Hi there,
Can anybody explain what is meant by bitcoins found in old format wallet and examples of their public keys/private keys. Thanks.
I think it means Bitcoin stored in an old format wallet where old format wallet refers to a legacy or non-segwit format. An example of public key of the old fromat wallet is an address string that might be start in 1 such as "1cDwMSxYstvetZTFn54X5m4GFgzxJaMDo5" and an example of the private key in the old format might be a string of characters that starts with 5 like "5WzTsXwOe1pm601tcNygAGRdCckhHJBGFsvd3VyK55PZXj3tL".
Here is the statement I am curious about:
On March 7, 2014, Mt.Gox Co., Ltd. confirmed that an old-format wallet which was used prior to June 2011 held a balance of approximately 200,000 BTC," the statement said. As reported CNN money -
https://money.cnn.com/2014/03/21/technology/mt-gox-missing-bitcoin/index.html.
Can anyone please help me understand the above article of old-format wallet used prior to June 2011. Thanks
This may be an answer to your question
The statement you are referring to is about the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, which was one of the largest and most popular exchanges for buying and selling bitcoins in the early days of the Bitcoin network.
In the statement, Mt. Gox is confirming that an old-format wallet that was used on the exchange prior to June 2011 held a balance of approximately 200,000 BTC. This means that the bitcoins were stored in an old-format wallet, which is also known as a "legacy" or "non-segwit" wallet. These wallets were the original way that bitcoins were stored on the Bitcoin network and used a different format for the public and private keys compared to the current format.
The old-format wallets were less secure than the new format wallets and are more vulnerable to hacking. It is possible that this old-format wallet was compromised by hackers, which led to the loss of the 200,000 BTC.
This statement is made by Mt.Gox in the year 2014, and it is indicating that they discovered an old-format wallet that they used prior to June 2011 held a balance of approximately 200,000 BTC. It is unclear what happened to those bitcoins, but it is reported that Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy in 2014 after losing 850,000 bitcoins, including 750,000 belonging to customers, and 100,000 of the company's own bitcoins.
It is important to note that Mt.Gox's incident is a cautionary tale for the crypto community to always keep their private keys secure and use the latest security measures for their wallets.