Hypnosis as a means of retrieving lost mnemonic seeds. Has anyone tried this?

[RinceWind84]

First and foremost: I am a tad bit concerned that this might fit better in the off-topic section. But I can assure you that I am being quite serious here.

As so many others, I have lost, misplaced or tossed my mnemonic seed.

I solo-mined bitcoin on my CPU in the year of 2009.

I am confident that I have hit/produced at least one block. Possibly more, but one would suffice for a thorough investigation into every possible option of retrieval.

Sadly I made a backup of the "nameofmywallet".wallet and not the actual wallet.dat, before hammering a nine inch nail through that olden HDD.

Thank you Microsoft for having introduced hidden files. And thank me for being so retarded.

A year ago, I gave up looking for that small slit of paper. And have since then taken a far greater interest in the cryptosphere at large.

I does haunt me though, thinking about how I could be retiring on some island right now.

Then came this thought 

But with hypnosis not being cheap, and me not having that fortune.

I would like to ask anyone with any kind of experience in this field, to chip in.

Before I go ahead an ruin myself some more.. . 

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[aplistir]

In 2009 there were no mnemonic seeds.
I think there was just a long list of pre-generated private keys and addresses.

But hypnosis is interesting, and you could try it yourself (with selfhypnosis)

I bet it would be quite difficult to remember whole private keys even when hypnotised

[NeuroticFish]

I bet it would be quite difficult to remember whole private keys even when hypnotised

From what I know the rule was to backup wallet.dat
The reason was that Bitcoin-QT was creating multiple addresses there by its needs.

So unless the user specifically saved certain private keys - quite advanced operation for average user - I'd bet that those private keys are lost.

OP, I think that the piece of paper you were looking for was the password for the wallet. And if you don't have the corresponding wallet anymore, you are wasting your time.

[RinceWind84]

Hmm. Interesting input.

Especially cause now I am very much in doubt whether there was ever a mnemonic seed.

When were these introduced?

I do know that I should have backed the wallet.dat but there is really nothing to do about this.

On a side note, I would never seek help from someone explicitly offering to retrieve lost btc passphrases.

I happen to know and trust someone who may want to do this experiment with me, pro-bono.

I just need to gather as much info as I possibly can as to when, how, what client so on and so forth. Cause she hasn't a clue.

When/if I decide to actually try this. I'll report back.  

EDIT: I see that the seed's were introduced in 2013. So I couldn't have had that.
This leaves me thinking that my idea is kind doomed from the start.

[vapourminer]

OP, I think that the piece of paper you were looking for was the password for the wallet. And if you don't have the corresponding wallet anymore, you are wasting your time.

there were no passwords for the bitcoin core wallet in 2009, the year i assume the OP destroyed his drive and made the backup. those came in sometime after 2011 (the year i started) and the wallet wasnt encrypted at that point.

OP im afraid that unless you find the wallet.dat or the keys themselves (paper wallet maybe, which is pretty advanced as has been pointed out) they are gone if indeed all you ran was the core wallet, and nothing else.

long shot here.. you have no drive image backups from that time period? a drive image would have all files, including "hidden" files, in it. you would just need to restore it to a spare drive.

and the file "name of wallet my wallet".wallet i dont recall any files that had a .wallet extension in the bitcoin core wallet filesystem.

maybe you sent it to some other wallet like armory? armory uses the .wallet extension, plus i believe it did/does word based backups. however i dont recall when armory was introduced, or what its early capabilities were.

[Tankdestroyer]

When/if I decide to actually try this. I'll report back.  
This leaves me thinking that my idea is kind doomed from the start.

You would not remember your lost wallet's seed using hypnosis but at least you will remember what type of wallet you have used to access that wallet but the chance of you being able to open it easily after hypnosis is still pretty low. I'd suggest that you give up on the hypnosis idea and try other means to recover your wallet.

[RinceWind84]

Thanks for all your advise.

For now, I'll leave this thought.

This may have shed some light though, since now I know what I am not looking for. And sadly no backups or image-files.

I knew this was very far fetched, but it would have been interesting if someone had actually had any luck this way.