InstaWallet Recovery/Claim - Please Help

[ThatCookieMonster]

Hi all & @Boussac

TL:DR - Had an instawallet many many years ago, laptop crashed, life went on - college, job, wife, kids, etc, cleaned our storage room last week and found my old laptop, had the laptop/drive recovered, found instawallet address, found out instawallet doesn't exist anymore, and now I would love to recover the funds from my instawallet.


Full story:

After recovering one of my old laptops, my wife and I were going through old pictures, she suggested I check for any of my old bitcoin wallets that I had told her about after bitcoin went crazy a couple years back and everyone was talking about bitcoin.

Sure enough, I found a text file and a chrome bookmark for my instawallet. We both got pretty excited considering we've been stuck in quarantine for months and there is not much to get excited about. So realizing we may have just found a decent amount of money which used to be an insignificant amount of money seemed like it would definitely be our highlight of the year. It was quite a bummer after clicking on the bookmark and seeing that the page did not exist anymore.

I started Google searching things like "what happened to instawallet". My searches quickly led me to a very long forum post here by @Boussac - after skimming through the 47 pages and clicking on more recent threads about the same topic, I've come to realize that the only thing I can do is post here and hope that @Boussac gets in touch with me.

It is very unfortunate that people like me who really didn't use instawallet religiously or rely on the btc held on the site for daily/regular transactions - would end up losing our funds because we were silly enough to leave our funds on a website we didn't touch for years and now that I have found out what happened to instawallet, it seems I am about 7 years too late for my btc to be guaranteed/returned :/  It would be great just to find out how much or how little BTC was left in my instawallet before it was shut down, but it would be even better to have my funds returned.

@Boussac If you are reading this, or anyone else in this forum is reading this who could help get his attention, that would be very greatly appreciated.

I can provide whatever information is necessary to prove my secret wallet address belongs to me.

Does anyone know if contacting customer service through Paymium would be a good idea? After skimming through related threads here it seems like that is the company who took over instawallet?

Any advice would be appreciated, even something as basic as telling me which forum area this should have been posted to. I posted it here because I saw a similar post in this same section.
Thanks so much and fingers crossed @Boussac stumbles onto this post!

[JeromeTash]

There is still a chance that you could recover your money if you provide proof though it has been a longtime since the deadline. 
@Boussac was last online on 1st December, about a month ago so there's a chance that he will be back.

This is what he said to someone with a similar problem in May this year

Please bear in mind that this was an experimental no-login, no-fee wallet, not a paying service.
Users are welcome to reach out if they can prove they were actual user by providing all the details in their posession.
I do not respond to unsubstantiated claim because they are too easily made up and I don't have time for that anymore after 7+ years.

Try sending him a PM
Here are some more of his public contacts

Code:

boussac.75011@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/pierre.noizat
https://linkedin.com/in/pierrenoizat

[Maus0728]

Just to add, it seems that @Boussac owned a french cryptocurrency website.
[1] https://e-ducat.fr/

The website is still pretty active and his last blog has been published 3 and 1/2 months ago. Anyhow, there are other links that you can use to reach out to him.

[2] https://github.com/pierrenoizat
[3] https://twitter.com/e_ducat
Edit: I have sent him a personal message and linked him to this thread. I'll make a notice if he somehow reply to my message. Happy New Year  

[ThatCookieMonster]

@JeromeTash - Thank you for the response and the contact info, I appreciate that!

@Maus0728 - Thank you as well for the additional info you provided. Also thank you so much for sending him a message linking to this thread, that's awesome!

I will probably choose one of the provided ways to contact him and link him to this thread, I don't want to overwhelm him or send him a hundred messages on all his platforms.
Hopefully I will have some sort of response in a months time or so. After that if I am still waiting to hear from him, I'll definitely try to reach him through the other contact methods as well.

Happy new year!

[ProfiTeam]

@JeromeTash - Thank you for the response and the contact info, I appreciate that!

@Maus0728 - Thank you as well for the additional info you provided. Also thank you so much for sending him a message linking to this thread, that's awesome!

I will probably choose one of the provided ways to contact him and link him to this thread, I don't want to overwhelm him or send him a hundred messages on all his platforms.
Hopefully I will have some sort of response in a months time or so. After that if I am still waiting to hear from him, I'll definitely try to reach him through the other contact methods as well.

Happy new year!

Man, as soon as you find out something, let me know, I just have the amounts of instawallets and I want to withdraw them, but I'm afraid to pay a limitless card from my bitcoin
If there was an opportunity to pay from the card balance, it would be great)))

[swaug]

@Thatcookiemonster @ProfiTeam
Have any of you been able to recover your Bitcoin or received a response? I just found my URL and login. I thought it was lost forever.. and now evidently, it may be. If you can send an update or help, please let me know! Thanks!!

[meiso]

Hi - did anyone ever get anywhere with this? I uncovered my instawallet details a few months ago and have been emailing, but I'm not certain whether there is any hope.

[Adamlm]

Any update? I have the same issue. I was using instawallet many years ago and found out that on its address there are some satoshis I'd like to get back. The block explorer shows that the address was untouched. I don't have any keys or seed, just an old link to instawallet like this: https://instawallet.org/w/some_long_code_here

@ThatCookieMonster @Boussac @JeromeTash:
https://twitter.com/Bitcoinuser/status/1513525555982917636

I think the only thing we need from the author of InstaWalllet is how to convert this "some_long_code" in the URL https://instawallet.org/w/some_long_code to the private key of the destination BTC address. I suppose that this could be done quite easily, but the source code is needed.

DM me if there any updated, thanks.

[JeromeTash]

Any update? I have the same issue. I was using instawallet many years ago and found out that on its address there are some satoshis I'd like to get back. The block explorer shows that the address was untouched. I don't have any keys or seed, just an old link to instawallet like this: https://instawallet.org/w/some_long_code_here

@ThatCookieMonster @Boussac @JeromeTash:
https://twitter.com/Bitcoinuser/status/1513525555982917636

I think the only thing we need from the author of InstaWalllet is how to convert this "some_long_code" in the URL https://instawallet.org/w/some_long_code to the private key of the destination BTC address. I suppose that this could be done quite easily, but the source code is needed.

DM me if there any updated, thanks.

The problem with people is they never come back with any update here. They just go quiet, so t's hard to know if their issues got resolved or not. But I suggest you first contact @Boussac.

I think the service must have been custodial, so he is the own who owns the keys to unlock your wallets.

[khaled0111]

I think the service must have been custodial, so he is the own who owns the keys to unlock your wallets.

It looks like instawallet was a custodial service indeed so there is no way to recover the funds without the assistance of @Boussac. btw, it appears that Boussac is also the founder of paymium exchange which is still operational.
OP didn't login since a long time but luckily enough his email address is visible on his profile page. No guarantee that this is his main wallet or he is still using it but it won't hurt to send it a message and ask for an update.

[Adamlm]

The problem with people is they never come back with any update here. They just go quiet, so t's hard to know if their issues got resolved or not. But I suggest you first contact @Boussac.

I've tried to contact him on twitter but no reply... Looks that there is no chance to recover these funds. Luckily I don't have much stuck there.

[BitMaxz]

I've tried to contact him on twitter but no reply... Looks that there is no chance to recover these funds. Luckily I don't have much stuck there.

I don't think you can able to contact them they have an old issue before about security breaches that end up closing their service.

About what you said above your post this one https://instawallet.org/w/some_long_code
That is the security breach and most of the wallets are recorded on archive.org sample this one

Code:

https://instawallet.org/w/h5qmpGNTseZ513uiFT9zqFuAvx277m3zg

That's an old wallet so it's impossible that you can still recover your wallet by giving this URL with your own code because anyone can have the same URL by going to archive.org and use that URL to send it to the owner of instawallet.

[JeromeTash]

I've tried to contact him on twitter but no reply... Looks that there is no chance to recover these funds. Luckily I don't have much stuck there.

It's hard to tell if he saw your message or not.

I don't know if you have tried to use other channels as well to reach out to him. If you did not. Let me share them with you since they are available publically.

Code:

boussac.75011@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/pierre.noizat
https://linkedin.com/in/pierrenoizat

This shows that he was paying old customers but they had to prove that they actually owned funds in the wallet

I think he is not ready paying old customers

What makes you "think" that ?
Customers ? Please bear in mind that this was an experimental no-login, no-fee wallet, not a paying service.
Users are welcome to reach out if they can prove they were actual user by providing all the details in their posession.
I do not respond to unsubstantiated claim because they are too easily made up and I don't have time for that anymore after 7+ years.

[Adamlm]

He posts something on twitter in French so I assume he's aware of mentions and DMs.

@Boussac please give us a sign.

[freewheelindylan]

any luck?

[dansus021]

Check it the address first is the money still there? make a couple of twitter threads and tag the person. I hope your problem solved

[JeromeTash]

Check it the address first is the money still there? make a couple of twitter threads and tag the person. I hope your problem solved

He is still very active on Twitter, unlike here, where his profile was last active in February 2022.

Some users however claim that they DMed and mentioned him in their tweets but still no response at all. Those whop tried to recover the funds have also since then gone quiet, so it's hard to know it their issues were solved or not.