Lost Relative

[TazTheTyrant]

My father recently passed from a car accident and had invested in Bitcoin, is there any way to recover his wallet/s?

[Madeon]

I am truly sorry to read this, my condolences to you and your family. It really depends on the situation, you have to offer more details so I can give you the right answer.

Do you have access to your father PC? did your father keep his wallet on his PC or on some exchanges?
Did your father ever told you or to any of your family members what passwords he usually used, do you have access to his email?

[TazTheTyrant]

his computer was destroyed but i got the data off the hdd and i will have access to his email tomorrow

[warningsigns]

First things first, secure the HDD and never share its contents and any information about your father's wallet with anyone here. If you are contacted by PM by strangers offering to "help" you recover or unlock or access the wallet, their advice is welcome but never disclose sensitive wallet information, especially keys, mnemonics, seeds and recovery passphrases.

Refuse recovery services requiring you to pay a fee upfront.

I recommend that you discuss non-sensitive matters publicly on this thread. Doing this allows genuine assistance to be rendered by people who know how proper recovery processes work. They can also quickly expose any attempt by scammers to defraud you.

Be careful of people who might ask you to Skype with them. This is not meant to generalize all Skype invitations as fraudulent but most of them have ulterior motives. One of the reasons for using Skype is privacy. It allows scammers to communicate without exposing and endangering their scam's modus operandi.

Sorry for your family's loss.

[jackg]

his computer was destroyed but i got the data off the hdd and i will have access to his email tomorrow

Have you found any qr codes in his paperwork anywhere? He may have printed off the wallet as a backup.

Do you have any idea what passwords he used, how old was he? If he was over say 30 he might have started writing passwords down somewhere.

If you load up bitcoin core with a copy of the backup of the wallet, does it have a padlock (search for wallet.dat if it's bitcoin core).

Did his phone also get destroyed or is that still functioning. Can you get that recovered or recover it yourself?

If it was a wallet other than bitcoin core, if theres a random 12 words, it could be a HD wallet. I'd suggest downloading electrum and trying it in there.

Also, my sincerest sympathy to your family and his friends/colleagues at this time. The coins will remain on the drive if you don't want to rush and want some time to maurn for him.

[Madeon]

his computer was destroyed but i got the data off the hdd and i will have access to his email tomorrow

If you have the wallet.dat, then what you will need to do is setup Bitcoin Core on a working computer, let it sync fully, remove "wallet.dat" and place your backed up wallet from your father HDD.
The wallet might be encrypted and in that case you will have to figure out what password your father used. Keep us updated how it goes...

God bless you!

[SanderM2]

I'm very sorry to hear about your dad, my condolences.

Now, to answer your question, are you sure your dad stored the coins on his computer?
Do you know anything more about it? Like, did he password protect it? If so: any idea about possible passwords?

If he was using the Bitcoin Core client you should be looking for a file called wallet.dat. Just scan the complete harddisk for it.

[baobao2000]

It’s terrible to hear about your loss and I express my sincere sympathy to you and your family

Try to identify where the bitcoins were held.
1 Look for wallet software on their computer. Once you find the wallets or know what online wallets/exchanges were used, you'll need to know their password to access the funds and transact them.
2 Look for a piece of paper or a digital file that contains a list of 12 or 24 words. Don't share those words with anyone. It's called a mnemonic seed and you can use it to import the deceased's Bitcoins onto a new wallet of your choosing. Also note that bitcoin may be held in physical form as a "paper wallet" containing public/private keys (long strings of text/numbers). They would have kept this in a safe place.
3 check email for emails from online bitcoin exchanges or wallet services that will provide clues as to their activities.
4 check browser history and bookmarks for bitstamp, coinbase, and other exchanges or other bitcoin related sites.

Have someone you can trust who is knowledgeable about bitcoin help search the computer and email. Perhaps you will find a spreadsheet or other log where they tracked their bitcoin finances that will help spell it out as well.

[posi]

Sorry for your lost but you need to stick the advice giving to you by Warningsigns concerning the Computer hard disk drive because there's a lot of lion looking for prey on here. However, I will advice you to get a trezor wallet now so you can forward the bitcoin once you're able to recover the wallet.

[slojjjiji]

Never trust anyone online ND NEVER send information, keys or files. It is way to lost your Bitcoins. Just spend some time and research infomation about bitcoin. Apparently this is an interesting thing, if your father believed in it

[win win win]

Sorry for your loss.

I hope you recover the coins, It's such a worry of mine, That they won't be recovered by my loved ones.

[xwshamim]

First analysis in which which wallet you father kept his btc and than see in the email if he uploaded any txt file and also chec th e computer drive is there any private key or wallet password in it if he was wise i m sure that he surely have done something like this to keep evrything safe ..

[NITCoinOfficial]

Sorry for your loss. There are many tools that support bitcoin and many services that store it.
Check e-mails for services like blockchain.info,coinbase.com, poloniex, bittrex, etc. Anything with words cryptocurrency and bitcoin in it, he might have invested in different platforms and cryptoexchanges, make sure to search for everything.
If you believe his wallet is on the HDD, check for wallet.dat file on the computer. Also, Electrum is a popular bitcoin storage tool, doesn't label its wallets with a dat extension. You would have to check for that in the directories. If you need any more advice, let us know. Good luck.

[Derfcoin]

his computer was destroyed but i got the data off the hdd and i will have access to his email tomorrow

Look for any file called wallet.dat, or I guess any file called .dat.

On a clean computer  (check for viruses), or using a clean boot with a USB drive boot installation of Ubuntu, install and sync bitcoin core with the blockchain. Then rename the ,dat file wallet.dat and import.

If you can't find any .dat files, try to go through all word,spreadsheet,txt documents to try to find a random string of 64 characters. That would be his private key that you can import too.

[seoincorporation]

his computer was destroyed but i got the data off the hdd and i will have access to his email tomorrow

This is really sad to read whats happens, my condolences.

Well, even when the computer destroyed, maybe there is a way the hard drive is still operational, and you can just connect it to another computer and have access to your fathers wallet.
Now, be patient, do not rush, and if you need help, it is better to look for someone in who you can trust, and much better if you know the person physically, ok? (a friend of a friend, a family member…)
There is a dramatic situation and they are always bad guys trying to get advantage…

Also, if you have his phone, maybe he had a wallet installed on it.

Try to search on the disk for wallet.dat file, or privatekeys backup, even some people have files with their wallet passwords as backup.

Hope this information help, any question you have post it on this forum and we will help you, but remember to not post sensitive information like privatekeys or things like that.