Had bitcoin in an old multibit wallet on desktop... now a big problem

[sarcinarious]

Hi. I had some bitcoin in a wallet sitting on my desktop on the old laptop which I forgot about. After the recent surge in price I tried to send it to coinbase...

Here is the problem, it was an old multibit wallet which is no longer supported (I didn't know) so the fees were completely wrong and the transaction was pending for over a week, so I reset the blockchain (as suggested online), now the wallet does not show the sent transaction and the multibit wallet on my desktop has 0 BTC balance (only shows received transactions, no sent transaction) , also the bitcoin was never received to my coinbase account. What should I do?

I guess what I want to do is put this bitcoin into an actual supported wallet and then get it sent (maybe) to coinbase with a realistic fee... I can't see that transaction being completed anytime soon with the transaction fee I used. I understand it is possible to double spend bitcoin to negate a pending transaction.

[OmegaStarScream]

Multibit classic? It should be possible to export the private keys. If that's the case, Install Electrum wallet, create a standard wallet and use the sweep option to send everything from your Multibit private keys to Electrum.

[sarcinarious]

Hi. I see the screen asking for the private key in electrum, where is the private key obtained from in the old multibit wallet? Thank you for the help so far.

Edit: I think I found the private key but there is no way to click "next" to sweep when its imported. Thanks

[sarcinarious]

Hi. Could use some addition help. Thanks

[OmegaStarScream]

Go to tools => export private keys in Multibit classic as shown:



This should either give you the private keys in CSV format or plaintext on the wallet itelf I believe.

You make an Electrum afterwards, Auto connect to a server > standard wallet > save the seed somewhere safe and re-type there. After the wallet is succesfully created go to the menu 'Wallet' > Private keys > Sweep and type the exported private keys there (one in each line):




You just click sweep and everything from the private keys will be sent to your new Electrum wallet.

[sarcinarious]

Hi. Thanks, the transaction is unconfirmed though? I thought it would be instant due to swapping wallets on the hard drive? Is that not the case.

edit: Also the transaction is smaller than the amount in the multibit wallet. Am I paying a fee to change wallets on the hard drive?

[mocacinno]

Sweeping = creating a new transaction, funding one of the addresses from your wallet.

A different option might have been to create a new wallet, using the private keys from your multibit classic instead... That way, there wouldn't be a sweeping transaction necessary.

[sarcinarious]

thank you for the help. I just checked and the transaction was completed with the fee. It's too late for me to avoid the fee.

[mocacinno]

thank you for the help. I just checked and the transaction was completed with the fee. It's too late for me to avoid the fee.

Great to hear
Don't worry about the fee, the procedure described by OmegaStarScream is cleaner anyways... It's not a good idear to keep using private keys that were exported in cleartext anyways, and having an HD wallet to begin with is probably also worth the tx fee.