Invalid private key error

[o_e_l_e_o]

As far as the private key is I feel I have been scammed. The key is an invalid key.

As per advice from this forum members, I tried to repair the key with FinderOuter but the result came as failed.

Given that you say your private key starts with 5 and has 51 characters (as it should), then it sounds very much like that one or more characters in your private key is incorrect.

Have you tried substituting every character in FinderOuter for a wildcard one at a time and running it? Beyond that, the next thing I would suggest would be to use btcrecover. It supports raw private key recovery. You would feed it your private key, along with telling it to search for x number of typos, and let it do its thing. Note that 3 typos gives around 220 billion possible combinations, while 4 gives around 2.6 trillion, so the process might not be quick (or even possible, if you have more typos than this).

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[Tofee]

As far as the private key is I feel I have been scammed. The key is an invalid key.

As per advice from this forum members, I tried to repair the key with FinderOuter but the result came as failed.

Given that you say your private key starts with 5 and has 51 characters (as it should), then it sounds very much like that one or more characters in your private key is incorrect.

Have you tried substituting every character in FinderOuter for a wildcard one at a time and running it? Beyond that, the next thing I would suggest would be to use btcrecover. It supports raw private key recovery. You would feed it your private key, along with telling it to search for x number of typos, and let it do its thing. Note that 3 typos gives around 220 billion possible combinations, while 4 gives around 2.6 trillion, so the process might not be quick (or even possible, if you have more typos than this).

Thanks. I shall try with recover. The invalid characters in the key are ‘I’ and ‘l’. Wish you and everybody on this forum merry X’mas. May God bless all.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Thanks. I shall try with recover. The invalid characters in the key are ‘I’ and ‘l’. Wish you and everybody on this forum merry X’mas. May God bless all.

And you've tried using FinderOuter with those two character replaced by a wildcard, and it still did not find any valid keys?

In that case, when you set up btcrecover, the firs thing I would try would be feeding with a tokenlist file which contains your private key with the "I" and "l" characters replaced with "%*" (without the " symbols), which is the wildcard for any Base58 character. I'd also include the argument --typos-replace %* which will search for a single typo and try every Base58 character in every other position.

If that doesn't work, then you'll have to start widening your typo search, but you will quickly run in to the limits of what is feasible.

[Tofee]

Thanks. I shall try with recover. The invalid characters in the key are ‘I’ and ‘l’. Wish you and everybody on this forum merry X’mas. May God bless all.

And you've tried using FinderOuter with those two character replaced by a wildcard, and it still did not find any valid keys?

In that case, when you set up btcrecover, the firs thing I would try would be feeding with a tokenlist file which contains your private key with the "I" and "l" characters replaced with "%*" (without the " symbols), which is the wildcard for any Base58 character. I'd also include the argument --typos-replace %* which will search for a single typo and try every Base58 character in every other position.

If that doesn't work, then you'll have to start widening your typo search, but you will quickly run in to the limits of what is feasible.

Appreciate your response and suggestion.
After several attempts a new error has popped up stating ‘ Invalid key - checksum error’. I am not sure what it means.
Request if any of the members can guide me how to overcome it.  — Thanks.

[o_e_l_e_o]

It means that the checksum (the last 5-6 characters of the private key) are not valid and do not match up with the rest of the private key. In other words, you still have one or more errors somewhere and have not yet found a valid key.

Is this error showing up on btcrecover? Can you share exactly the command you are running? Does it give you that error immediately or does it perform a search first?

[Tofee]

It means that the checksum (the last 5-6 characters of the private key) are not valid and do not match up with the rest of the private key. In other words, you still have one or more errors somewhere and have not yet found a valid key.

Is this error showing up on btcrecover? Can you share exactly the command you are running? Does it give you that error immediately or does it perform a search first?

This error is showing up immediately on FinderOuter.Thanks for your response. Wish you merry Xmas.

[Romoe]

I lost my priv keys few years back and recently found while going through old lap top

Did you find it in an original email or it was in the text file you created?
If you find it in an original email, it's high likely that it's a scam because it's wrong from the beginning.

but if it in the text file you created, The mistake might be that you recorded it incorrectly, for example You may alternate lowercase letters with uppercase letters. (Base58 is case sensitive), The more mistakes you make,the more time it takes to find. It may take an hours to find valid key in 3 letters wrong. But for 4 letters wrong, It may take months or even years to find the valid key [Run on one simple CPU 24hr/day]
In this case, I think the first thing to do is you should try to find the private key form your original email.

[Romoe]

This python script below can create new valid checksum, It probably won't help much. But you should at least give it a try.

Code:

import base58

key = '5JLUSIY1ap3diK5PP2PIuAtdhyHKqyPTDzccqlHfiMcCGd5s8LM'   #change this key to your private key


x = key.replace('I', 'i')
y = x.replace('l', 'L')


bytekey = base58.b58decode(y[0:46] + 'z'*5)[:33]

print(str(base58.b58encode_check(bytekey), 'utf-8'))

I can create the code that specific on your case, but I need more information [ex. how many 'I' and 'l' in your key and Where is it located?].
May be a months or a years, If you tried every possible way but still can't find the valid key, contact me at telegram or email on my profile.

[nc50lc]

This error is showing up immediately on FinderOuter.

This must be a typo, yes?
Because FinderOuter will just fail the search after exhausting all the permutations.

[o_e_l_e_o]

This error is showing up immediately on FinderOuter.Thanks for your response. Wish you merry Xmas.

Then you are entering the wrong string in to FinderOuter. If it is showing up immediately, then it means FinderOuter is simply checking the string you have entered and telling you it has an incorrect checksum. It is not actually attempting to brute force any other possibilities.

Here's what you should be doing:

Open FinderOuter
Click on "Missing Base58"
Paste in your private key to the first box
Swap the invalid characters I and l for the missing char symbol (which is * by default)
Ensure the input type is "PrivateKey"
Click "Find" at the top

If it doesn't find your key, if you could then copy and paste here exactly what appears in the box at the bottom, that would be useful.

[larry_vw_1955]

This key was received on purchase of bitcoins via PayPal about a decade back. Then, there was very little knowledge sources available online.
 I presume more than 400 attempts has been made to hack my bitcoins.

So maybe this is a dumb question but did you ever check this key when you bought it using paypal? If not then i'm not sure why not.

Since the privkey has not been activated for many years, is there any possibility of keys invalidity?

activated by who?
 

[Tofee]

This error is showing up immediately on FinderOuter.Thanks for your response. Wish you merry Xmas.

Then you are entering the wrong string in to FinderOuter. If it is showing up immediately, then it means FinderOuter is simply checking the string you have entered and telling you it has an incorrect checksum. It is not actually attempting to brute force any other possibilities.

Here's what you should be doing:

Open FinderOuter
Click on "Missing Base58"
Paste in your private key to the first box
Swap the invalid characters I and l for the missing char symbol (which is * by default)
Ensure the input type is "PrivateKey"
Click "Find" at the top

If it doesn't find your key, if you could then copy and paste here exactly what appears in the box at the bottom, that would be useful.

Thanks for your response. Wish you and all a very very happy New Year 2023. May year 2023 bring peace, prosperity and good health to all.

 Regarding the invalid key which I have is as follows.

The result in FinderOuter is “finished fail”.

The key has checksum error along with several characters not at the right positions. It starts with 5 but the second character is ‘F’ followed by other characters with two invalid Base 58 characters and checksum error which  makes me understand that last four characters are not correct. So, in total the key has the atleast 7 characters wrong and could be more.
 
I am frustrated because I purchased Bitcoins via PayPal with my debit card in 2010/11 and least expected to be scammed on Bitcoins then because they were not worth even Pennie’s as of early days.

I tried to sweep key from the key produced by FinderOuter in Electrum but it results in ‘No count’

I feel the entire key is invalid.

If anybody can help me to get contact details of Blackschneider78 who has posted on this forum of having purchased Bitcoins in 2011, via email/PayPal, please do.

Appreciate your suggestions and advice.

[o_e_l_e_o]

It starts with 5 but the second character is ‘F’ followed by other characters with two invalid Base 58 characters and checksum error which  makes me understand that last four characters are not correct. So, in total the key has the atleast 7 characters wrong and could be more.

It has to start with 5H, 5J, or 5K.

The invalid checksum is telling you that the checksum is not correct for the key you entered. We already know that is the case because the key contains invalid characters. This does not necessarily mean the checksum contains errors - the checksum may very well be the correct checksum for the correct key and will validate just fine once you sort the other errors.

Appreciate your suggestions and advice.

Use btcrecover as I suggested above. If you are struggling with this, then your only option would be to ask a third party wallet recovery service to run it for you. I'd be happy to give it a shot as well, but this will necessitate you sharing your incorrect private key with either the wallet recovery service or myself.

[larry_vw_1955]

The invalid checksum is telling you that the checksum is not correct for the key you entered. We already know that is the case because the key contains invalid characters. This does not necessarily mean the checksum contains errors - the checksum may very well be the correct checksum for the correct key and will validate just fine once you sort the other errors.

Maybe we need to take a step back and ask some basic questions like why didn't the OP check the private key when he first got it to make sure it was valid?

Use btcrecover as I suggested above. If you are struggling with this, then your only option would be to ask a third party wallet recovery service to run it for you. I'd be happy to give it a shot as well, but this will necessitate you sharing your incorrect private key with either the wallet recovery service or myself.

If the private key cannot be validated then dispute the transaction with paypal get your money back. post on the forum that they tried to scam you. etc. etc. if the private key validates and is associated to an address that holds the amount of bitcoin you purchased then what you do is move them ASAP.

Now I do understand that at the time of purchase bitcoin was worth very small tiny amount but it's the principal of the thing. Don't trust, verify.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Maybe we need to take a step back and ask some basic questions like why didn't the OP check the private key when he first got it to make sure it was valid?

There are a lot of red flags here which make me think this is a scam, from the "seller" sending OP a raw private key instead of making a transaction, through to the key containing invalid characters. However, there is nothing OP can do about any of these red flags now, and we can only attempt to work with what he has in his possession. I strongly suspect OP has been scammed and there are no coins to recover, but we can at least try.

If the private key cannot be validated then dispute the transaction with paypal get your money back. post on the forum that they tried to scam you. etc. etc.

You can correct me if I'm wrong (since I've never used PayPal), but my understanding is that there is a time limit of 180 days to open a dispute. PayPal are not going to entertain a dispute for a transaction which is in the region of 10 years old.

[larry_vw_1955]

There are a lot of red flags here which make me think this is a scam... I strongly suspect OP has been scammed and there are no coins to recover, but we can at least try.

you may be right. the only thing is this was back in like 2010. i'm not sure how people sold bitcoin back then. maybe it was accepted to just sell the private key and not actually send bitcoin to the person's address. obviously that seems like a really bad idea today and you would think it would seem like one to people back then too but they didn't have all the different wallets and things they do now. so i guess it was harder to create your own wallet/address. there is also the remote possibility that the OPs laptop got some data corruption and the private key is not correct due to that. that's probably very unlikely but i guess it is a remote possibility.

You can correct me if I'm wrong (since I've never used PayPal), but my understanding is that there is a time limit of 180 days to open a dispute. PayPal are not going to entertain a dispute for a transaction which is in the region of 10 years old.

Well of course they're not going to let someone dispute something that old. I didn't realize this at first but it seems the OP probably would not even have been able to dispute it 10 years ago either since back then I don't think paypal had a digital goods protection. Now they seem to though: https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/news?item=122644 so that would have been another reason to not be using paypal back then to buy btc. scammer's paradise...

no one should be needing to buy bitcoin from someone else using paypal these days though. since they can just buy it from paypal directly.

[Romoe]

It starts with 5 but the second character is ‘F’ followed by other characters with two invalid Base 58 characters and checksum error which  makes me understand that last four characters are not correct.

The one charecter that does’nt fit the Base58 chart is ‘I’.

Perhaps the format of the key is not Base58. The knowledge of wallet creation may not have been widespread in 2010, so methods for generating private keys may differ, You should try to decode your key with another format ex Base64, Base62

[o_e_l_e_o]

but they didn't have all the different wallets and things they do now. so i guess it was harder to create your own wallet/address.

If it was hard to create your own wallet or key pairs from scratch, then it was probably even harder to find software which would let you import a raw private key to access coins you had supposedly bought.

no one should be needing to buy bitcoin from someone else using paypal these days though. since they can just buy it from paypal directly.

I would suggest you just shouldn't use PayPal at all, since they introduced a clause in their Terms which allows them to fine you thousands of dollars if you say things online that they don't like.

Perhaps the format of the key is not Base58. The knowledge of wallet creation may not have been widespread in 2010, so methods for generating private keys may differ, You should try to decode your key with another format ex Base64, Base62

A possibility, although a raw private key encoded in these systems would be 44 characters, rather than the 51 OP has.

[larry_vw_1955]

If it was hard to create your own wallet or key pairs from scratch, then it was probably even harder to find software which would let you import a raw private key to access coins you had supposedly bought.

which would/should have made it even more obvious/incombent upon the person purchasing to make sure they could verify the private key. otherwise they're just buying a string of alphanumeric characters  

I would suggest you just shouldn't use PayPal at all, since they introduced a clause in their Terms which allows them to fine you thousands of dollars if you say things online that they don't like.

where does it say they're going to "fine you thousands of dollars if you say things online that they don't like" ?  

If you are a seller and receive funds for transactions that violate the Acceptable Use Policy and said violation is associated with fraud or the sale of goods that are counterfeit or otherwise infringe on intellectual property rights, then in addition to being subject to the above actions you will be liable to PayPal for the amount of PayPal's damages caused by said violation. You acknowledge and agree that $2,500 USD (or equivalent) per violation is presently a reasonable minimum estimate of PayPal's actual damages - including, but not limited to internal administrative costs incurred by PayPal to monitor and track violations, damage to PayPal’s brand and reputation, and penalties imposed upon PayPal by its business partners resulting from said violation associated with fraud or the sale of goods that are counterfeit or otherwise infringe on intellectual property rights - considering all currently existing circumstances, including the relationship of the sum to the range of harm to PayPal that reasonably could be anticipated because, due to the nature of the violation, actual damages would be impractical or extremely difficult to calculate. PayPal may deduct such damages directly from any existing balance in any PayPal account you control.

since you don't suggest using paypal, who do you suggest? coinbase?

[Tofee]

It starts with 5 but the second character is ‘F’ followed by other characters with two invalid Base 58 characters and checksum error which  makes me understand that last four characters are not correct. So, in total the key has the atleast 7 characters wrong and could be more.

It has to start with 5H, 5J, or 5K.

The invalid checksum is telling you that the checksum is not correct for the key you entered. We already know that is the case because the key contains invalid characters. This does not necessarily mean the checksum contains errors - the checksum may very well be the correct checksum for the correct key and will validate just fine once you sort the other errors.

Appreciate your suggestions and advice.

Use btcrecover as I suggested above. If you are struggling with this, then your only option would be to ask a third party wallet recovery service to run it for you. I'd be happy to give it a shot as well, but this will necessitate you sharing your incorrect private key with either the wallet recovery service or myself.

Thanks for response and suggestions. I appreciate it.

Unfortunately, the seller has never disclosed to me the address of my purchase hence I don’t have any clue as to what I own or I need to take into consideration before engaging third party wallet recovery. Though it is prophesied that ‘Your private key - your bitcoins” - in my case I was in the impression that I can trust the seller because it was purchased with escrow as PayPal.

Currently after recovering the key, I feel that the seller has taken advantage of my trust and executed his stealth scamming game by advising me to store the private keys at a secret or safe place and to delete the email.

Little did I ever realize that I am scammed until recently when I started analyzing the private key and opened a can of worms which is spread on my table.

Once again , thanks for your response and wish you and your family a very very happy new year 2023.