Problems with Bitcoins Mined in 2009

[minkpump]

I have some bitcoin addresses mined in 2009 with problems.

Public Key is outdated, no satoshi-era updates to current protocols have been made.

everything is still in 32 bit..

I can't spend the btcs this way.

[1714933950]

1714933950

[1714933950]

1714933950

[1714933950]

1714933950

[BitMaxz]

What is your backup?
Seed phrase do not exist yet in the year 2009 and the public key you mention won't be able to use for recovery.

Maybe if you have wallet.dat file or private key then you can recover your old wallet. Do you have any of these?

[pooya87]

I have some bitcoin addresses mined in 2009 with problems.

And how did you come upon these addresses? Did you by any chance get them from a scam "brute force" project?

Public Key is outdated, no satoshi-era updates to current protocols have been made.

Public keys are never outdated and there hasn't been any updates from the very first day that bitcoin was introduced which would affect the keys. In other words any key generated in 2009 is still valid today and can be used.
In any case you need private key to spend coins not public key.

everything is still in 32 bit..

What do you mean by this? Private keys are 32 bytes but wallets don't show them as bits, they convert them to a human readable format using base58 encoding and call them WIFs.

[nc50lc]

Public Key is outdated, no satoshi-era updates to current protocols have been made.

everything is still in 32 bit..

You must be talking about P2PK UTXOs, if so, Bitcoin Core can spend those.
Just import the "Private Key" into a new non-descriptor wallet and it should be able to find those transactions.

If the Private Keys are "32 bit" as well (64-character HEX), you just have to encode them into WIF using conversion tools.
Your Public Keys can't be used to spend those bitcoins.

[LoyceV]

You must be talking about P2PK UTXOs, if so, Bitcoin Core can spend those.
Just import the "Private Key" into a new non-descriptor wallet and it should be able to find those transactions.

If OP really has 50 (or more) Bitcoins mined to pubkey, he shouldn't mess with it on an online computer. Sync Bitcoin Core and unplug your internet. Then import the private key, without risking any online exposure. Create, verify and sign a transaction offline, copy it, and broadcast it online.
Alternative: Import the pubkey, let Bitcoin Core sync until 2010 (that shouldn't take long), and if anything shows up, you can take it offline to import the privkey. Or let it sync completely to be sure the funds are still there.

[kaggie]

I have some bitcoin addresses mined in 2009 with problems.

Public Key is outdated, no satoshi-era updates to current protocols have been made.

everything is still in 32 bit..

I can't spend the btcs this way.

"Public Key is outdated" - Public keys from 2009 are still valid.

"no satoshi-era updates to current protocols have been made" - Old addresses would still work. Bitcoin core has made updates to the protocols but they remain backwards compatible. That is no small feat to maintain compatibility, but one that I hope continues for a very long time.

"everything is still in 32 bit.." - Bitcoin keys have only ever been in 64 bitbytes.

[nc50lc]

"everything is still in 32 bit.." - Bitcoin keys have only ever been in 64 bit.

Actually, it's 64 "Bytes" (uncompressed public key minus the '04').

By the way, I have also quoted his "32-bit" above and replied like he said "32 bytes", that also got me :P

[kaggie]

"everything is still in 32 bit.." - Bitcoin keys have only ever been in 64 bit.

Actually, it's 64 "Bytes" (uncompressed public key minus the '04').

By the way, I have also quoted his "32-bit" above and replied like he said "32 bytes", that also got me

Hahaha, you are correct. Rookie mistake on my end. Cheers.
Bitcoin keys have only ever been 64 bytes (or 512 bit), plus the few variations on that for the different types of address types.

-
A few other things:

Within parts of the bitcoin source code, you will find that 'setFloat' causes a double to be defined, rather than a float. In most programming languages, floats are 32 bits and doubles are 64 bits. Bitcoin plays it loose with the typical definition here
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/univalue/include/univalue.h#L58

The calculations for an address from a 64 byte key relies on mathematics where 32 and 64 bit would not be sufficient. I actually once programmed a search for any exceptions to the general Fermat conjecture (Fermat's last theorem with fewer constraints, also known as the Beal conjecture) using 32 bit as the first stage, then moving to 100+ bit after I thought there might be exceptions. After looking at the solutions with higher bit resolution, my exceptions turned out to not exist.

[minkpump]

It sounds like your coins were received directly to a pubkey (pay-to-pubkey), rather than an address (pay-to-pubkeyhash). You might have to spend them by building a raw transaction. Have you looked at tools such as coinb.in? It can be used offline by downloading the source. For your input you'd reference the receiving transaction ID and the output index (n).

It is possible?

[BitMaxz]

It sounds like your coins were received directly to a pubkey (pay-to-pubkey), rather than an address (pay-to-pubkeyhash). You might have to spend them by building a raw transaction. Have you looked at tools such as coinb.in? It can be used offline by downloading the source. For your input you'd reference the receiving transaction ID and the output index (n).

It is possible?

Why not try it I don't know if it will work where did you hear that?
If you are going to make a raw transaction through coinb.in you need any of these Address, WIF key, Redeem Script or Transaction ID.

But I think your case about your private key will not work on Coinb.in unless if it's a WIF key.

Can you post a sample of your private key(Not the original one) I receive a PM from you and you said you have the private key why not import it into electrum?
You can use this link below as your reference for private key prefixes and copy the example from that link and paste it here.
- https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/List_of_address_prefixes

[nc50lc]

It sounds like your coins were received directly to a pubkey (pay-to-pubkey), rather than an address (pay-to-pubkeyhash). You might have to spend them by building a raw transaction. Have you looked at tools such as coinb.in? It can be used offline by downloading the source. For your input you'd reference the receiving transaction ID and the output index (n).

It is possible?

That is possible but I don't know if coinb.in can check P2PK outputs, and to make it, you must know which UTXO to spend.
One option is to create a watching-only wallet in bitcoin Core by importing those public key(s) into a non-descriptor wallet using the command importpubkey
And with that, you don't need coinb.in to create the raw transaction, you can use Bitcoin Core itself and sign it using your private key using signrawtransactionwithkey (if it's WIF).

But before you get into finer details, what data do you actually have? Public Key(s)? Addresses?
Please describe it without giving the actual data (e.g.: how many characters, give an example or edit all characters of the actual data but leave the first character correct).

Because OP doesn't make sense and your reply didn't add anything, you just replied to the one that shows a possibility to spend it.
You'll have to have the "private key(s)" for you to spend those coins and it should be the pair of your "public key(s)",
without it, you're just wasting your time.
Since that reply isn't in this topic, you must be the author of this reddit thread: /r/Bitcoin/comments/vhq21r/problems_with_bitcoins_mined_in_2009
Please quote the message that isn't yours if you want to include it to your post, like I did above.

[LoyceV]

you said you have the private key why not import it into electrum?

Because it's stupid bad practice to import a private key holding 50 (or more) Bitcoin into a hot wallet! Don't do that!
Electrum can't import pubkeys, so it's not possible to sign safe (offline) with Electrum. Use Bitcoin Core.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

Electrum can't import pubkeys, so it's not possible to sign safe (offline) with Electrum. Use Bitcoin Core.

This is what i do. I sign a transaction from an offline device. Take the signed files and broadcast it from the online device. I consider it safe if I am aware in every step that I am performing. I am taking about Electrum.

[hosseinimr93]

This is what i do. I sign a transaction from an offline device. ...........

The problem here is that you can't create the watch-only wallet which you need for making the unsigned transaction.
Electrum doesn't support importing public keys and if you import the address instead of that, it won't show P2PK transactions.

[minkpump]

The thing happens in a mysterious way, when synchronizing the wallet after the years, the transactions disappear....

[nc50lc]

The thing happens in a mysterious way, when synchronizing the wallet after the years, the transactions disappear....

This only means one thing: The transactions in your wallet weren't actually in the blockchain.

But invalid transactions do not automatically get deleted after a scan,
those just wont be included to the total balance and displayed with "?" status in the transaction tab.

Mysterious indeed,
There must some something wrong with your wallet.dat file, like tampered data that got "fixed" after loading the wallet.
Did you actually mined those coins or have you bought/received that wallet.dat with mined coins from somebody else?

[LoyceV]

The thing happens in a mysterious way, when synchronizing the wallet after the years, the transactions disappear....

I assume you made a backup before doing that, right? If so: start by checking the Transaction ID.

[hZti]

The thing happens in a mysterious way, when synchronizing the wallet after the years, the transactions disappear....

That will happen if sometime during those years the bitcoin was send to another adress. You synchronize the blocks starting from block 1. At one point the synchronization is at the block where your adress received the coins. Btocoin core will then show your coins in the balance. After some time the block wehre the coins were send away will be synchronized, so the bitcoins will disappear again. The best way to see if your BTC is still there is to check also in mempool.space .

[BitMaxz]

The thing happens in a mysterious way, when synchronizing the wallet after the years, the transactions disappear....

It seems that you decided to connect your PC/Laptop to the internet and let your wallet sync.

If the funds or your balance become 0 after syncing there is a big possibility someone already has access to your wallet(Or you might be infected) and sent it to another address. In that case, you can't able to recover them because Bitcoin transaction is irreversible.

If you talking about "it syncing after a few blocks are downloaded the transaction history gone?"
It could be a bug if the wallet was started in 2009 and 2010 and has never been touched until you open the wallet and after syncing the wallet transaction under history is gone it could be a bug.

What I would like you to do is to get the used address(es) under your wallet(If you can able to check the addresses tab) and check them one by one in the block explorer. If all addresses from your wallet do not have funds and one of your addresses has one transaction under history then it was already sent to someone and possible someone has access to your wallet or your PC is infected and you can't able to recover them.

[hZti]

The thing happens in a mysterious way, when synchronizing the wallet after the years, the transactions disappear....

That will happen if sometime during those years the bitcoin was send to another adress.

In such case, Bitcoin Core would show additional transaction where the Bitcoin is moved rather than delete existing transaction from transaction history.

[1] allprivatekeys[dot]com/wallet.dat?mined=on

That is true, i assumed he meant that the bitcoins disappeared from his wallet balance, meaning the balance goes to zero. Because there is no way that the transactions would disapper from his wallet, even if it got hacked or something of that kind. Actually the OP should just take his addresses and check them on an block explorer. Its not that hard and he would know in a few seconds if he still has the bitcoins or if they were sent away, stolen or whatever.