A piece of advice from Satoshi that you shouldn’t ignore

[Ahli38]

Satoshi once advised against deleting a wallet for any reason. And he also suggested keeping or even copying the keys just in case. I personally think that Satoshi believed that a wallet you no longer use might be needed at some point in the future. Perhaps Satoshi was very serious in making that suggestion. And I’m sure he didn’t want anything bad to happen to someone who had deleted their wallet, where it could lead to disappointment. Satoshi’s message shouldn’t be taken lightly by anyone because you never know what the future holds so you need to follow his advice. I found myself pondering for a moment when I read Satoshi’s message. And I think Satoshi’s words carry a lot of meaning if you think about them further. But he made his words so simple by just a few words. I’m sure Satoshi is someone with cognitive efficiency which is why he’s able to make complex things seem simple. And that’s just like the idea or even the vision behind Bitcoin which he created with the goal of making things easier for everyone even though there are complex technical aspects behind it.

(Source)

I’d like to know, do you also realize that this advice is very important to know or even to always follow?

[Upgrade00]

You could just share the advise from satoshi without a lot of the fillers you used in the text. It is valid recommendation, almost everything satoshi had to say is, and cannot be over emphasized

It costs nothing to keep a wallet you no longer need which is permanently on the network.

[Pumpsta]

 There's soooo much info from him with deeper meaning than simply "never delete a wallet" (though if u look through his messages they sound pretty straightforward, idk if he meant any of them to have a deeper meaning)

[Catenaccio]

(Source)

Why don't you quote the post of satoshi?
I see quoting his post is better than attaching a screenshot of his post, especially you know exactly the post is and add it to the source.

I’d like to know, do you also realize that this advice is very important to know or even to always follow?

I let my old wallets on my computer, and that's simple like this. I even did not open and check my old wallets but possibly I will do that in the future. Who knows a big gift from someone sent to me, but is it the purpose of "never delete your wallets" advised by Satoshi Nakamoto?

I don't know.
I feel like if someone mistakenly sent my bitcoins, I have responsibility to send these coins back to the sender. Exception is if someone donated it to me, and I knew that from a signed message or Coinbase message but chance for that is zero with me. It is more possible for Bitcoin developers, not a person like me.

[YOSHIE]

I’d like to know, do you also realize that this advice is very important to know or even to always follow?

I often read about the advice that Satoshi said, for me this advice makes sense if we have Bitcoin assets in a crypto wallet (wallet), yes keeping everything related to the wallet is normal.

But if the reason is, as Satoshi Nakamoto said.

Satoshi Nakamoto recommends never deleting a crypto wallet to prevent permanent loss of funds if future transactions are accidentally sent to that address.

Satoshi explained that the Bitcoin address you have created may receive another transfer of funds at a later date, either due to someone else's accident or an automated system. If you delete your wallet and private key, and someone sends Bitcoin to your old address, those coins will be locked forever in the blockchain and can never be retrieved.

I think, that rarely happens although there is a risk of a stray transaction in the future, I think the ratio is 1000/1, however, There is nothing wrong if we save or copy everything related to Crypto wallets, who knows what we never thought would happen, Satoshi's advice is good for anticipation in the future.

[PostQuantumBTC]

There is someone that is very close to me that someone sent USDT to, he later did not use the wallet to be receiving cryptocurrencies so he deleted it. After many months have passed the person sent USDT to the same address and called him that he sent USDT to the address.

The person that sent the USDT was at fault but if he has not deleted the wallet, he would have still helped the person to recover the coin.

When he told me about this and he posted about it on this forum without seeing any solution, I know that I should not delete any wallet unless I have not sent any coins to the wallet and I have not given the wallet address to anyone.

[Cookdata]

Satoshi once advised against deleting a wallet for any reason. And he also suggested keeping or even copying the keys just in case. I personally think that Satoshi believed that a wallet you no longer use might be needed at some point in the future. Perhaps Satoshi was very serious in making that suggestion. And I’m sure he didn’t want anything bad to happen to someone who had deleted their wallet, where it could lead to disappointment.

I don't think there is deeper meaning to what he said, it's a word of caution for wallet in the future where you may found it useful. For example, there are many Bitcoin fork coins where private keys is needed to claim coins on fork chain, when they spend their original Bitcoin, they don't bother about the wallet and private keys when they can claim free coins, free money or convert to back to Bitcoin.

Some people randomly donate Bitcoin to address when they see contributions of work they found valuable, even till  now some people still donate to some address. Imagine having multiple donations to address without private keys, you have wasted the Bitcoin and the effort of people that donated.

[Fiatless]

But if the reason is, as Satoshi Nakamoto said.

Satoshi Nakamoto recommends never deleting a crypto wallet to prevent permanent loss of funds if future transactions are accidentally sent to that address.

Satoshi explained that the Bitcoin address you have created may receive another transfer of funds at a later date, either due to someone else's accident or an automated system. If you delete your wallet and private key, and someone sends Bitcoin to your old address, those coins will be locked forever in the blockchain and can never be retrieved.

I think, that rarely happens although there is a risk of a stray transaction in the future, I think the ratio is 1000/1, however, There is nothing wrong if we save or copy everything related to Crypto wallets, who knows what we never thought would happen, Satoshi's advice is good for anticipation in the future.

It happens. I know someone who complained that he lost some money because someone sent money to a compromised wallet. It would have been better to delete such a wallet to avoid sending its address by mistake.

Satoshi's advice is valid, but I might have to delete a wallet that has been compromised.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

Yea, there's no need to actually delete an old wallet without keeping the keys backed up somewhere. A situation might arise in the future where you might want to sign a message to prove that the address actually belongs to you, if you can not sign the message, then there might not be an alternative way to prove that you owned the wallet. So, this advice is very important to adhere to. My old wallet that I lost, I didn't intentionally delete it but Iost the jotter that I wrote down the key, else I don't delete old address.

[bitbollo]

no one mentioned, but around 2015/2016 there was an airdrop to holder of bitcoin/doge/ltc in a specific timeframe (and holder on chain!)
this was providing a new coin called "clam". with an interesting evaluation (despite it was just another shitcoin).
imagine an empty wallet become worthing few thousands of satoshi
after this event I think there is a proof as real world evidence about this good habit

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

no one mentioned, but around 2015/2016 there was an airdrop to holder of bitcoin/doge/ltc in a specific timeframe (and holder on chain!)
this was providing a new coin called "clam". with an interesting evaluation (despite it was just another shitcoin).
imagine an empty wallet become worthing few thousands of satoshi
after this event I think there is a proof as real world evidence about this good habit

These coins knew that they can use Bitcoin to shill their shitcoins. Through airdrop for Bitcoin holders, it's kind of how they shilled their shitcoins directly to Bitcoin community, not only Bitcoin holders.

Dogecoin, Litecoin, CLAM used to be top coins, and there were more top coins than these three coins but most of past top coins died or fell out of top positions after years and cycles.

The cryptocurrency market cap snapshots over years show that.
https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/

[Hatchy]

Some people randomly donate Bitcoin to address when they see contributions of work they found valuable, even till  now some people still donate to some address. Imagine having multiple donations to address without private keys, you have wasted the Bitcoin and the effort of people that donated.

The most interesting part is that with new forks, whether now or in the future, those shitcoins are basically going to be sitting there under the old private keys, as long as you still have those keys and haven't disposed of them. I had a wallet that I no longer needed recently, but I still kept a few copies of its keys stored safely elsewhere. My thinking was that I might accidentally send coins to that wallet in the future, or someone else might send something there, so having access to the keys could still be useful. I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping old keys safely stored. You can have a separate place where you keep backups of old wallets and their keys, just in case you ever need them again in the future. You may never use them, but there's little to no reason to destroy the backup as long as it's stored securely.

[Catenaccio]

The most interesting part is that with new forks, whether now or in the future, those shitcoins are basically going to be sitting there under the old private keys, as long as you still have those keys and haven't disposed of them. I had a wallet that I no longer needed recently, but I still kept a few copies of its keys stored safely elsewhere. My thinking was that I might accidentally send coins to that wallet in the future, or someone else might send something there, so having access to the keys could still be useful. I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping old keys safely stored. You can have a separate place where you keep backups of old wallets and their keys, just in case you ever need them again in the future. You may never use them, but there's little to no reason to destroy the backup as long as it's stored securely.

Satoshi Nakamoto only posted that and never explained why as well as purposes of that action.

We only can guess some reasons like: your mistake to fund those old wallets, someone sent coins to these wallets, donated to those wallets, or purpose of claiming forks in the future.

Yeah there are many possible things to do and because keeping old wallet files don't harm anything, these files don't consume too much storage space, so between deletion and saving these old wallets, I choose to save my old wallets.

If you have many wallets, they can be decoy wallets too.
Can duress (decoy) Bitcoin wallets stop physical attacks?

[Mpamaegbu]

I often read about the advice that Satoshi said, for me this advice makes sense if we have Bitcoin assets in a crypto wallet (wallet), yes keeping everything related to the wallet is normal.

Even if we don't have any asset left in the wallet, one never knows if someday there could be tokens airdropped to that address in future for having held cryptos at some point. This industry is a crazy place. Nobody can say for certain what can happen next.

I think, that rarely happens although there is a risk of a stray transaction in the future, I think the ratio is 1000/1, however, There is nothing wrong if we save or copy everything related to Crypto wallets, who knows what we never thought would happen, Satoshi's advice is good for anticipation in the future.

Yeah it rarely happens this day. Maybe in the past, we had cases like that because a lot of users weren't extremely careful while transacting. As for me, I once hallucinated receiving such mystery transfers that never happened till date.

On the deletion thing, I do delete wallet apps on my device to create memory space but I try as much as I can to keep my seedphrases.

[Bigjoe33]

There is someone that is very close to me that someone sent USDT to, he later did not use the wallet to be receiving cryptocurrencies so he deleted it. After many months have passed the person sent USDT to the same address and called him that he sent USDT to the address.

The person that sent the USDT was at fault but if he has not deleted the wallet, he would have still helped the person to recover the coin.

When he told me about this and he posted about it on this forum without seeing any solution, I know that I should not delete any wallet unless I have not sent any coins to the wallet and I have not given the wallet address to anyone.

This is purely a case of great mistake, which of course happens sometimes in life. You don't intend to, but it just happens sometimes, and that's why the advice never to delete a wallet you have used for transactions before is legit and very important. Just imagine that case now, who loses? Will the friend let go of the coins and resend?,, or will he assume he has sent and thats just it, and he should go and sort himself since he didn't publicly or privately inform him that he had deleted the wallet? Who takes more blames?

Except for the case of a compromised wallet, it's just better to let it. It wouldn't cost you heavens to save and keep the wallet and keys somewhere else and safe. If that was the case, he would have just retrieve the coins peacefully. It's far better to keep. No one knows tomorrow.

[abel1337]

Satoshi advise is very valid. There should be no reason to delete a seed phrase if a wallet is inactive, we can get a lucky opportunities from those wallets. I learned myself the hard way.

I remembered before when I used to do daily transaction on my wallet (not exactly bitcoin but on the other chain) but I decided to use other wallet as my main wallet and transfer all the funds into the new wallet and deleted the copy of my seed phrase and removed the wallet on my PC. I missed one opportunity of getting a random big airdrop from a token, and one of the qualification of the airdrop users is to have a good amount of trading volume transaction. I missed that airdrop because I deleted the seed phrase which is very unfortunate. I regret my decision at that time. It's kinda frustrating.

[buwaytress]

The only wallets I ever delete are non-Bitcoin. Still keep my original one even if I don't use it any longer, also serves as a useful identifier if ever needed (that's also an under-used tool, signing from an old wallet).

Didn't realise satoshi said it but I will never recover the alt wallets I cleared in a spring cleaning circa 2019...

[Faisal2202]

There's soooo much info from him with deeper meaning than simply "never delete a wallet" (though if u look through his messages they sound pretty straightforward, idk if he meant any of them to have a deeper meaning)

Don't overthink, read that post made by Satoshi and theymos, because the context of the whole thread is important. They are discussing an issue about 0/unconfirmed txs, so in short AFAIK, the problem was that some txs were based on earlier txs that the network no longer had available there.

So in response to this Satoshi said we should never delete our wallet. Also, this is not mainly for all wallets like TW, or any other similar wallet, back then you had to secure the wallet.dat file, key alone was not enough like these days. Not with BTC Core, but with Electrum or other similar wallets, you only have to secure the keys and seed phrase for recovery options.

[Alvin_talk]

I’d like to know, do you also realize that this advice is very important to know or even to always follow?

I don't think this advice is so important today considering that we are in the era of hierarchical deterministic wallets (HD wallets). I think so long as you back up your seed phrase you are safe.

Old wallets do not operate exactly the same way as todays wallets. In the old form, a wallet automatically generates 100 private keys which are used to receive coins and change and once these keys are almost exhausted, the wallet automatically generates another set of private keys. Backup can become outdated in the old model because even if you backed up your wallet.dat file, how will you back up the new keys that will be generated when the first 100 are exhausted? That is why he advised users not to delete their wallets.

HD wallets solve this problem by introducing the concept of master seed (12/24 words seed phrase) which is the source of all your keys. Therefore, when you have a backup of your seed phrase, a deleted wallet should not be as risky as Satoshi era wallet since it can be recovered with the seed phrase.

[Creeper0]

Sometimes unnecessary things can also become necessary. Only time will tell, nothing is unnecessary in life. I have seen this proven more than once in real life, I have not yet encountered such a real experience in the case of wallets.

The depth of the advice of a talented person like Satoshi is immense and the importance of his advice is also immense. There can be many reasons behind the advice not to delete the wallet. Since creating a new wallet and saving the old wallet is completely free, it is better not to delete our wallet. We do not have any loss or any complications for this.