Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Re: Imported private key into my wallet but my Bitcoins did not show up!!
by
theonewhowaskazu
on 07/03/2014, 05:52:52 UTC


Yes you assume correctly. Your wallet will never "delete bitcoins" (i.e, delete your password that gives you access to the bitcoins) unless you explicitly tell it to. Still, its generally a good idea to take a backup of your wallet once you finish importing your key.

There is 0.04240537 BTC in the address you provided, or about $28 worth. So long as you have the private key for that address, your Bitcoins are safe, so don't worry about that.

Here are some reasons why your BTC wouldn't be showing up in your wallet:

(1) You haven't finished synching with the blockchain. Are you using the Bitcoin-QT client? If so, does it say "synching" when you open it (and display a box saying X days/weeks remaining on the bottom of the window)?

(2) You haven't imported the private key correctly. Just try again.

(3) You need to -rescan the block chain (this is the process where your Bitcoin client re-checks for transactions to your address).



Thanks a lot, I do have the private key......But I have a question about the Rescan.....How do I execute a rescan?

Do I have to do it from the Debug Command, as if I were importing or dumping the private key?

What is the steps for doing the rescan?

Ok I'm gonna be honest right now: I've never actually ran Bitcoin-QT on a windows system (I run bitcoind on my servers, though), so I don't know exactly how to do it. (I use Electrum for my wallet on my personal computer, which doesn't ever need to rescan). I THINK this is the way you'd do it:

(1) Find the directory your Bitcoin QT is installed to (ex: C:\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin)

(2) Open up cmd.exe (command prompt) and type in cd (ex: cd  C:\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin)

(3) type in bitcoin-qt.exe -rescan

And then let it run. Not 100% sure that'll work though, so don't quote me on it.

Also for future use I've gotta recommend electrum especially for those not hugely into running a full bitcoin node all the time. Its WAY lighter weight and doesn't run into these kinds of complications.