HELP!!! :-)

[Jos1973]

Hey guys,

I am facing a challenge: in 2012 I bought some bitcoins and stored them in a wallet. Soon after, the rates dropped dramatically and I lost my interest.

As my interest in bitcoins is back, I tried to find my old wallet. No clue at all!! But surprisingly, I had my wallet address stored  (the private key). As far as I know, this should be usefull in order to reactivate...

Can anyone tell met what to doo in order to restore the wallet address? Should I open a new wallet? Do I need to download over 100gig first? What are my options??

I truely hope to find some expertise here!! Thank you in advance for your support on me!

Bests,
Jos

[.crypto]

If you still own the private key, thats good 

I would install electrum wallet and just import the key there, no need to download the whole blockchain.

[bob123]

Depending on the amount of your coins you should be carefully when downloading a wallet and handling your unencrypted private key.
If your priv key is sitting unencrypted on your hard drive i would first disconnect your pc from the internet.
On a clean pc then you can download a wallet of your choice (https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet) which supports private key import.
With a lightweigt wallet you don't have to download the full blockchain (e.g. electrum). After importing the private key into your new wallet you can then
send those coins wherever you want to.

[salihno71]

Which wallet do you have currently?