Gaining access to my alt coins I mined once

[Rickirs]

Hi,
In mid 2018, had tried luck with mining with couple of GPUs, however, by end of 2018, things were not good and I gave up mining like many others (only recently to regret). Now I have lost touch of everything however, I had saved access keys / password and wallet address in backup drives and recently I managed to find out that I own couple of hundred dollars of value crypto with some dead and undead coins. Now since the Crypto scene is changed a lot,for me its like starting all over again. Back in days, used ccminer and claymore etc.  Biggest issue I am facing that how to get access back to my crytos.

Currently I think I may have mined following atleast once (as per my backup text file)
ETH
SIA
DECRED -
MONERO
BTCP

I can clearly see that ETH is still going strong but not rest seems almost dead apart Decred and Monero with fair value.


Now I have following doubts, hoping someone familiar with current trends can point me to right direction:
1. How many from above are actually not dead or still relevant (clearly apart of ETH).

2. How to check balance / access following as I don't want to get scammed by providing my credential to some wrong wallet / scam software :

a. SIA -> I don't remember but my backup only has some phrase which is I suppose is required to access SIA wallet .  Its series of words I think was generated when I first created wallet. Is it only thing required to access sia wallet as I suppose we also need wallet address ?
b. Decred --> Same for sia, someohow I forgot to include wallet address but only passphrase / random words ,
c. Monero : Have wallet address, view key. So how do I check balance if I have anything . What is right way, which wallet or process ?
d. BTCP : Have I think SEED and some random string , I suppose its wallet address ( I remember claiming zcl at time of its work when BTCP was created etc.)
e. ETH , I have wallet address and its passphrase . What is proper to claim it , which wallet to download now.


3. If I plan to mind ETH (given its increased price) , what Pool and miner should I use now ?

Clearly, I have access keys but I should have also backup up my claymore / ccminer batch / sh files also but I missed that.

I hope I not have lost it all or do I ?

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[JayDDee]

Check on any trusted exchange that supports the coin for its current price. If you can't find one the coin
probably has zero value.
You'll need to install the latest version of the wallet for each coin of interest.
You need the wallet key to open the wallet, and maybe a passphrase to make a transaction.
Your addresses are all listed in the wallet.

[flip4flop]

Most of the wallets can be recovered if you have the private keys or the seed for them? I just went through this with BTCP, BTCZ, ZEN, and a few others. You need to save all your wallet.dat files if you have them somewhere safe. Then download the latest wallets for each of those projects.  Once you have done that you may need to add nodes/peers in the console tab to ensure it can sync or download the latest bootstrap from the coins Github pages.  Once that is complete you can replace the wallet.dat in the new coins folder with the one from your old wallet.  That should allow you to see your coins in the new wallet. Then depending on where you live you just need to find an exchange that you can use to trade them. Check Coinmarketcap or Coingecko.  Should work for almost any coin.

[adaseb]

I wouldn't bother trying to recover your BTCP. That coin back in early 2018 was big, it pumped like crazy at launch. It had a price of like $50 or so, then after that it basically went down hill. Right now its priced around $1 or so. So I am assuming if you didn't sell at $50 because the value was low, then most likely you won't want to sell it at $1 either. The chain still seems active, so you can always just send your coins to an exchange to sell.

Ethereum obviously is the one that went up the most since 2018. It peaked at $1400 back then and look at the price we have today. So this one is actually worth recovering. The other 3 coins, SIA, DCR and MONERO are pretty much where they were back in early 2018 or so. So if you never having lots of those coins then it might be worth the hassle to recover the wallets and send to an exchange to sell.

[TheMimic1]

I wouldn't bother trying to recover your BTCP. That coin back in early 2018 was big, it pumped like crazy at launch. It had a price of like $50 or so, then after that it basically went down hill. Right now its priced around $1 or so. So I am assuming if you didn't sell at $50 because the value was low, then most likely you won't want to sell it at $1 either. The chain still seems active, so you can always just send your coins to an exchange to sell.

Ethereum obviously is the one that went up the most since 2018. It peaked at $1400 back then and look at the price we have today. So this one is actually worth recovering. The other 3 coins, SIA, DCR and MONERO are pretty much where they were back in early 2018 or so. So if you never having lots of those coins then it might be worth the hassle to recover the wallets and send to an exchange to sell.

Bitcoin private was under 1$ months back and yet it make it to 4$ right in front of my eye, I know it's not that good but I still make few gains from the project, I bought under 1$ and sold at 4$ but the dump was quick, bitcoin gold and bitcoin diamond are still better

[Rickirs]

Most of the wallets can be recovered if you have the private keys or the seed for them? I just went through this with BTCP, BTCZ, ZEN, and a few others. You need to save all your wallet.dat files if you have them somewhere safe. Then download the latest wallets for each of those projects.  Once you have done that you may need to add nodes/peers in the console tab to ensure it can sync or download the latest bootstrap from the coins Github pages.  Once that is complete you can replace the wallet.dat in the new coins folder with the one from your old wallet.  That should allow you to see your coins in the new wallet. Then depending on where you live you just need to find an exchange that you can use to trade them. Check Coinmarketcap or Coingecko.  Should work for almost any coin.

Don't have wallet.dat for any, just passphrase, seed etc.

[swogerino]

Most of the wallets can be recovered if you have the private keys or the seed for them? I just went through this with BTCP, BTCZ, ZEN, and a few others. You need to save all your wallet.dat files if you have them somewhere safe. Then download the latest wallets for each of those projects.  Once you have done that you may need to add nodes/peers in the console tab to ensure it can sync or download the latest bootstrap from the coins Github pages.  Once that is complete you can replace the wallet.dat in the new coins folder with the one from your old wallet.  That should allow you to see your coins in the new wallet. Then depending on where you live you just need to find an exchange that you can use to trade them. Check Coinmarketcap or Coingecko.  Should work for almost any coin.

Don't have wallet.dat for any, just passphrase, seed etc.

Those with a seed I think you can recover that with the seed,for example Electrum and Exodus use a 12 word seed as a recovery option and Electrum goes even further if I remember correctly that it can also support other seeds as long as they are BIP39 compatible but it is a long time since I don't use it daily so I don't remember correctly.Go to this section to read more about Electrum.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=98.0

If you mined Eth as you say at that time Exodus was the best around,the latest newcomer as  a multicurrency wallet so most probably you have used it.

[nc50lc]

-snip-
Don't have wallet.dat for any, just passphrase, seed etc.

Those with a seed I think you can recover that with the seed,for example Electrum and Exodus use a 12 word seed as a recovery option and Electrum goes even further if I remember correctly that it can also support other seeds as long as they are BIP39 compatible but it is a long time since I don't use it daily so I don't remember correctly.Go to this section to read more about Electrum.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=98.0
-snip-

For Electrum, it's not necessary, Electrum neither supports any of the coins mentioned by the OP.
There's a fork for BTCP but it's abandoned and there's no active server to connect to.

[Rickirs]

Alright, so looks like I can gain access to most of my coins.

I will go one by one, start with ETH first ,

Now I need to make sure I use correct wallet software, its little confusing, for example, I went here for Ethereum wallet.
https://ethereum.org/en/wallets/find-wallet/

They have lots of wallet mentioned, few are I suppose exchange wallet. However, what I need is offline wallet (I am not sure its right term) where I can login and check my ETH balance and transfer if I needed so.

I remember, back in days, it used to sync , but there there some wallet which do not require such sync but still were able hold and transact.   

[FP91G]

Alright, so looks like I can gain access to most of my coins.

I will go one by one, start with ETH first ,

Now I need to make sure I use correct wallet software, its little confusing, for example, I went here for Ethereum wallet.
https://ethereum.org/en/wallets/find-wallet/

They have lots of wallet mentioned, few are I suppose exchange wallet. However, what I need is offline wallet (I am not sure its right term) where I can login and check my ETH balance and transfer if I needed so.

I remember, back in days, it used to sync , but there there some wallet which do not require such sync but still were able hold and transact.   

Install metamask for Ethereum. This is the simplest wallet.
https://metamask.io/
And then transfer your coins to the hardware wallet address or to an exchange where you can sell them.

If metamask doesn't work, use https://www.mycrypto.com/
This is also a good non-custodial wallet.

[Rickirs]

Alright, thanks.

So, I suppose mycrypto.com is online wallet , I mean last time I had downloaded official ETH wallet as a windows binary / software. In case of myCrypto.com, we are actually accessing everything through there server. Although they say that the CAN NOT : 
Access your funds for you
Recover, reset, or modify ANY of your information
Reverse, cancel, or refund transactions
Freeze accounts

While Meta Mask comes as browser extensions, so do some other.  Isn't unsafe as we tend to install  other extensions, sometimes they may not be safe and can compromise things in whole browser. Then again, I am re-learning everything, so I can't say much.

What are your views about Exodus, it seems to be quite popular but not open-source.

[Rickirs]

Nevermind, just found standalone mycrypto.com https://download.mycrypto.com/
Downloaded it, however, currently I have my address along with a password. And I don't seem to find a way to use it to gain access.

[swogerino]

Nevermind, just found standalone mycrypto.com https://download.mycrypto.com/
Downloaded it, however, currently I have my address along with a password. And I don't seem to find a way to use it to gain access.

I am not an expert in the matter however I think you need at least a private key or mnemonic to import to a wallet,most Eth wallet support importing a private key,Metamask is the best for that.Remember that you can't recover funds without the private key,password is irrelevant when you don't know to where it belong and you need both a private key and a public one which by the public I mean your Ethereum address,public key is not relevant as it can be found after you import the private key.Also in some wallets there were some parts of them especially in Windows in Appdata which you can access by typing in the address bar of file explorer %appdata% and in there some wallets keep critical files like wallet.dat or other related ones for a complete recovery.Maybe if you had a wallet.dat file you could try to open it with the password you have.

For Exodus,that one is my fav so far for everything and not for just ETH.Below a screenshot of it.

[adaseb]

When you say you don’t have any wallet.dat I am assuming you don’t have a wallet for ETH correct? Just the seed?
If so you really should use MyEtherWallet and put one on an online computer and another on an offline computer.

You put your seed in the offline computer and it will generate all your addresses, then with the address which has ETH use the offline tool from MEW website and make an unsigned offline transaction, then put those details such as nonce, gas fee, etc into the offline computer which will sign it. Then take that signed transaction and put it on the online computer and send it where you want.

This way your funds won’t get stolen if you got a virus somewhere.

[JayDDee]

You're trying to recover coins from an existing wallet right? So you don't want to create a new one.
And don't be worried about addresses, the wallet has all the addresses.

You need to find the key for your old wallet. Without it the coins are inaccessible. You import the
key into a new wallet and your addresses and coins will show up. Your password is used to
make a transaction but you need the key first just to open the wallet and see it's contents.

The file is usually called wallet.dat. Without it the coins are lost. That goes for each coin, they all have
their own wallet.dat. Don't get them mixed up.

[Rickirs]

It looks like I almost had lost my ETH but then I found my keystore file, mywallet was used with the keystore along with password to gain access.  I will now look into other coins.

[FP91G]

While Meta Mask comes as browser extensions, so do some other.  Isn't unsafe as we tend to install  other extensions, sometimes they may not be safe and can compromise things in whole browser. Then again, I am re-learning everything, so I can't say much.

Use Metamask with a hardware wallet. It is safe.

How to transfer your MetaMask to a Trezor Hardware Wallet
https://kryptonitelex.medium.com/how-to-transfer-your-metamask-wallet-to-a-trezor-hardware-wallet-a40fc77faf6f

The Safest Way to Use MetaMask With Ledger
https://www.ledger.com/academy/security/the-safest-way-to-use-metamask

[amishmanish]

If you have the passphrase, the simplest way would be to recover it using Metamask. Metamask is now supported on mobile too so if you have a clean smartphone, that too could be an option. Metamask mobile also supports NFTs which desktop doesn't.

ETH is also moving to PoS in the coming future so not much use thinking about restarting to mine, IMO. Though you can dust up the rigs and get them ready to go if some other PoW coin increases in value. You never know what will be next with crypto.

I hope you can safely recover everything and find a happy stash somewhere.

[Rickirs]

Thanks guys, I have now better understanding for ETH.

Now please guide me which Monero wallet to use .
https://www.getmonero.org/downloads/

[Rickirs]

Suggestion for good wallet for TRON, don't want Android / Exchange wallet.