There's no good reason not to make the code public, we need to verify that the recovery program doesn't do anything unsafe and leave private keys and sensitive data lying around in temporary files (at best) or sends the whole wallet file and/or private keys across the network (at worst).

And also by open-sourcing your recovery tool you enable people to improve it for edge-cases (seed phrases, multisig, extended words, BIP38 etc etc). If you look at pywallet or btcrecover for example you see there are a dozen or so people improving them.

Exactly these are the scammers we warn everyone of:


Never trust a newbie. Never download a file sent by a newbie.
Never give away your wallet file or private keys.

If you see people "offering help" like in the quote, just ignore them.

Exactly these are the scammers we warn everyone of:


Never trust a newbie. Never download a file sent by a newbie.
Never give away your wallet file or private keys.

If you see people "offering help" like in the quote, just ignore them.

Hi folks! I have a Old corrupt wallet.dat from a client. I tried some things to recover those 33.54 BTC, since July 16. This is the wallet:

https://blockchain.info/address/1KYYVUwWSMrNkje41jzvubSRsjABu3EUt6

Next, a short summary of the history of this wallet:

*) This wallet comes from a old version of bitcoin-qt (2011), my client said "0.3.24 Beta version", but that is not sure. He remember, he could mining with that client of bitcoin-qt. In fact, he did a "copy & paste" of the wallet.dat when the client was mining and updating. Then, he put that file in a USB drive, and stored for years. When he tried to recover the wallet.dat with a new client of bitcoin-qt, bit he never had success.

*) He said, "the wallet is not encrypted with a password".

*) The size of the wallet.dat file is 112kb

What i tried, with no success :

1) I downloaded the bitcoin-qt client 0.3.24beta, and i tried to open the client with the wallet.dat loadded. i had this messagge:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1feAvAHdS8t7e2bY3pGVRPZOtMcUgkasj/view?usp=sharing

2) I downloaded the new version of bitcoin-qt client 0.12.1 (i did in July 16), and i tried to open with the same method above.

3) I tried commands from the bitcoin-qt client 0.12.1, like "salvagewallet" and "upgradewallet".

4) I tried bitcointools.

5) Then i started to open the wallet with a HEX editor and looking for a pattern like "KeyA", "key!" or any other kind.

6) Also i tried this script: https://gist.github.com/msm595/7595164. I got 0 privkey.

7)I modified the script above, changing the line 17, with other kinds of REGEX patterns. I tried:

What i need:

*)Any Kind of help, I don't rule out that I could have tried badly some previously mentioned method.

*)Don't Waste your time, requesting the wallet.dat file. I'll not pass it on.

*)You can pass me, open source scripts writed for you, with the following steps to make it work.

*)I am a Python Developer, so i'll prefer scripts writed in that lenguage.

If your recover method, helps me to recover the wallet.dat i'll pay you a reward (We can negociate it)

Hi folks! I have a Old corrupt wallet.dat from a client. I tried some things to recover those 33.54 BTC, since July 16. This is the wallet:

https://blockchain.info/address/1KYYVUwWSMrNkje41jzvubSRsjABu3EUt6

Next, a short summary of the history of this wallet:

*) This wallet comes from a old version of bitcoin-qt (2011), my client said "0.3.24 Beta version", but that is not sure. He remember, he could mining with that client of bitcoin-qt. In fact, he did a "copy & paste" of the wallet.dat when the client was mining and updating. Then, he put that file in a USB drive, and stored for years. When he tried to recover the wallet.dat with a new client of bitcoin-qt, bit he never had success.

*) He said, "the wallet is not encrypted with a password".

*) The size of the wallet.dat file is 112kb

What i tried, with no success :

1) I downloaded the bitcoin-qt client 0.3.24beta, and i tried to open the client with the wallet.dat loadded. i had this messagge:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1feAvAHdS8t7e2bY3pGVRPZOtMcUgkasj/view?usp=sharing

2) I downloaded the new version of bitcoin-qt client 0.12.1 (i did in July 16), and i tried to open with the same method above.

3) I tried commands from the bitcoin-qt client 0.12.1, like "salvagewallet" and "upgradewallet".

4) I tried bitcointools.

5) Then i started to open the wallet with a HEX editor and looking for a pattern like "KeyA", "key!" or any other kind.

6) Also i tried this script: https://gist.github.com/msm595/7595164. I got 0 privkey.

7)I modified the script above, changing the line 17, with other kinds of REGEX patterns. I tried:

What i need:

*)Any Kind of help, I don't rule out that I could have tried badly some previously mentioned method.

*)Don't Waste your time, requesting the wallet.dat file. I'll not pass it on.

*)You can pass me, open source scripts writed for you, with the following steps to make it work.

*)I am a Python Developer, so i'll prefer scripts writed in that lenguage.

If your recover method, helps me to recover the wallet.dat i'll pay you a reward (We can negociate it)

(im using a mac)

Hey, I have some old wallet.dat files I'm trying to recover/access. In the process of downloading bitcoin core. I tried to replace the automatically generated wallet.dat file with my wallet.dat file(s) and it gives me a "corrupted unable to recover" message,  both the wallets are very old, pre-forks.

I have since installed pywallet and its associated dependencies and get the following error when trying to dump the  VALID autogenerated wallet.dat file from the bitcoin core with pywallet.    

'ecdsa' package is not installed, pywallet won't be able to sign/verify messages

Wallet data not recognized: {'__type__': 'hdchain', '__value__': '\x02\x00\x00\x00\xe9\x03\x00\x00\xd1\xc0\x8bB\xa0\xe1G\xbe5\x11\x9bs\xe7\xe4\xac\xaf\xb1\x88\xfc\xad\xe8\x03\x00\x00', '__key__': '\x07hdchain'}

Wallet data not recognized: {'__type__': 'keymeta', '__value__': "\n\x00\x00\x00\x06\xfaGZ\x00\x00\x00\x00\x0cm/0'/0'/855'\xd1\xc0\x8bB\xa0\xe1G\xbe5\x11\x9bs\xe7\xe4\xac\xaf\xb1\x88\xfc\xad", '__key__': "\x07keymeta!\x02\x00?\x93\xc4\xf4U\xd9\xf6\x0b)Z\x1e\xfe\xf9\xc4zUz\xf1'\xb1~\xe2\x056\xf2e\x8a\x8d\x8a\x92\xa7"}

Wallet data not recognized: {'__type__': 'keymeta', '__value__':
"\n\x00\x00\x00\x05\xfaGZ\x00\x00\x00\x00\x0bm/0'/0'/51'\xd1\xc0\x8bB\xa0\xe1G\xbe5\x11\x9bs\xe7\xe4\xac\xaf\xb1\x88\xfc\xad", '__key__': '\x07keymeta!\x02\x00\x87\xe5\xed\xb8T\x0ev\x89!\x1d\xa3\xae\x17\xe1\xc7\x98\x98\x02\xd9}D\xd1s]\x18\x80R\x1cp\n\xfc'}


Basically a whole lot of wallet data not recognized messages.

this is the final message,

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/Kainan/Downloads/pywallet-master/pywallet.py", line 2111, in parse_wallet
    d.update(parse_BlockLocator(vds))
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not iterable
ERROR parsing wallet.dat, type bestblock
key data:    bestblock
key data in hex: 0962657374626c6f636b
value data in hex: 544a020000

______

I will be paying a bounty of at-least 200$ for assistance with this, possibly much more if there's a substantial amount in the wallet and I gain access to it.