Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Re: Please, I need help for converting a very old btc private key to WIF.
by
nc50lc
on 01/07/2025, 05:19:03 UTC
Just out of curiosity, my other question is whether something similar to what happened to this person in 2010 ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=782.0 ) could happen. He sent a bitcoin to himself and lost all the change.
In you case, since you're dealing with individual private keys. Your options to spend are either Sweep or Import.

In the former, it depends on the wallet where you swept the bitcoins since you'll be using it to spend after Sweep.
Modern wallets are mostly HD; if not for some reason, has a good number of pre-generated keys on its keypool, so issues like that shouldn't occur.

In the latter, when you create a transaction, the change will usually be sent back to the original address. (e.g.: Electrum imported wallet)
But that depends on the wallet you used to import because some mix the imported keys to its main wallet so that will subject the the above.