Electrum doesn't see/recognize a certain wallet private key

[shlomogold]

There's a private key found on the internets to a wallet that was supposedly Satoshi's 50 btc.
I guess somebody cracked it somehow, got the fifty and let people know the private afterwards.
When I enter that private key to my Electrum wallet I see nothing.
There's no history even though you can see its transactions on blockchain.
Looks like Electrum deliberately blocking this particular key. Why?

The key: 5KGLRScL6BqRkWnB8kTtoJmj21GT2W4KHpHJ2AA6vewuqM3tFVM
Tte address: 1NChfewU45oy7Dgn51HwkBFSixaTnyakfj

[1714495565]

1714495565

[1714495565]

1714495565

[1714495565]

1714495565

[Charles-Tim]

Addresses were not paid to in the past. Instead, public keys are used for making transaction is the reason.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The transaction which paid 50 BTC to that address did not pay that address at all. Rather, it paid the public key associated with that address, as Charles-Tim has pointed out. Most wallets and block explorers will therefore not show the transaction or not show it correctly, although some do.

The private key 5KGLRScL6BqRkWnB8kTtoJmj21GT2W4KHpHJ2AA6vewuqM3tFVM gives the following uncompressed public key:

Code:

044e01f16fe203dbfd8110fd636f42e69bd2fa9e0fef913f00554e4412cb1cae070296f95c6b64f3fdcb7ee9dc838f20b992077e839703b3c2c5427e90e5afd0d1

That uncompressed public key gives the address you have shared.

Let's look up the transaction which looks like it pays that address 50 BTC: https://mempool.space/tx/4ff149267a5b1e55e3d90a5a5b451dd6d3c2c82b26b96a599dda0ed5585f1f3d

If you click on "Details", you'll see that the locking script is simply OP_PUSHBYTES_65 PublicKey OP_CHECKSIG, and the transaction type is P2PK (pay to public key).

And so, because this is a P2PK transaction paying a public key, and not a P2PKH transaction paying an address, Electrum will not display it. It will however show up on some block explorers, for example here: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/1NChfewU45oy7Dgn51HwkBFSixaTnyakfj

[pooya87]

I guess somebody cracked it somehow, got the fifty and let people know the private afterwards.

Wrong.
There was a miner who has been mining in early days and at some point in 2011 they decided to consolidate all their block rewards into one output which they continued to mix/spend from over time. The only reason why that private key (of the already empty address) is known today is most probably because the real owner sold it later on to a shady person on the internet who wanted to pull some sort of scam or possibly used it to claim some shitcoin (like CLAM or something like that) and it got leaked.

[nc50lc]

Looks like Electrum deliberately blocking this particular key. Why?

Import it to non-descriptor Bitcoin Core wallet instead and those P2PK transactions should be scanned without issues.
That's if you're already running a full node or want to set-up one for that purpose.