Trying to restore my wallet from 2009 or earlier

[Bennoko]

Hello guys, some months ago i recognized i had some wallets from 2009 maybe earlier beacause i was a soldier in 2010, sure thing its from 2009 whatever. Iwas using electrum wallet, wallet opens with blue space, stars with the icon picture if anyone knows in that time, so that wallet gave me 12 passphrase, wrote em down and now i reached it. Now i use these 12 words seed it says old seed but doesnt show my funds inside. I tried all servers still zero. Any ideas please

[1715185699]

1715185699

[1715185699]

1715185699

[1715185699]

1715185699

[1715185699]

1715185699

[Abdussamad]

There was no electrum wallet in 2009. You must have installed it years later. If restoring from seed leads to an empty wallet you can try the things listed here especially 1c and 2a:

https://bitcoinelectrum.com/frequently-asked-questions/#why-does-restoring-my-wallet-from-seed-lead-to-a-different-wallet

If nothing in the above faq works then you just have an empty wallet.

[Bennoko]

Yes it was exist my friend. May be officially it started 2011 but in that dates i was so away from online connections
Exactly end of 2008 or first quarter of 2009

I tried all that things. The paper i wrote cant be wrong cause its still hanging out and alive


Should it need a time, some while to synchronization?

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[ABCbits]

Yes it was exist my friend. May be officially it started 2011 but in that dates i was so away from online connections
Exactly end of 2008 or first quarter of 2009

IMO it's very unlikely Electrum already exist since end of 2008,
1. It's earlier Git commit happened on Nov 4, 2011 (https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/tree/6db1a31e58ee15c448448139e7d3a9e72b14268f)
2. First post (on this forum) which mentioned Electrum was posted on June 12, 2011, 09:50:17 PM (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=16017.0)

Should it need a time, some while to synchronization?

If you see green/blue circle icon on bottom-right of Electrum, it means sync process already finished.

[levyashin]

Hello guys, some months ago i recognized i had some wallets from 2009 maybe earlier beacause i was a soldier in 2010, sure thing its from 2009 whatever. Iwas using electrum wallet, wallet opens with blue space, stars with the icon picture if anyone knows in that time, so that wallet gave me 12 passphrase, wrote em down and now i reached it. Now i use these 12 words seed it says old seed but doesnt show my funds inside. I tried all servers still zero. Any ideas please

Can you see the address of that address?

Maybe funds are already gone and that is the reason you can't see them? Also i agree with the posts that at 2009 there was no electrum.

[Bennoko]

Anyone remember the opening of electrum with like a java blue sky, space, stars with written ELECTRUM and icon?
Not if , i do exactly remember. What version of that any clues?


Unfortunately I dont ve any exact adresses to compose but My seeds fits the old seed in v1, i checked. There must be something i can do. Come on It’s blockchain

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[Bennoko]

In v1 if doesn’t support to connect servers how my wallet ll synchronization completed?

[NeuroticFish]

In v1 if doesn’t support to connect servers how my wallet ll synchronization completed?

Those servers no longer exist.
All you can do with the old wallet is to get the addresses, check them for funds with an online block explorer and copy the private keys for the addresses with funds into a new and working Electrum.

PS. I'm really curious how you can have Electrum from such early days. From what you're telling it may be even from before Bitcoin was existing...

[Bennoko]

Okay ill try that, thank you n thank anyone who replies
By the way, in that time it was a payment option for some web sites. The only wallet was electrum websites offers. i was making some surveys n
they pay btc it was 0.02 as i remember. No exchange ways for money. U can just swap for some game utilities n deep web payment options. After that all its build

[Abdussamad]

You shouldn't be using anything other than the latest electrum. It is compatible with old seeds including version 1.x ones. You wouldn't have been able to restore from seed if it wasn't.

You should try the things in the link i gave above.

[Bennoko]

Is this the moderator CO of Electrum thomasV

[Lucius]

Hello guys, some months ago i recognized i had some wallets from 2009 maybe earlier beacause

It is impossible to have a Bitcoin wallet before 2009, because Bitcoin was officially created at the very beginning of 2009, more precisely on January 3, 2009. You also keep repeating that it is Electrum, even though we know that the program did not exist at the time - just as there were no surveys and similar things that paid into Bitcoin. The first commercial transaction took place only in mid-2010 when Laszlo Hanyecz paid 2 pizzas 10 000 BTC.

i was making some surveys n
they pay btc it was 0.02 as i remember.

0.02 BTC was practically worthless in Q1 and Q2 2009, so this figure also says that you definitely mixed up the years.


Please do not post in the row, use the quote option to reply to multiple users in one post.


@Abdussamad, link does not work in Firefox - SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG

[Bennoko]

$0.02 is the one btc cost

Alright and You guys keep writing what u read around internet. I lived inside.
I need someone more serious more specific, ready to share the reward%20

[pooya87]

I lived inside.

You say this but at the same time the information you give contradicts that. For example in 2008 bitcoin hasn't been introduced yet and in early 2009 the Electrum was not even conceptualized, neither was HD wallets and mnemonics.
Also bitcoin had no value in early days and nobody would have paid anyone bitcoin for anything let alone for surveys! You could literary receive 50 bitcoin by mining a block easily on your PC or get 5 bitcoins from a faucet.

I need someone more serious more specific

You can send ThomasV a PM and hope he sees the forum-email and replies or you could create an account on GitHub and open a new issue on the project repository asking "when did Electrum first version come out?".

[Bennoko]

Thank you

[nc50lc]

Yes it was exist my friend. May be officially it started 2011 but in that dates i was so away from online connections
Exactly end of 2008 or first quarter of 2009

I tried all that things. The paper i wrote cant be wrong cause its still hanging out and alive

Regardless of the date: if it's from versions lower than v0.31, then your seed phrase can't be used to recover the wallet to the later versions.

These are the "release notes" that came with Electrum v0.32 and some later versions:

version 0.31 fixes a vulnerability in the key generation function.
Unfortunately, this means that wallets created prior to 0.31 are
incompatible with newer versions. We apologize for the
inconvenience. We try to keep this kind of upgrades as rare as
possible.

If you use an older wallet, you will see a message asking you to
create a new wallet and to move your balance to the new wallet.

-snip-

Note that you may keep your current seed. For this, all you need to do
is to create the new wallet using the wallet recovery procedure. You
will not recover your old wallet with the new software, but you will
get a new wallet instead.

LIST OF UPGRADES:
-----------------

Version 0.34: The key derivation was changed again in version 0.34, in order to offer "type 2 wallet" capabilities.
Version 0.31: This version fixes a vulnerability in the key generation function.

TL;DR: It indicates that there were two updates that made the very old electrum wallets unrecoverable with the later versions,
seed should still work but it will generate a different set of keys hence will recover a 0 balance wallet.

Your option is to install v0.30 below, restore your seed phrase, then dump the private keys from the wallet file.
IDK if there are wallet tools that support it though, perhaps some old timer has some info.

[Bennoko]

Searched for 0.30 but i couldnt see any working links, any advice please?

[ABCbits]

Searched for 0.30 but i couldnt see any working links, any advice please?

Here's link to commit/source code of Electrum with version 0.30 (see setup.py file to verify it), https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/tree/5883aaf8ca2f79bf694d11ac6b63f5defd2a2c38. The bad news is you'll need to setup Python 2 environment because there's no compiled/installer version for very old version of Electrum.

[Lucius]

Alright and You guys keep writing what u read around internet. I lived inside.

Inside what, Satoshi Nakamoto's head? You claim to have had Bitcoin in your possession before it existed, or even when it existed during 2009 when only a handful of people knew about it in Q1 and Q2. Don't get me wrong, but there are a lot of people on this forum who know a lot more than you think and no one has bad intentions, your story just doesn't match the historical facts.

Also bitcoin had no value in early days and nobody would have paid anyone bitcoin for anything let alone for surveys! You could literary receive 50 bitcoin by mining a block easily on your PC or get 5 bitcoins from a faucet.

As for the first faucet (as far as we know from history) we know that it is the work of Gavin Andresen, but this project came to life only in 2010 - and there is evidence for that : Get 5 free bitcoins from freebitcoins.appspot.com

[Abdussamad]

@Abdussamad, link does not work in Firefox - SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG

Works fine for me. I use firefox too. What version of firefox are you using?