REALLY NEED YOUR HELP! Bitcoins disappeared!

[kashish948]

Hi

I sent 0.06849 to 1A5iCBMXPJF7esUssyaaeLpTocoyW2EK6n. At this time my client, bitcoin core was syncing and was 4 hours behind.

I entered the password and everything was good. My balance deducted. But I couldn't see it under the "transactions" tab. And the syncing got stuck at 4 hours.

So, I restarted the client and now its synced, my balance deducted but nothing shows up in the transactions or the blockchain. As if the bicoins were never sent but my balance has gone down by exactly 0.06849 BTC.

Im trying to -rescan but i dont think im doing it correctly. The console gives me "Method not found (code -32601)". What am i doing wrong here?

PLEASE HELP ME.

[kashish948]

I would at least try to -rescan successfully before panicking. Can someone guide me with that please?

[Mr.burns]

Please post the TX id.

[shorena]

I would at least try to -rescan successfully before panicking. Can someone guide me with that please?

You do not -rescan from console, but you launch bitcoin core with it.

In any case shut down any running bitcoin-core first.

in Windows you hit Win + R, enter c:\program files\bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe -rescan and hit ok.
for Linux you open a terminal, enter bitcoin-qt -rescan and hit enter.
I assume MacOS will work similar to Linux.

[kashish948]

Please post the TX id.

Can't because it isn't showing under the "transactions" tab.

[kashish948]

I would at least try to -rescan successfully before panicking. Can someone guide me with that please?

You do not -rescan from console, but you launch bitcoin core with it.

In any case shut down any running bitcoin-core first.

in Windows you hit Win + R, enter c:\program files\bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe -rescan and hit ok.
for Linux you open a terminal, enter bitcoin-qt -rescan and hit enter.
I assume MacOS will work similar to Linux.

Thanks! Trying now.

[shorena]

Please post the TX id.

Can't because it isn't showing under the "transactions" tab.

Its probably lost in limbo. If the client that initially broadcasted it forgot about it and the blockchain explorers did not pick it up, its very likely that only a very few clients even know about this TX.

[kashish948]

re-scan didnot work! now im panicking!!! pleeaseee help. any suggestions?

[zedicus]

Please post the TX id.

Can't because it isn't showing under the "transactions" tab.

Its probably lost in limbo. If the client that initially broadcasted it forgot about it and the blockchain explorers did not pick it up, its very likely that only a very few clients even know about this TX.

It is not possible for a TX to be "lost in limbo" for any amount of time. An input is always either spent or unspent. If an unspent input is part of an unconfirmed TX that has been accepted by the nodes then for all intensive purposes it is "spent pending confirmation" however if the TX does not confirm after 24 hours then the input will again be spendable.

[bigasic]

Yea, chill for the moment. a year or so ago, I "lost" a transaction, I just figured it would eventually work itself out. it took about a week, but it did... So, give it a couple days before freaking out..

[shorena]

-snip-
It is not possible for a TX to be "lost in limbo" for any amount of time.

The input no, the actual TX yes.

An input is always either spent or unspent. If an unspent input is part of an unconfirmed TX that has been accepted by the nodes then for all intensive purposes it is "spent pending confirmation"

While this is true if it is known to all the nodes, a TX may not be known to all nodes. The one in question does not show on blockchain.info [1], blockr [2] nor on blockexplorer [3] which makes me think that very few nodes know about it. While the explorers are not important I also think the miningnodes do not know about it, thus it would be impossible to confirm.

however if the TX does not confirm after 24 hours then the input will again be spendable.

Not if the client you are using "forget" it still can spend the input. Since the -rescan did not work, OPs bitcoin-core still has no idea it is actually able to spend the input of the missing TX.

Yea, chill for the moment. a year or so ago, I "lost" a transaction, I just figured it would eventually work itself out. it took about a week, but it did... So, give it a couple days before freaking out..

But it was well propagated, wasnt it? It would not advice panicking either, but I also think that just waiting is not enough.

re-scan didnot work! now im panicking!!! pleeaseee help. any suggestions?

I have read in the past that sometimes once is not enough. As I wrote above I dont think waiting is the way to go in your case. I personally would try at least one more -rescan because it does not take that much time. If that fails the next thing I would do is to launch with -reindex. This will take more time as you are rebuilding the data in the chainstate folder, which holds the information about your unspend outputs (see [4]).


[1] https://blockchain.info/address/1A5iCBMXPJF7esUssyaaeLpTocoyW2EK6n
[2] http://btc.blockr.io/address/info/1A5iCBMXPJF7esUssyaaeLpTocoyW2EK6n
[3] https://blockexplorer.com/address/1A5iCBMXPJF7esUssyaaeLpTocoyW2EK6n
[4] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory

[ajareselde]

Yea, chill for the moment. a year or so ago, I "lost" a transaction, I just figured it would eventually work itself out. it took about a week, but it did... So, give it a couple days before freaking out..

Agree, i myself also had a few lost transactions that didnt appear on blockchain.
Didnt take me long time to go into panic mode, since even after re-downloading blockchain problem preserved.
In the end everything showed up and was fixed, so just dont panic

[DannyHamilton]

In the console, enter:

Code:

listunspent

Find the output with the smallest number of confirmations.

The "txid" from that output is most likely the most recently sent transaction from the wallet.

Take a look at that txid in a block explorer such as blockchain.info or blockr.io and see if it is the transaction you think you are missing.

[kashish948]

ok. did -rescan a couple of times. no use

so then i did a -reindex.  still the transaction isn't showing in the console.

[kashish948]

In the console, enter:

Code:

listunspent

Find the output with the smallest number of confirmations.

The "txid" from that output is most likely the most recently sent transaction from the wallet.

Take a look at that txid in a block explorer such as blockchain.info or blockr.io and see if it is the transaction you think you are missing.

It is 30ce2396215644e2ccaa845087b9b81b151a287ff821946dc8c427fca765f1dd with 447 confirms. Not the one Im looking for

PLEASE HELP ME SOMEONE! This would really shackle my trust on the Bitcoin software! How can my BTC just vanish!!! 

[kashish948]

ok so i added up the "final balance" of all my addresses and it is: 5.18434533 BTC but my wallet shows 5.9340246 BTC available balance instead of what it should be at 6.0025246 BTC

[kashish948]

Any help? Please!!!!

[bigasic]

I had 5 coins go missing from mutlibit a few months ago, I was doing a lot of transactions and I figured It was my error somewhere, then I looked into it and figured that I was missing exactly 5 coins. I reloaded the blockchain on multibit, or whatever they call it, and walla, it showed up. 5 coins i wasn't counting on showed up..

what wallet are you using? if it QT, then there has to be a re sync or something..

Something is up with your wallet. do this.. take your public wallets over to blockchain.info and add them as watch only see what you add up there. if you have to, take your private keys over and sweep them.. thats what i would do if i did all that i could, but try to reload the entire blockchain or re sync it.. (thats how I actually figured out i was missing 5 coins)

[HardForkComing]

Try sending your entire balance to 2nd address, exchange or any other wallet.
Do a rescan, move funds back, do a rescan again, if nothing appeared in first place.
Had the same issue. That little "trick" helped me.

Good luck! :-)

[Razick]

EDIT: Nevermind, this won't do you any good. You need to export your private keys and import them into a new wallet.

The good news is it sounds like they aren't lost just not showing up. If all else fails you could delete the blockchain files and re-sync, but make sure that you do not delete wallet.dat for obvious reasons.