[READ] Trying to recover bitcoin? Read this

Due to the recent torrent of people asking how to recover lost bitcoins, I present -

How to recover bitcoins from lost or corrupted wallet.dat

Table of Contents

1. Did you buy or download the wallet from the internet?
2. If you have a real wallet.dat file that you created
3. Where is your wallet file located?
4. My wallet file is corrupted. Help!
5. I forgot my wallet password or seed phrase. Help!
6. Recover wallet files from corrupted or formatted disks
7. If all else fails...

So, you have a wallet file you created or maybe you got from somewhere and you're trying to extract private keys from it. Keep reading because this topic will show you how to extract the private keys from real wallets, and steer you clear from bogus wallets that are sold on the darknet with no real private keys and may even be loaded with malware. You won't believe how easy it is to forge a fake wallet!

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1. Did you buy or download the wallet from the internet?

Then I advise you to please stop and read this. almost all wallet files sold online are counterfeits. Wallet.dat files are literally just databases-on-a-file with tables for private keys, metadata and addresses and some other fields. Attempting to recover bitcoin from these is a waste of time because the "encrypted private keys" inside the wallet file may actually be just random numbers passed through an encryption function!

With the current bitcoin price skyrocketing to $41K, so has the number of scams involving wallet.dat files. Please stay safe. People claiming to sell you wallet files may actually send you a compressed (zip) or RAR file that has malicious programs that steal private keys from your wallet software instead. So again, please save your money. It's just not worth it for getting lost bitcoins which nobody has been able to retrieve before in history.

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2. If you have a real wallet.dat file that you created

Then read the excellent guide written by LoyceV: Recover Bitcoin from any old storage format. It describes the format of the private keys you need to extract, the names of the wallet.dat files for different programs, how seed phrases work, and other important concepts you need to know before you start recovering your wallet.

When you finish reading that post, read on.

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3. Where is your wallet file located?

Each wallet software stores their wallet files in a different location. Here are the locations for where wallet software creates wallets by default, and what they name them

Bitcoin Core:

- Wallets are located at C:\Users\<YOUR USERNAME>\.bitcoin\wallets on Windows, /Users/<YOUR USERNAME>/.bitcoin/wallets on MacOS, and /home/<YOUR USERNAME>/.bitcoin/wallets , Each subfolder in the wallets/folder represents a wallet you have created. In each of these sub folders there is a single wallet.dat file in each of them. The wallet.dat file in the .bitcoin/wallets folder is the wallet for [default wallet].

Electrum:

- Wallets are located at C:\Users\<YOUR USERNAME>\.electrum\wallets on Windows, /Users/<YOUR USERNAME>/.electrum/wallets on MacOS, and /home/<YOUR USERNAME>/.electrum/wallets on Linux. Your wallets files are all files located in that folder. They have no file extension and if you don't remember giving your wallet a name, look for a file called default_wallet. That is the name of the default wallet in Electrum.

Multibit:

According to https://github.com/Multibit-Legacy/read-multibit-wallet-file:

Quote

Locating your wallet file

Mac OS
Version   Wallet file location
Multibit Classic   ~/Library/Application Support/MultiBit/*.wallet
MultibitHD   ~/Library/Application Support/MultiBitHD/<wallet-id>/mbhd.wallet.aes

Windows
Version   Wallet file location
Multibit Classic   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\MultiBit\<wallet-name>.wallet
MultibitHD   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\MultiBitHD\<wallet-id>\mbhd.wallet.aes

<wallet-id> is a very long, random directory name that acts as a globally unique identifier for a wallet. It is starts with mbhd- followed by a long string of letters, numbers and dashes. You will have one directory like this for each wallet.

<wallet-name> is the name that you gave the wallet when you created it. You will have a ``.wallet file for each wallet.

<username> is your windows user name.

Armory:

Read the github page Bitcoin: Migrate away from Armory Wallet for instructions on how to get the Root Key for your Armory wallet and use it to extract all of your private keys.

Mycelium

Mycelium uses a standard BIP39 seed phrase to create your wallet file, stored internally on your phone or tablet. On Mycelium iOS, go to Settings > Back Up and then write down the seed phrase it displays on the screen. On Mycelium Android click on the top right 3 dots > Backup to access this screen.

Once you have the seed phrase, you can create a new Electrum wallet and import this seed phrase into it.

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4. My wallet file is corrupted. Help!

WARNING: After you recover your bitcoins, move them to a different address. These recovery tools store your private keys in plain-text in various locations on the hard disk or memory, which allows anyone to steal your recovered bitcoins. Disconnect your computer from the internet during recovery if possible.

Pywallet is the swiss army knife for recovering private keys from corrupted wallets. Install Python, download the GitHub repository, extract it from the zip file if necessary, and then run:

Code:

./pywallet --dumpwallet

If your wallet is encrypted and you remember the passphrase, run:

Code:

./pywallet --dumpwallet --password="Your password"

This will output your private keys to the command-line terminal.

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5. I forgot my wallet password or seed phrase. Help!

This section assumes you have the wallet file. If not, skip to the next section.

First of all, if you have a wallet that supports seed phrases and you only forgot the password, then you can create a new wallet and restore from the seed phrase.

If you forgot the password and the seed phrase, then unfortunately, all bets are off. You need one of these to recover your bitcoins.

If you have only forgotten a word or two of your seed phrase, or you forgot the order of two or three or a similar small number of words, or even if you forgot a few characters of your password, use btcrecover to recover your bitcoins. Go to https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md for instructions for seed phrase recovery, and go to https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover/blob/master/TUTORIAL.md#btcrecover-tutorial for instructions on how to recover your password.

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6. Recover wallet files from corrupted or formatted disks

A fellow forum user shared their experience of recovering bitcoins from their damaged partition, which you can read here: how I rescued my wallet.dat. Please note that the more data you have written to the drive after it was formatted, the less likely this method will succeed.

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7. If all else fails...

...and you have the wallet file and remember part of your password or seed phrase, you can contact Dave of walletrecoveryservices and ask him to help you to recover your password or seed phrase. Dave has been in this business since 2013 and is the only recognized wallet recovery service by the bitcointalk community, and he has a way of recovering your password/seed phrase without you sending him the entire wallet file. This means it's impossible for private keys to be intercepted and stolen.

Self-moderated against spam

Please use this thread for asking details on how to recover your wallet, seeds or private keys or suggestions/critique/corrections/improvement to the OP.

I'd prefer if newbies use this thread for asking about wallet recovery since there are some other wallet software I couldn't find information about.