[Question] Old pool from 2011-2012

[Hhampuz]

So I'm in a bit of a pickle.

I got involved with BTC in 2013. I had a lot of things happen both good and bad and eventually I cashed out almost everything in mid 2014 until I came back last August.

I've been having some memories, flashbacks. In 2011 or 2012 there was a pool.. BTCGuild or something similar. I remember that I was in there and doing some GPU-Mining from a couple of PC's. Now I can't really remember when they were operating or if they were really called BTCGuild. I have no hope of recovering any old BTC (I was not educated at all with BTC so I kept all the coin I mined on their website).

I eventually forgot about it until very recently. I do remember that this pool were one of the first if not the first to sell those USB Miners, unless they were the ones that made them.

I realize that this is very fuzzy, but if you have any idea of what I'm talking about please do share .

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[Biffa]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7760.0

[Hhampuz]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7760.0

Ahh. It might have been that one. But I'm not completely sure as I may have just read about that one somewhere and "created" the memory. Either way, Thank you for the link. Will read up a bit to find out what happened to them. But I'm guessing that whatever BTC I had on there are forever lost right now?

[HeroC]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7760.0

Ahh. It might have been that one. But I'm not completely sure as I may have just read about that one somewhere and "created" the memory. Either way, Thank you for the link. Will read up a bit to find out what happened to them. But I'm guessing that whatever BTC I had on there are forever lost right now?

If you did indeed use BTCGuild, then yeah it may be gone. You may try contacting the old owner but I'm not sure if they'd respond. I used to have some BTC in there but it shutdown before I withdrew. Not enough to contact them though.

[Hhampuz]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7760.0

Ahh. It might have been that one. But I'm not completely sure as I may have just read about that one somewhere and "created" the memory. Either way, Thank you for the link. Will read up a bit to find out what happened to them. But I'm guessing that whatever BTC I had on there are forever lost right now?

If you did indeed use BTCGuild, then yeah it may be gone. You may try contacting the old owner but I'm not sure if they'd respond. I used to have some BTC in there but it shutdown before I withdrew. Not enough to contact them though.

Yeah I did send him a PM here on bitcointalk but I'm not expecting much.

I don't think I had too much on there, maybe a couple of coins at most.

It is what it is, I just remember I loved the Interface and how smooth everything ran. It did teach me all I knew about BTC back then, sad to see that they had to shut down but it is understandable.

[gamefixer]

I mined there until they shut down. I recall one of their last posts saying something along the lines of you needing to manually withdraw your BTC.

[-ck]

btcguild gave MONTHS of warning when they were closing down, and then still responded to support for months after their official support closure. You can't expect a company to respond 2 years after it has shut down.

[Hhampuz]

btcguild gave MONTHS of warning when they were closing down, and then still responded to support for months after their official support closure. You can't expect a company to respond 2 years after it has shut down.

This was not an attempt to retrieve whatever funds that were on the account. More a remembrance thread to see who used to Mike there. To this day I've not seen any pool that has had an equal design or ui.

When they were closing down I must have been mia. As I said before I started mining there but didn't really know what bitcoin was so I left it after a couple of months and forgot all about it.

[physicist]

It was a great interface. Definitely my favorite pool.

[BTCicero]

I was redirected here from a now deleted post titled "BTC Guild Lockdown". First, let me say that I know that I am totally in the wrong in this situation and would be equal parts shocked and elated if this came to any sort of conclusion.
 
My partner and I gave up mining with BTC Guild pretty much right before the announcement that it was shutting down. We did not check our account until last weekend when we stopped by a Bitcoiniacs ATM and figured out that while we could see our balance, we could not withdraw.

Now I am more educated about certain issues and know that BTC Guild was never a bank, and leaving our coins there for 2+ years was both wrong and negligent. I recognize how completely screwed we probably are and I also recognize that we have no one to blame but ourselves. That being said, is there any possible way to get access to our account and get the coins out?

[os2sam]

I was redirected here from a now deleted post titled "BTC Guild Lockdown".

You need to PM Eleuthria.  Don't see him around much anymore, but he does pop up once in a while.  So post in the BTCGuild thread and PM him directly.

[Soros Shorts]

We did not check our account until last weekend when we stopped by a Bitcoiniacs ATM and figured out that while we could see our balance, we could not withdraw.

How was this possible? The website was disabled over a year ago. I still have it bookmarked on an old phone and it now just redirects to bitcoin.org.

[Hhampuz]

We did not check our account until last weekend when we stopped by a Bitcoiniacs ATM and figured out that while we could see our balance, we could not withdraw.

How was this possible? The website was disabled over a year ago. I still have it bookmarked on an old phone and it now just redirects to bitcoin.org.

I have to agree here. As you stated you noticed the warning about the pool shutting down yet never went to check your balance. A tad strange.


As for contacting the owners or in any way get something back from it, I'd say your chances are slim to nonexistent. I saw a case where they gave back the balance to a user over 12 months after they closed, but even that was a bit extreme. Any idea on how much you had on there, or are we talking pennies?

[BTCicero]

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How was this possible? The website was disabled over a year ago. I still have it bookmarked on an old phone and it now just redirects to bitcoin.org.
[/quote]

I was surprised too, but the account balance was there. It was even possible to deposit funds into our account. This was honestly the only thing that gave me any hope of a recovery. As to contacting Eleuthria, is there a BTC Guild forum that is not closed? It looks to me as if they are all defunct.

[VRobb]

Sounds like you have the public key to your account, but never got the private key.  That would explain why you can still see a balance on the ledger but can't grab it, and luckily enough there is still a balance and not already taken out.

[os2sam]

As to contacting Eleuthria, is there a BTC Guild forum that is not closed?

I also suggested PM'ing him. PM means personal or private message.  So just PM his account name.