PSA: Never delete your old Wallets or Keys

[DaveF]

Yes, I know it seems obvious but you never know when some coin is going to come into an old address that you have not used in years.
Kano is finally making "dust" payments to people who have mined at his pool. Some people have not used it / logged in for 5+ years are getting $30+ dropped into their accounts.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789369.msg56478860#msg56478860

Some "hacked" exchanges are rumored to want to send payments but only to addresses that you had previously used and can confirm.

Other old dust out there that you might have forgotten about that for whatever reason finally gets sent.

-Dave

[o_e_l_e_o]

In the words of Satoshi:

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

[bitmover]

Yes, I know it seems obvious but you never know when some coin is going to come into an old address that you have not used in years.
Kano is finally making "dust" payments to people who have mined at his pool. Some people have not used it / logged in for 5+ years are getting $30+ dropped into their accounts.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789369.msg56478860#msg56478860

Some "hacked" exchanges are rumored to want to send payments but only to addresses that you had previously used and can confirm.

Other old dust out there that you might have forgotten about that for whatever reason finally gets sent.

You are right.

There are also forks/airdrops which might give you money if you had any balance from X years ago.

This may sound silly now, but those forks/airdrops may worth a lot in the future, specially if BTC price really sky rocket.

[AB de Royse777]

In the words of Satoshi:

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

Unfortunately I had few wallets those were exposed on the web and I do not use them any more. There are some wallets that I deleted too long time ago too. I was not a bitcoiner at that time to be honest.

Anyway, I am 100% confident nothing is coming on my way :-P

[ene1980]

Some "hacked" exchanges are rumored to want to send payments but only to addresses that you had previously used and can confirm.

Other old dust out there that you might have forgotten about that for whatever reason finally gets sent.

I am not sure i am holding all the wallets which i used in the past but i am certainly holding some of them i my old HDD before moving them to other secure wallets but this is the first time i am hearing that someone is sending money to old wallets, usually if i get money in my wallet from anonymous sources i will be worried as you never know if those are from illegal sources or hacked coins .

[dkbit98]

We should probably make our own graveyard of old empty addresses and old priv keys, put it on some encrypted USB drive with a password in case of situations like this.
It's a lottery that may actually pay off.

[buwaytress]

Too late for me to go back and retrieve old ones but I concur. Not even just for Bitcoin too, I did spring cleaning a couple of years or maybe three ago, threw out some wallets I thought I'd for certain never even open again. Airdrops galore missed, I can tell you that.

Even if it has to be stored in some insecure place, it'd be at least something should anyone ever come a-knocking for random gifts of magic internet moneh. Though as ETF points out, they do give you time these day, in general, to do something for their nothings...

[bitbollo]

Nice initiative since it's an honesty sign by pool owners.
I remember the same surprise/excitement with old bitcoin/ltc/doge address with balance on May 2014 since received some CLAMCOIN.
Unfortunately the price after some years has literally plummet and I haven't sold it before
Since this initiative made by CLAMS I decide to save/store each address in a dedicated hardware ...

[xanxus.kun]

Nah I'm too lazy to do that, though I don't think there will be much difference  in keeping them. I have my old keys for few years now, I'm just getting sad by looking at my portfolio. Lots of tokens from the previous campaign I joined before, still no value.

[bolawin]

just found this on some old wallet 

[coiningz]

People need to learn how to store their keys and seeds

[Spaffin]

I always keep all information in printed form, and therefore any statements about my activities are kept in folders. If there were any wallets , then they still remain in my access, Even if I have not been using them for many years. no matter how much time has passed, any old wallet is practically a part of our work and very often pleasant surprises appear on such wallets, such as Livepeer Token (LPT), which was handed out for free a few years ago 2.26 tokens for each wallet and I received them for several of my wallets. And now the price of the token is almost $ 25.

[mk4]

Nah I'm too lazy to do that, though I don't think there will be much difference  in keeping them. I have my old keys for few years now, I'm just getting sad by looking at my portfolio. Lots of tokens from the previous campaign I joined before, still no value.

Yea.. I'd care a lot less as well if we're talking about most altcoins here because altcoins are another story. But bitcoin though? Definitely a keep, I think a lot of people are totally underestimating bitcoin's future potential despite it's $1T market cap. I'd say if you still have rotting altcoins that are near-dead, just convert em to bitcoin even if they're just worth like $10.

[Ibrahim60]

Firstly thanks for your kind idea. But This is a matter of sorrow that in 2017 i lost my one wallet keys and after losing it i saw that a project distribute token. I lost 500$+. I was so sad for after this. Then i learn a lesson and keep my wallet key in safest place. Also i write down it in my diary.

[DeathAngel]

I don’t there will be any worthwhile shitcoin drops (forks) for the foreseeable future but sure, it doesn’t take much to keep hold of a copy of any old wallets.

[SFR10]

Not sure if I should get frustrated for not having access to the first few wallets that I had back then or for not choosing Kano ^{[back in the day when I used to mine BTCitcoin]} as my preferred mining pool.
^{- Probably both [SMH]}

[Stedsm]

I too have a story but a different one. I mined korecoins back in 2013-14 period and had around a million of them. At that time, it wasn't worth anything in terms of BTC and even in fiat, so I just deleted my wallet.dat file and forgot about it. Later in 2017 pump, that same coin was worth BTC0.000175 each, so a huge loss of BTC175 which could have been worth $3.5 million based on BTC's ATH then. It's definitely worth saving or keeping our old wallets and/or keys safe with us because we may get surprises any day as it's crypto party going on.
And yeah, badly missing those forks (free money you know  ).

[Smartvirus]

I was just about to wonder if people do delete there private keys and just when I was about to see reasons why, the explanation from OP just made the reasons useless.

This is what isn't been thought of by most users and besides, of what damage or what would it cost you to keep your wallet address and keys or seed phrase safe? Practically nothing. They don't occupy any space and besides, if properly filed, it could go in as the rest keys and be easily identified. So, it doesn't do any good to delete them.

Again, not just exchanges but, its also possible that, the signature campaigns one might have worked with in the past can also do this form of dust donations in the event of either an anniversary or a lot of profit and having your key or seed phrase with you could mean you making a few bucks. Though, I'm not an advocate of getting free stuff.

[hatshepsut93]

I don't think people often delete their wallets, they are more likely to just forget about them and eventually lose to something like a clean OS reinstallation.

People should treat old wallets the same as they treat their current wallets, unless it's a wallet that was never ever used and its addresses were never given to anyone - such wallets can indeed be safely disposed.

[nelson4lov]

Firstly thanks for your kind idea. But This is a matter of sorrow that in 2017 i lost my one wallet keys and after losing it i saw that a project distribute token. I lost 500$+. I was so sad for after this. Then i learn a lesson and keep my wallet key in safest place. Also i write down it in my diary.

Sorry about your loss. These things happen from time to time. We just have to be more careful and apply caution before making any critical decision.

I was just about to wonder if people do delete there private keys and just when I was about to see reasons why, the explanation from OP just made the reasons useless.

This is what isn't been thought of by most users and besides, of what damage or what would it cost you to keep your wallet address and keys or seed phrase safe? Practically nothing. They don't occupy any space and besides, if properly filed, it could go in as the rest keys and be easily identified. So, it doesn't do any good to delete them.

~Snipped

For the records, I've seen a couple of people that would readily delete their wallets when they're done with what ever they were doing with it especially those privacy-obsessed ones. While it doesn't answer the question directly, it goes to show people just want a clean slate every time. Another point to note is that it's often done by mistake. One time, I moved from a windows OS to a Linux distro forgetting to properly do backups.

I also don't see any point deleting wallets especially since it can still come in handy in the long run.