Could you try to avoid such "walls of text", it's painful to read. Please, space out your thoughts. You want to make it as easy and pleasant as possible for those willing to help you. Just a friendly hint...
I bought it from Swan, bought a Trezor, moved it to Samourai and THOUGHT I moved it into cold storage. Then forgot about it and have let it sit. To be honest, I'm trying to trace back my steps from when I did this a few years ago, and things haven't been adding up.
Could you explain, why you moved your coins to Samourai when you already had a Trezor hardware wallet? Not sure if it's important but frankly I don't understand this intermediate step.
I'm not going to discuss semantics but what do you think is "cold storage"?
I would suggest to you that you document steps thoroughly, especially if you're not sure if you understand everything properly what you do with wallets and coins.
My only logical conclusion is that I generated an address not from my trezor wallet and that's why it's not in there. I've been trying to answer the question: Where is the btc that I thought I moved into cold storage?
How exactly did you check that your coins aren't in your Trezor wallet? (I will come to this later again.)
I assume now that with "cold storage" you mean your Trezor wallet. Is this assumption correct?
Going through the steps that I SHOULD have taken, would mean that when I attach my device to the suite, it should show what's in the wallet.
I haven't used my PiTrezor (behaves like a Trezor One) with Trezor Suite for quite some time, so frankly I forgot if it's actually necessary to connect the Trezor hardware to view a balance of the wallet. I would need to test this when I find the time.
As Trezor Suite already knows the Master Public Key of the Trezor wallet, it's technically not needed to have the hardware wallet connected to get the wallet's balance, but as said above, I forgot how Trezor Suite actually behaves.
Maybe more current Trezor users can chime in?
By the way, which Trezor hardware wallet do you have, if I may ask? It should be safe for you to answer this question.
Unfortunately it only shows three private keys with 0 btc total.
As khaled0111 said, I don't think you can display private keys of your Trezor hardware wallet, because private keys are not supposed to leave the device (Ledger, are you listening?).
I did a factory reset on the trezor device and then put in my wallet seed, and still nothing showed up. It recovered an empty wallet . When I connect the device it always asks for a passphrase, but I don't have one written down so I'm thinking that one wasn't set.
Don't get me wrong if I'm nitpicking but with some steps we have to be as accurate as possible.
Why did you do a factory reset of the Trezor device? It doesn't hurt, as long as you're sure you can recover your device wallet properly, but I'd like to understand what you wanted to achieve with this step. I have a feeling that many new wallet users aren't really experienced with wallet recovery, I guess very few practise this extensively before they load their wallet with valuable coins.
Can I assume that with "wallet seed" you mean the mnemonic recovery words of your Trezor wallet? Just to be sure, we're still on the same page...
You didn't change anything with your Trezor Suite, did you? This is important, please answer!
I assume you didn't change the wallet in Trezor Suite which is for the software part a watch-only wallet, the private keys to sign transactions are in the Trezor device.
Normally you set a protective access PIN or password/passphrase to unlock your Trezor device. Are you talking of this unlock secret?
Or does Trezor Suite asks you for the mnemonic passphrase which is an extension of the mnemonic recovery words?
Don't delete your Trezor Suite wallet as long this isn't sorted out. Make backups to be safe.
I would need to verify this with my PiTrezor, but it could take quite some time until I can actually do it. So maybe other current Trezor users can chime in again here.
IF Trezor Suite wallet has some sort of flag that an optional mnemonic passphrase extension has been used, then it knows it should ask for it. If none has been used, it makes no sense to ask the user to provide one (unless it's an option in Trezor Suite's settings).
You should know that any unique optional mnemonic passphrase generates a completely unique wallet. IF you have used a mnemonic passphrase and can't enter it exactly as you may have in the past, you will always get an empty wallet with any false mnemonic passphrase. BIG mistake to not write such an optional mnemonic passphrase physically on paper (multiple backups recommended, safe storage imperative).
The address starts with bc1q. I do not remember how I requested a receiving address. Potentially in Samourai. I've since recovered the Samourai wallet and there's nothing in there,
OK, so that's native Segwit addresses which also gives us the standard derivation path for this address type that Trezor uses.
If you wanted your coins to go to "cold storage" in your thinking (equals Trezor device wallet likely), why then potentially in Samourai, that makes no sense. Not judging...
I'm thinking now that I SHOULD HAVE generated a receiving address in the suite, right?
If you wanted your coins to be controlled by your Trezor device wallet, then YES.
I very well may have done it on a random key generator website and wrote down the private key. Not sure what else to think. It's still there at the address I sent it to three years ago. Just sitting inaccessible
Now that's a plot twist. When I read this part, some shivers went up and down my spine. If this were true, I'm a bit surprised your coins are still where they are.
If you ask yourself, why: never generate private keys on an online website! NEVER, period! You can't know how truely random those keys are, you don't know what this website logs. In any case, big no-go, again: never do this for real coins with value!
Are you potentially speakting of some online website that generates random Bitcoin private keys along with their public address (the intermediate public key is rarely needed). Why do you think this could've happened? Do you remember having thought about such steps? Well, you would've written down one or more private keys. Can you find that written evidence?
I'm sorry to be frank, but this is all quite messy. It's going to be tough to come close to some solution. Let's hope for the best.
Anyway, there could still be other reasons why your so far recovered wallets are empty. Sorry, but this post got really long with a lot of questions and I believe some important ones. Please, try your best to answer as many as possible, if not all.