Possibly recovered old Bitcoin wallet private keys... now what?

[PomBTC]

Back in 2011 I mined for a about six weeks. Until my wife couldn't deal with the noise my AMD 6970 was putting out. I didn't back up the wallet and ultimately formatted the drive. Oh well. Bitcoin was less than $30.

The drive got very little use and was retired not too much later. I knew the wallet was on the drive so I just stored it for a possible recovery later. So now I used a tool to recover private keys from the drive. Let it go for a few hours and it managed to find 104 keys. Not sure if anything will amount from these keys but I have no idea what to do now to recover them to a new wallet and cash out.

I have a text file with the private keys and also a recovered wallet.dat file. I disconnected the computer with the wallet from the network right now until I figure out the safest way to proceed.

Could anyone shed some light as to what to do next to:

A. Import the private keys / wallet.dat into a new wallet (I presume this needs to be done) to see if there are any coins.
B. Next steps to convert the Bitcoin to USD and ultimately to my bank account.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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[karmakeddon]

-snip-

A. Import the private keys / wallet.dat into a new wallet (I presume this needs to be done) to see if there are any coins.
B. Next steps to convert the Bitcoin to USD and ultimately to my bank account.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

The first logical step would be to try importing those keys to wallets such as Electrum or Armory. You can then find out if you do have coins in these wallets and then try to consolidate them on a single wallet address.

For conversion of bitcoin to USD, you can try a lot of exchanges. If you are in the US, you can try Coinbase and send them to your Paypal then to your bank. In other regions, I do not have an idea how you exchange it.

[PomBTC]

Thank you karmakeddon.  Is it safe to just take the private keys and import them during an install of Electrum? Or do I designate the recovered wallet.dat file as the wallet for Electrum to use? The wallet is very old and I read the format changed so I am unsure if this is a concern. When I mined I used to use the Bitcoin Core wallet.

Would importing the private keys into a new wallet some how destroy or invalidate the coins since the addresses are different?

Thank you for your help!

[TryNinja]

Thank you karmakeddon.  Is it safe to just take the private keys and import them during an install of Electrum? Or do I designate the recovered wallet.dat file as the wallet for Electrum to use? The wallet is very old and I read the format changed so I am unsure if this is a concern. When I mined I used to use the Bitcoin Core wallet.

First of all, backup all the files you found for your safety.

Electrum can't open yor wallet.dat file since it's probably a Bitcoin Core wallet. The best approach would be to download Bitcoin Core, let it sync (should take a while) and open the wallet.dat with it.

For your list of private keys, download Electrum and import your list of private keys.

Would importing the private keys into a new wallet some how destroy or invalidate the coins since the addresses are different?

No. You can just import them.

[PomBTC]

I have the wallet and keys backed up in several locations.

After importing the keys to Electrum, it will presumably show any bitcoins available (if any)? Would I be able to use Electrum to cash out at coinbase or do I need to import the Bitcoin Core wallet into the synced Bitcoin Core Client and then exchange at coinbase?

Thanks again for the assistance.

[Kprawn]

I should think that a simple sweep, should transfer those coins to your current Bitcoin address in Electrum. Did you check the Bitcoin address for

any coins? Also remember not to chuck away the wallets, because you can sweep the forked coins from those wallets too. Bitcoin Cash and also

Bitcoin Gold. A lot of people forget about that and then they throw away money.   

[kahc]

I have the wallet and keys backed up in several locations.

After importing the keys to Electrum, it will presumably show any bitcoins available (if any)? Would I be able to use Electrum to cash out at coinbase or do I need to import the Bitcoin Core wallet into the synced Bitcoin Core Client and then exchange at coinbase?

Thanks again for the assistance.

I reckon that your wallet.dat was unencrypted since you manage to recover the private keys.
When you sweep, make sure that the address field is you own address.
Once done, your balance will show in Electrum(make sure that Electrum is in sync).
Then you can spend the balance however you want.

[PomBTC]

Copying the private key directly from the recovery output didn't allow me to proceed to the next step in Electrum.

I used bitaddress.org's software to decompress the private key locally and pasted the uncompressed key into Electrum. Electrum did let me proceed but I received a no input error. Reviewing the bitcoin address at blockchain.info shows 0BTC for several keys attempted. Each private key produces a different bitcoin address.

Any other thoughts on how to proceed?

Thanks for the help!

[kahc]

Copying the private key directly from the recovery output didn't allow me to proceed to the next step in Electrum.

I used bitaddress.org's software to decompress the private key locally and pasted the uncompressed key into Electrum. Electrum did let me proceed but I received a no input error. Reviewing the bitcoin address at blockchain.info shows 0BTC for several keys attempted. Each private key produces a different bitcoin address.

Any other thoughts on how to proceed?

Thanks for the help!

Did you check all 104 private keys?
Bitcoin core by default always contains 100 not-yet-used keys in wallet.dat
So I reckon only 1-4 of your private keys actually have balances.
Btw which software did you use to extract the keys?

[PomBTC]

I haven't yet checked all 104 keys. I'll begin checking shortly. Just wanted to make sure the general process was correct before checking all the keys.

I used the software in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25091.0

[PomBTC]

Update:

I began checking the private keys with the previous method mentioned utilizing the bitaddress.org function. I do have my old bitcoin address which I checked earlier today. To my surprise I found the private key with that old bitcoin address!

EDIT: I've found a second key with a small amount of BTC. My understanding is that each key is unique and independent of eachother so my sweeping the smaller private key will not affect the previously found key with the other amount of BTC?

To recap my next steps, I would like to verify:

1. Create new Electrum (SEED) wallet using seed method
2. Create new Electrum (RECOVERED) wallet using private key
3. Use Electrum (RECOVERED) wallet to Sweep private key to SEED wallet
4. Click 'Broadcast'
5. Hope SEED wallet shows bitcoins just sent?

Thank you!

[achow101]

I used bitaddress.org's software to decompress the private key locally and pasted the uncompressed key into Electrum.

Don't do that, you will get a different address. Compressed and uncompressed public keys result in different addresses. The private key has a flag that indicates whether it should use a compressed or uncompressed public key, so doing this will change the addresses that you get.

Instead of importing your private keys, you should sweep them. Create a new Electrum wallet and use the Wallet > Private Keys > Sweep function instead.