Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Re: Bitcoin private key missing a character help!
by
lostkey606
on 01/01/2018, 12:18:41 UTC
Hi all,

I saw an older post and someone had the same problem like mine. Basically I set up a paper wallet and wrote down the private key, now I've missed out a character I used bitaddress.org. Private Key WIF Compressed 52 characters base58, my key starts with a K. Now I thought that I only missed out a character, but I ran a script and got 3162 combinations that gave an extra character inputted them into blockchain and none worked.
So now I am missing a character and somewhere along the line I have made a very small error (that could be accidentally making one of letters caps instead of noncap, looking at my key there could be maximum possibility of 6 characters that could be noncap or cap that is worst case scenario) I'm pretty sure that 90% of this key is correct as I skimmed through it after writing it down also my bitcoin address is correct. If there is a way of working out the key based on my partial private key and my bitcoin address that would be great. I want to try another 3162 combinations is there a way of automatically checking these keys instead of copying and pasting into blockchain? If the key is found a reward will be given. Thanks for the help.

Do you have a QR code printed on your paper wallet or did you write it down manually?
This tool can help finding the typo in the key automatically: https://github.com/hexafraction/wif-repair.

Silly me I don't have a printer, I should have taken a photo of the code on my phone. But I was being too cautious and wanted to write it down and not have it anywhere else.
Thanks for that tool I'll check it out.