EARLY BITCOIN WALLET.DAT

[CryptoCruiser]

This IP tried changing my password IP 87.123.132.159

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[DannyHamilton]

SPV wallets (such as Electrum and MultiBit) didn't come along until 2011.  So, if you were using bitcoin in 2009, then you probably were using Bitcoin-Qt.

As such, if any bitcoins were sent to you, you would have first downloaded and run Bitcoin-Qt, then told the sender the bitcoin address from your Bitcoin-Qt wallet, then seen the balance in the Bitcoin-Qt wallet increase when you received the transaction.

If that all sounds familiar then you're probably looking for a file named wallet.dat

I'm REALLY SURPRISED to hear that you gave ANY money at all for bitcoins in 2009.  The first well known transaction of bitcoins for ANYTHING of value was the 2 pizzas bought by Laszlo Hanyecz for 10,000 bitcons in spring of 2010.  Untill then, people were happy to send thousands of bitcoins to anyone that wanted them for FREE.

[HI-TEC99]

I don't believe the OP could have bought Bitcoins from an exchange around August - fall of 2009

The first Bitcoin exchange was started by a user called NewLibertyStandard who registered on January 19, 2010.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=26

NewLibertyStandard's profile link above shows he was the 26th user to register here. How could there be an exchange before he registered when the community consisted of less than 26 people?

The second Bitcoin exchange was called Bitcoin Market. Its thread was started on January 15, 2010 and trading on the exchange started at a later date.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20.0

Those two exchanges are the first two mentioned in the Bitcoin wiki. If there were earlier exchanges then why doesn't the wiki mention them?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:History

[DannyHamilton]

I filled the fields on the page with I assume my credit card and clicked submit. I then remember I was given a download link on the bottom of the page and there was also a statement that read something along the lines that I would have to wait 15 minutes. I don't remember if I had to wait for the link or not. I downloaded the link and it was a file with gears on the icon. I didn't understand it so I downloaded it again. At this point I was angry and confused and just assumed the I was out the $60 or $70 I spent. The fact that I was very angry at this stupid bitcoin garbage helped etch the experience in my memory. I do now understand that it isn't garbage.

If that happened in 2009, then you were probably scammed and probably didn't get any bitcoins at all.  Bitcoins were free in 2009. Someone probably charged your credit card and gave you nothing but a junk file (or malware) in return.

In early 2010 $60 would easily have gotten you more than 30,000 bitcoins (worth about $36,000,000 today), and there still wasn't anybody accepting credit cards for bitcoins yet.

Either you are not remembering the date correctly, or you are not remembering the experience correctly at all.

[cr1776]

It is possible that I'm confused on the date. But it would have been for sure before June 2010.

And I do thank you much for your input!

Definitely search for the wallet.dat file. 

[BitcoinFX]

I ran the '2nd' known Bitcoin <> fiat exchange service, using Liberty Reserve (now defunct - with my totally legally earned Forex trading funds being 'confiscated' when LR was shut down).

I had a basic website with contact information and a simple pricing widget, but the few successful trades I conducted were all manual and done via email. I certainly did not accept credit cards either and none of the trades I conducted totalled more than $10 in fiat value, at that time.

Before the BitcoinMarket exchange was established, there was someone in the US who made exchanges by accepting cash in the mail. I don't recall who that was and I think they also deleted most of their post history.

I just checked the way back machine archive and no copies of my website exist during the time it was online, which was for less than a few months, probably. I used a free .cc.cz domain with my forum account name. It was hosted for free on weebly.

If the OP genuinely brought bitcoin in the manner they claim then I don't imagine that they have the dates correct or the website they claim to of used was certainly not known to users of this forum at that time.

Bitcoins early history on the wiki is truly very patchy TBH, because those wiki pages were created mainly by people after the events. The first trades for goods and/or services were not the now infamous Pizzas! I remember buying US postage stamps from NewLibertyStandard before Laszlo posted the Pizza trade. I suspect that other trades also took place before that time, they were just not made publicly.

Anyhow, if you are genuine @CryptoCruiser then I wish you luck! I'm also one of the few people from bitcoins early history who knows what its like to not own or to have lost coins that now have great value.

[HI-TEC99]

I ran the '2nd' known Bitcoin <> fiat exchange service, using Liberty Reserve (now defunct - with my totally legally earned Forex trading funds being 'confiscated' when LR was shut down).

I had a basic website with contact information and a simple pricing widget, but the few successful trades I conducted were all manual and done via email. I certainly did not accept credit cards either and none of the trades I conducted totalled more than $10 in fiat value, at that time.

Before the BitcoinMarket exchange was established, there was someone in the US who made exchanges by accepting cash in the mail. I don't recall who that was and I think they also deleted most of their post history.

I just checked the way back machine archive and no copies of my website exist during the time it was online, which was for less than a few months, probably. I used a free .cc.cz domain with my forum account name. It was hosted for free on weebly.

There are waybackmachine snapshots of it. This is the earliest one. It says "Our maximum Exchange per request is currently 2500 BTC or $10 LR USD" on the homepage.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100617031313/http://www.bitcoinfx.cz.cc/

This is all the snapshots on the waybackmachine. The second one says "Available Bitcoins = 15,000 BTC".

https://web.archive.org/web/20100601000000*/http://www.bitcoinfx.cz.cc/

Thanks for correcting me on Bitcoin's history. I thought Bitcoin Market was the second exchange. You should be in the history books (and in the wiki).

Before the BitcoinMarket exchange was established, there was someone in the US who made exchanges by accepting cash in the mail. I don't recall who that was and I think they also deleted most of their post history.

That might have been the user called Vinnie who ran http://bitcoin2cash.com/

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2508

This is a quote of the first waybackmachine snapshot of his site on July 16, 2010.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100716235418/http://bitcoin2cash.com/

We are currently buying up to 25,000 more bitcoins.

For every 200 bitcoins sent to 1CRZpkKKAt7G5uiK4JPBjBJGnozgiatFAs you will receive $1.00 USD in cash by mail or via Paypal.

Send transaction details to sales@bitcoin2cash.com after the transfer.

All transfers are final.

We are not responsible for lost or stolen funds during transit.

The prices shown here are subject to change after we establish a market value.

Our automated system and complete website are coming soon!

[BitcoinFX]

Oh, cool! I searched without the www.  

I'd like to point out here that the ecardone api widget (on one site page) was run by ecardone (Liberty Reserve people) and it provided a 3rd party exchange service to buy LR (not bitcoin) from them via their website. Perhaps that is what the OP remembers using?

To clarify, I was never part of Liberty Reserve - only an account(s) holder. I certainly did not distribute any private bitcoin sales via wallet.dat download either. Any exchange I made was/is on the blockchain.

EDIT: Note that these free domains were controlled by nic .cz.cc (now defunct) and that any domain content seen after my exchange service operated is not mine and is essentially 'hijacked'. 

Additional: I was also never part of AurumXchange (now defunct + they did not exchange BTC back then), an affiliate link is referenced on one of the archived pages, understand that at that time I was keen to make buying bitcoin as accessible as possible, often via 3rd party websites, hence ...

I did make the crossover between e-currency, forex trading forums to bitcoin. Around that time NewLibertyStandard had some issues with PayPal charge-backs from customers that used his website: http://newlibertystandard.wikifoundry.com/ - I'm probably the reason he added Pecunix (now defunct) as a bitcoin exchange method, because of no charge-backs, as with Bitcoin.

Whilst one of my websites might look like a hiyp, I was actually doing real Forex trading with brokers that accepted Liberty Reserve back then (such as what is now roboforex, for example) and I made profit (mostly trading XAUUSD), making LR withdrawals without any issues. Our initial concept was to back our exchanges with both mining and forex trading. The majority of micro 'investors' in my other website were 'hyip' people who caused me some 'issues' and some other personal circumstances made me withdraw from bitcoin to focus on continuing with some trading robots and other projects.

One of the reasons I sold my own bitcoin via the BitcoinMarket (who accepted BTC <> LR) was to help repay my own shares to investment partners (now deceased), so that I could focus on continuing trading Forex markets, which at that time was more profitable! Crazy, right!  

No one was ever left out-of-pocket from my activities, which is why I'm not a btc-millionaire today.

Most people on this forum and the history books will be completely unaware of the massive efforts some of the earliest adopters took in helping to establish bitcoin as a currency.

One of the last things I did before I left the forum, on hiatus, was to donate 500 BTC to Gavin's bitcoin faucet, because it had 'run-dry'. Coins which I almost put into cold-storage.  

I also shared many a PM with Satoshi, which was fun!  

[HI-TEC99]

One of the last things I did before I left the forum, on hiatus, was to donate 500 BTC to Gavin's bitcoin faucet, because it had 'run-dry'. Coins which I almost put into cold-storage.  

It could be worse, you could have donated ฿1,100 to get it started off, then added more later like Gavin.

For my first Bitcoin coding project, I decided to do something that sounds really dumb:  I created a web site that gives away Bitcoins.   It is at: https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

Five ฿ per customer, first come first served, I've stocked it with ฿1,100 to start. I'll add more once I'm sure it is working properly.

*snip*

The donation address from Gavin's faucet shows you weren't alone in making huge donations. It had 19,715 Bitcoins donated to it!


https://web.archive.org/web/20100703032414/http://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

https://blockchain.info/address/15VjRaDX9zpbA8LVnbrCAFzrVzN7ixHNsC

[BitcoinFX]

The donation address from Gavin's faucet shows you weren't alone in making huge donations. It had 19,715 Bitcoins donated to it!


https://web.archive.org/web/20100703032414/http://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

https://blockchain.info/address/15VjRaDX9zpbA8LVnbrCAFzrVzN7ixHNsC

Indeed. What's done is done, but we don't forget (well perhaps some of it)! 

[HI-TEC99]

The donation address from Gavin's faucet shows you weren't alone in making huge donations. It had 19,715 Bitcoins donated to it!


https://web.archive.org/web/20100703032414/http://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

https://blockchain.info/address/15VjRaDX9zpbA8LVnbrCAFzrVzN7ixHNsC

Indeed. What's done is done, but we don't forget (well perhaps some of it)! 

As Satoshi pointed out, it was easy to generate 50 Bitcoins back then. Five Bitcoins was "play money", and 500 wasn't a big deal

Excellent choice of a first project, nice work. I had planned to do this exact thing if someone else didn't do it, so when it gets too hard for mortals to generate 50BTC, new users could get some coins to play with right away.  Donations should be able to keep it filled.  The display showing the balance in the dispenser encourages people to top it up.

You should put a donation bitcoin address on the page for those who want to add funds to it, which ideally should update to a new address whenever it receives something.

[HI-TEC99]

Download a search tool like Portable Everything, then use it to search for "wallet.dat" after it finishes indexing a hard drive. It's much faster than using the search tool built into windows.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE-SOFTWARE/System/File-management/Portable-Everything.shtml

If you deleted the file there might be ways to recover it, or the private keys in it if you didn't use the hard drive much afterwards. However, that requires more sophisticated tools.

[BitcoinFX]

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR TAKING THE TIME TO PROVIDE SO MUCH INFO!

Although the transaction as a whole is foggy I do have some vivid memories of it.

I remember I was linked from this guys website to a page with a BTC logo on it.

I remember being dismayed at the huge price in BTC until I realized that USD was a small fraction of that.

I remember the transaction page basically stayed the same with an added download link at bottom. It also said something about waiting 15 minutes but I'm not sure that I had to wait for the download to appear.

I remember the downloaded file was an icon with gears on it. I opened it to see lines of numbers and letters that I didn't understand so I downloaded it again.

I remember being angry for losing money during the whole confusing process which I think has helped me remember it.

Later I realized that maybe the file was the keys to the bitcoin and that maybe I was supposed to wait 15 minutes before sending them to this guy. I know it's a shot in the dark but with the price of BTC it is at least worth investigating..

I'm actually starting to think that I might vaguely remember a site similar to what your describing. Its certainly not one of the sites already mentioned above in this thread though.

I will need to have a look through some old emails / notes etc., which I may or may not have access to any more. Its clearly not my old service anyway, so that's one possibility less I guess.

Please try not to get your hopes up. I've done that myself before to only be disappointed.

[HI-TEC99]

I'm actually starting to think that I might vaguely remember a site similar to what your describing. Its certainly not one of the sites already mentioned above in this thread though.

I will need to have a look through some old emails / notes etc., which I may or may not have access to any more. Its clearly not my old service anyway, so that's one possibility less I guess.

Please try not to get your hopes up. I've done that myself before to only be disappointed.

That's good advice. I started running a google search for sites selling Bitcoin between 2009 and 2010. I came across a number of cached pages of sites, but stopped searching after I checked one that virustotal scan says is a malware site.

The OPs wallet.dat could have been malware from such a site.

[HI-TEC99]

The OPs wallet.dat could have been malware from such a site.


I'm not exactly sure how malware can work but the file I downloaded was a readable one.

Is your computer configured to show file extensions?

Does an .exe file appear as just a name, or "name.exe"?

I have heard of malware disguised to look like wallet.dat files, but they are really called wallet.dat.exe

If a computer isn't configured to show file extensions such a file appears as wallet,dat

The .exe extension doesn't show.

When you double click them they infect your computer.

[BitcoinFX]

*snip*

Thanks for correcting me on Bitcoin's history. I thought Bitcoin Market was the second exchange. You should be in the history books (and in the wiki).

*snip*

No worries. Sorry to 'hijack' the OP's thread.

I guess that makes four sides to every story i.e.

My side, your side, the truth and the narrative!   

[xskl0]

I purchased bitcoin between August 2009 - June 2010. I've learned probably the later with posts below. I remember thinking that I was hosed because I only ended up with a data file with gibberish on it. I now understand that this was probably the wallet.dat file. I'm carefully searching old hard drives. Does anyone know what site(s) I would have purchased them from and what file names I should be looking for? Thanks

Are you using programs like Recuva to restore deleted files?