GPU mining 2013, back today and

[totte1015]

So...

A long story perhaps,

I remember I started to google "how to earn money" and shit like that when I was a teenager living home in 2013, and ended up with this "new" and easy way, GPU mining.

I did not understand jack shit more or less, just followed some guides, downloaded a few programs, along with Bitcoin Core I remember.

I had my computer running all day long with my old GTX 780 for a few nights then lost interest since I remember one bitcoin was like a few dollars, and I had like 0.0000000001 slowly building up.

I lost interest pretty quick and never looked back.

Until today.

Out of nowhere im like "oh wait now hold on a minute.............."
I got onto googling all the popular mining wallets and bitcoin wallets 2013, and I have left traces all over the bitcoin world with my old login, and after a few hours i found my golden stash.
Over at SlushPool, I had 0.00218974 BTC just laying there.
Got really excited and well, it is around 100 dollars, I mean its always something, right?!

But that is not all.
My traces I mentioned, also include a email from Blockchain from 2013, containing a wallet.json file for wallet recovery.
This is where it starts to get tricky, I have NO idea how to restore the balance of that file, or how it works.
I dont know I never used that back in the days!

And there is one other thing that bothers me, I do have one wallet linked on SlushPool, that I have no clue where it leads to, none of the recieving wallets has the same adress as the one at SlushPool
I am not sure if I never got my way around to send the bitcoins I had back then, but I really would like to know if there is a way to trace WHO or WHAT wallet its linked to?

Also would like to know how I should do with the wallet.json file!

[malevolent]

If you're on a secure machine, you can import the wallet here: https://login.blockchain.com/wallet/import-wallet

 or use btcrecover if you don't remember the password: https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover

Watch out for potential scammers messaging you, don't send them anything.

[n0nce]

If you're on a secure machine, you can import the wallet here: https://login.blockchain.com/wallet/import-wallet

 or use btcrecover if you don't remember the password: https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover

Watch out for potential scammers messaging you, don't send them anything.

Why would he want to upload a wallet file to a website? I mean; they do have a reputation to lose, so maybe not going to scam him, but there are much safer ways to do so. The upload may fail or there might be a MITM site and all kinds of issues like that.

@OP, if you have the patience (I think you do, since you forgot about those coins for this long), I'd recommend to install Bitcoin Core on your local machine (if you don't have a lot of disk space, with the 'prune' option turned on) directly from the link on the top of the forum. Then when it's done syncing (can take a few days if your PC is fairly modern), drop the wallet.dat into the right directory and send it to e.g. a hardware wallet from there.

[malevolent]

There's also Blockchain.info/com's decryption tool if you know the password: https://github.com/blockchain/my-wallet-backup-decryption-tool

@OP, if you have the patience (I think you do, since you forgot about those coins for this long), I'd recommend to install Bitcoin Core on your local machine (if you don't have a lot of disk space, with the 'prune' option turned on) directly from the link on the top of the forum. Then when it's done syncing (can take a few days if your PC is fairly modern), drop the wallet.dat into the right directory and send it to e.g. a hardware wallet from there.

Bitcoin Core uses wallet.dat, he has wallet.aes.json from blockchain.info. He'd waste time for naught.

[PrimeNumber7]

@OP, if you have the patience (I think you do, since you forgot about those coins for this long), I'd recommend to install Bitcoin Core on your local machine (if you don't have a lot of disk space, with the 'prune' option turned on) directly from the link on the top of the forum. Then when it's done syncing (can take a few days if your PC is fairly modern), drop the wallet.dat into the right directory and send it to e.g. a hardware wallet from there.

It appears the OP is dealing with possibly a hundred dollars worth of coin. The cost of a hardware wallet alone is likely going to exceed the value of his old coin.

[n0nce]

Bitcoin Core uses wallet.dat, he has wallet.aes.json from blockchain.info. He'd waste time for naught.

Oh right, missed that - my bad! Is it encrypted with some AES key belonging to blockchain.info?
If so, he's super lucky they're still around in all these years; after many online wallets and exchanges came and went.

[ranochigo]

Oh right, missed that - my bad! Is it encrypted with some AES key belonging to blockchain.info?
If so, he's super lucky they're still around in all these years; after many online wallets and exchanges came and went.

Nope. It shouldn't be difficult to decrypt if OP knows the passphrase.

OP can just decrypt it locally and import it into a wallet, but IMO it isn't really worth the effort. It would be far easier to just import it using their online utility, and in this case probably wouldn't warrant so many extra precautions because of the extra effort that comes with it as well. Blockchain.com has HSTS so there isn't a huge risk of MITMs, at least that easily.

And there is one other thing that bothers me, I do have one wallet linked on SlushPool, that I have no clue where it leads to, none of the recieving wallets has the same adress as the one at SlushPool
I am not sure if I never got my way around to send the bitcoins I had back then, but I really would like to know if there is a way to trace WHO or WHAT wallet its linked to?

If the address was a well-known service, then you can use walletexplorer.com to check which group of addresses it is connected to.

[totte1015]

I do have managed to decode it with DecryptWallet, and now have priv key and all that in a .txt file

What do I do now with that?


Also I am wondering, is there any point mining today with a RTX 2080 at home? Or is it just way too late for that train?

[ranochigo]

I do have managed to decode it with DecryptWallet, and now have priv key and all that in a .txt file

What do I do now with that?

Download Electrum(electrum.org/#download) and verify it[1]. When you start Electrum for the first time, you should be greeted with a screen which asks you to create a new wallet, choose Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys. In the box, insert your private keys in this format:

Code:

p2pkh:L...
p2pkh:5...
p2pkh:K...

Just make sure that for each line, p2pkh: is appended before the private key.



[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0

[n0nce]

Also I am wondering, is there any point mining today with a RTX 2080 at home? Or is it just way too late for that train?

This is off-topic, but here's a link to point you to the right direction:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=160.0

Nowadays, you can only mine Bitcoin with ASIC.

TL/DR Summary:
 - You CANNOT meaningfully mine bitcoin with your PC or laptop no matter how powerful it is.
 - You CANNOT meaningfully mine bitcoin with your tablet or phone no matter how powerful it is.
 - Mining apps for your phone or tablet that claim to mine bitcoin are almost certainly scams.
 - You CANNOT find software here to mine bitcoin with your PC by itself.
 - You MIGHT be able to do one of the above with altcoins, but such discussion goes into the altcoin mining section.
 - You CANNOT find or post software here to mine on other peoples' PC without their permission.

[totte1015]

I do have managed to decode it with DecryptWallet, and now have priv key and all that in a .txt file

What do I do now with that?

Download Electrum(electrum.org/#download) and verify it[1]. When you start Electrum for the first time, you should be greeted with a screen which asks you to create a new wallet, choose Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys. In the box, insert your private keys in this format:

Code:

p2pkh:L...
p2pkh:5...
p2pkh:K...

Just make sure that for each line, p2pkh: is appended before the private key.



[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0

Hmm okay. I dont managed to verify it, didnt understand the steps :/

I created a wallet, i managed to import two of the private keys it seems, they got added to "adress" and appear Type "recieving"
But both just says 0 in Balance

Does this mean its 100% sure that the .json wallet contained no bitcoins?

Also, I now managed to import the priv keys onto Blockchain, it says there too there is zero balance :/
I guess that concludes this little mystery, no millions laying around but around 100 bucks atleast

Last thing I am wondering about is that adress though, where it leads to

Also, I know I used Bitcoin Core, but I guess that was a local way of storing the bitcoins and is lost today

[Bitcoin_Arena]

Also I am wondering, is there any point mining today with a RTX 2080 at home? Or is it just way too late for that train?

Yes, you can mine altcoins like Ethereum and the likes of ravencoin. Ethereum has been the most profitable throughout last year, but you can no longer mine bitcoin using GPUs. It's too late for you on the side of Bitcoin.