Bitcoin Customer Support

in LeoFinance3 years ago

Losing access to your crypto is no fun! Here is a how-to summary.

Last year in October, I noticed that I was unable to fetch balances or spend bitcoins that were in my Particl-Copay wallet. I use a lot of different experimental wallets and keep track of their quirks, reliability and ease of use.

Screenshot_20210225155353.jpg

This one was failing in the 'other coins' category. I did a quick search to find out if others were having the same difficulty and they were. One of the threads suggested downloading one of two wallets to import coins, bla-bla-bla, etc.

I had never heard of the wallets they were recommending. Best not to use an experimental wallet to recover a failed experimental wallet. I went for a trusted old friend. Private keys imported to Electrum.

Customer support?

Not really. There is no need for customer support as long as you pay attention when setting up any new wallet, you will always be able to get your coins if things go wrong.

Always note your key or seed

Of course, when you set up a wallet, you note your private keys and/or seed. I had noted the 12 words (the seed) associated with each of the three wallets. I put it in an encrypted file on several pen drives as well as on paper in my safe. It is a habit of mine. Bitcoin has risen from the mid $12,000 range to the $40,000 - $50,000 range. I want to be careful where I put my seed. More so, my keys.

Getting the private keys

I started with the wallet that contained the least - according to the last known balance showing.

A handy site to note is allprivatekeys.com which calculates every public/private key pair contained in any given mnemonic seed.

I used a fresh Linux install, went to the above link, and disconnected the machine from the internet.

The page will still work with no connection to the internet. I just pasted my seed where shown below, and everything related to that seed was filled in.

nemonic1.jpeg

You do not need to know what everything on this page is. You do want to make sure that no cameras are in the room with you (even a cell phone on your desk) and that there is no possibility of a virus, hacker, screenshot bot, etc. on your machine. Again - no internet connections to the computer!

If you are only recovering ten bucks, less precautions are needed.

Scroll down to "Derived Addresses"

nemonic2.jpeg

This will list ever public address that your wallet program would have used during the time you had it. Also any that would have been used in the next hundred years. I had only used two or three of the possible addresses in the last year.

Just copy each address in the second column and go to blockchain.info, I think it will redirect you to Roger's site nowadays, and see if it has any transactions. If so, is there a balance?

Scroll right to find the Private key

You are still in the Derived Addresses section of the web page. Grab the private key for each address that has a balance. Copy them an dput them in a text file as a list.

nemonic3.jpeg

Then import that list of private keys to Electrum, download if you don't have it. I used the electrum-4.0.9-x86_64.AppImage file to open Electrum Wallet on Linux.

List your keys

When you have the list of private keys copied to the iport keys section of Electrum, click Next

privatekeyselectrum.jpeg

there will be a prompt to set an encryption key for the restored wallet you just created.

All of the related BTC should show up and can be sent to another wallet that is trustworthy. I chose to empty the wallets that were on my Particl-Copay app and send the coins to my Coinomi wallet.

Particl is still a good coin. They just had a difficulty with one of their wallet's *extra features". The desktop wallet is a blockchain based EBay with no corporation to sell your data or charge you fees. I will keep using their wallets and service as PART appreciates. This was just a bump in the road.

Through many years of hard disks that wore out, lost android phones, and other tragedies. I have never failed to recover funds as long as the seed or private keys were written down or properly stored.

Not your keys? Not your crypto!

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Good post indeed.

But... instead of allprivatekeys.com, I still highly prefer Ian Coleman's site
https://iancoleman.io

Recently he added a very big thing - the BIP85 derivation !
https://iancoleman.io/bip39/

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

Thanks for the vote of confidence! Coleman's site noted!
Just sharing my experiences so others know how to handle a seemingly bad situation. I seem to always go old school, like stuff I used in 2013, it is my comfort zone. I am not just going to download some other untested wallet to make up for the one that just dropped the ball.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

Nicely put together this, cheers :)

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

This is pretty good
You Should keep your keys secret

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

Electrum is a great wallet for those who do not want to have to download the entire blockchain. I've suggested it to several people and really happy with it.

Glad you were able to use it to recover some funds.

So true.. not your keys not your crypto.

Really useful info, I use the same method to store seeds - encrypted USB - two of them in two different locations.

It's certainly worth knowing if wallet 'interfaces' stop getting supported.

Very hindsightful info regarding this issue many may encounter. Regards mate.

You are very careful with how you operate and good to see. I hate all this cloak and dagger stuff as you just never know.

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