from restore points are usually compressed).

Please tell me what happens and ask me if you need help with any of this. Good luck.

P.S.: Could you by any chance still have a saved session in VMware from the same boot of Tails as when you created the wallets?

Also, have you ever exported and saved a private key from any of those Electrum wallets (it can be used in combination with the master public key to find the seed)?