Newbie in need of help please. Reward if you can help

[golfpro10]

So back in 2013 I bought some bitcoins and I created a public and private key offline using bitaddress.org. I will check them occasionally on blockchain using the public key to confirm they are still there.  Well today for the first time ever I tried transfer a bitcoin to my blockchain wallet and it said the private key is not valid. It is showing the coins are in there but I cannot access them. My private Key is 51 keys long and starts with a 5. When i go to type in the private key on blockchain it tells me it is invalid until I type in the 40th key then it gives me an option to import until i type in the 45th key then it tells me it is invalid again and grays out the option to import it again. I think the private key might be some old technology that needs to be converted. Not sure if anyone can help me. If you can help out i would be willing to send a little bitcoin your way if I can get this fixed. Thanks

[hexafraction]

Just sent you a PM following up for more details.

[HCP]

if it is 51 chars and starts with a 5... you have an "uncompressed private key in WIF" format.

You can double check if you have written it down correctly by using bitaddress.org. DO NOT type your private key straight into the online version!! You need to download a copy of the bitaddress.org website (use the link at the bottom of the page for their Github or "zip"). Run it offline on your PC, then select "Wallet Details", and type your key into the box and click "view details".

You should see the matching "uncompressed public key". If you don't, then your private key is incorrect.

Also, to be honest, using blockchain.info wallet is a very bad idea. Their fee system is broken at the moment, and if you try to send your coins anywhere, chances are it will use a stupid low fee and your transaction will get stuck. I'd recommend getting Electrum and "sweeping" your key into a new "seeded" wallet.

Instead of doing the bitaddress thing, you can also try typing the key into Electrum "sweep" dialog, if the "Sweep" button stays greyed out, then the key is invalid and likely you have transcribed it incorrectly

Feel free to PM is you want more help.

[mmo4me.2016]

I think you should check out here! https://coinb.in/
Let others check that it is not for the BTC, preferably yourself or the people you trust

[SopaXT]

So back in 2013 I bought some bitcoins and I created a public and private key offline using bitaddress.org. I will check them occasionally on blockchain using the public key to confirm they are still there.  Well today for the first time ever I tried transfer a bitcoin to my blockchain wallet and it said the private key is not valid. It is showing the coins are in there but I cannot access them. My private Key is 51 keys long and starts with a 5. When i go to type in the private key on blockchain it tells me it is invalid until I type in the 40th key then it gives me an option to import until i type in the 45th key then it tells me it is invalid again and grays out the option to import it again. I think the private key might be some old technology that needs to be converted. Not sure if anyone can help me. If you can help out i would be willing to send a little bitcoin your way if I can get this fixed. Thanks

Look, try typing the entire key. Upper/lower case matters, so 5MyPrivateKey[...] is not the same as 5myprivatekey[...].
Also, don't use blockchain.info, they are well-known for being hacked multiple times - coins were stolen. I'd suggest using and offline wallet such as Bitcoin Core (bitcoin.org) and importing the private key there.
Also, make sure to protect your wallet with a strong password, it's trivial for malware to steal your coins. If you use Windows, I'd also suggest doing this on a Linux live USB (try Ubuntu).

[HI-TEC99]

Try installing the electrum wallet on your computer, then importing your private key into it using these instructions.

http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#can-i-import-private-keys-from-other-bitcoin-clients

[golfpro10]

if it is 51 chars and starts with a 5... you have an "uncompressed private key in WIF" format.

You can double check if you have written it down correctly by using bitaddress.org. DO NOT type your private key straight into the online version!! You need to download a copy of the bitaddress.org website (use the link at the bottom of the page for their Github or "zip"). Run it offline on your PC, then select "Wallet Details", and type your key into the box and click "view details".

You should see the matching "uncompressed public key". If you don't, then your private key is incorrect.

Also, to be honest, using blockchain.info wallet is a very bad idea. Their fee system is broken at the moment, and if you try to send your coins anywhere, chances are it will use a stupid low fee and your transaction will get stuck. I'd recommend getting Electrum and "sweeping" your key into a new "seeded" wallet.

Instead of doing the bitaddress thing, you can also try typing the key into Electrum "sweep" dialog, if the "Sweep" button stays greyed out, then the key is invalid and likely you have transcribed it incorrectly

Feel free to PM is you want more help.

Hello HCP. I tired to enter the private key into bitaddress.org and it says check sum error. So i was assuming i copied it down wrong. But at the time I had made 2 public keys that generated 2 private keys. When i type in the second private key it gives the same error. I find it doubtful that i copied both private keys down incorrectly. Is it possible that Bitaddress gave me bad private keys? read some stuff out there about that? Thanks for the heads up on blockchain and I will use Electrum. It seems to me though that there is a bigger problem with the private keys. Either I transcribed them both wrong or something with bitaddress. I can see the balance on my public key just cant get the private to match.

[hexafraction]

I've written a program that tries different potential "typos" of the key and validates them to see if any are valid Base58check keys using Kotlin/JVM. Once I finish communicating with OP regarding any specific things (GUI or similar considerations) they may need and I add those things, I will post a copy of the code here (for transparency and in case anyone wants to improve upon it).

[hexafraction]

I've uploaded the code (Java+Kotlin) to https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair. The relevant files containing executed code are in https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair/tree/master/src. The program does not perform network or file I/O. The entry point in main.kt is for the command-line interface; JavaMain's main method runs the GUI.

[HCP]

I've uploaded the code (Java+Kotlin) to https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair. The relevant files containing executed code are in https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair/tree/master/src. The program does not perform network or file I/O. The entry point in main.kt is for the command-line interface; JavaMain's main method runs the GUI.

Wow... that is some very thorough coverage of the search space for likely possible typos, case sensitivity AND transposition errors! I think that code should cover almost any transcription error that the OP is likely to have made while recording his private keys

Thanks for posting it up... I'm sure that others will find it very useful.

[hexafraction]

I've uploaded the code (Java+Kotlin) to https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair. The relevant files containing executed code are in https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair/tree/master/src. The program does not perform network or file I/O. The entry point in main.kt is for the command-line interface; JavaMain's main method runs the GUI.

Wow... that is some very thorough coverage of the search space for likely possible typos, case sensitivity AND transposition errors! I think that code should cover almost any transcription error that the OP is likely to have made while recording his private keys

Thanks for posting it up... I'm sure that others will find it very useful.

No problem; I'm happy to provide it to the community. Hopefully it will find more use in other situations like these. Anyway, I received word from OP that this program successfully recovered the typos on both of the keys.

golfpro10: If you don't mind sharing when you get a chance, what was the type of mistake with the private key that got repaired? I'm curious, and knowing this would help me know where to focus on some of the more in-depth recovery techniques.

[Beparanf]

I've uploaded the code (Java+Kotlin) to https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair. The relevant files containing executed code are in https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair/tree/master/src. The program does not perform network or file I/O. The entry point in main.kt is for the command-line interface; JavaMain's main method runs the GUI.

This is very useful. You are a genius. This really helps on fixing my private key error. I'm lucky to see this tweak. Kudos sir.

[hexafraction]

I've uploaded the code (Java+Kotlin) to https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair. The relevant files containing executed code are in https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair/tree/master/src. The program does not perform network or file I/O. The entry point in main.kt is for the command-line interface; JavaMain's main method runs the GUI.

This is very useful. You are a genius. This really helps on fixing my private key error. I'm lucky to see this tweak. Kudos sir.

No problem, feel free to share it around or drop a tip if it helped.

Anyway, there's now an actual release at https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair/releases

[Amevalentine]

use https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair/releases

it will recover your issue, and using offlline wallet

[hexafraction]

use https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair/releases

it will recover your issue, and using offlline wallet

I just wrote this program to fix this issue for the OP, so they are all set

[golfpro10]

I wanted to thank everyone for their comments and help especially Hexafraction who wrote the code for me and helped me unlock my coins. He is a class act!!

[golfpro10]

I've uploaded the code (Java+Kotlin) to https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair. The relevant files containing executed code are in https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair/tree/master/src. The program does not perform network or file I/O. The entry point in main.kt is for the command-line interface; JavaMain's main method runs the GUI.

Wow... that is some very thorough coverage of the search space for likely possible typos, case sensitivity AND transposition errors! I think that code should cover almost any transcription error that the OP is likely to have made while recording his private keys

Thanks for posting it up... I'm sure that others will find it very useful.

No problem; I'm happy to provide it to the community. Hopefully it will find more use in other situations like these. Anyway, I received word from OP that this program successfully recovered the typos on both of the keys.

golfpro10: If you don't mind sharing when you get a chance, what was the type of mistake with the private key that got repaired? I'm curious, and knowing this would help me know where to focus on some of the more in-depth recovery techniques.

Hey Hexafraction on your question. On one of the private keys there was a lower case g and was supposed to be a lower case q. The other one was quite strange. It was a uppercase L that was supposed to be an upper case H. Not real sure how i messed that up but the code Hexafraction wrote caught the error.

[hexafraction]

Hey Hexafraction on your question. On one of the private keys there was a lower case g and was supposed to be a lower case q. The other one was quite strange. It was a uppercase L that was supposed to be an upper case H. Not real sure how i messed that up but the code Hexafraction wrote caught the error.

No problem, it happens. I'm glad that the substitution step caught the error.