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Comment by throwaway_btc1 | Hacker News Reader

I have some mined coins from 5-ish years ago, but it was on such an old bitcoin client I haven't been able to show proof of work in order to transfer them out of that wallet, and it seems to be pretty difficult to recover an old wallet, especially when I'm paranoid that the data will be snatched as soon as I reconnect that old computer to the internet, since the bitcoin client was so old it didn't have proper protections in place.

I really should have had it all figured out so i could take advantage of this run, but I didn't. Now I'm kicking myself. I wasn't ready the last time it shot up over $1k/coin either.

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You don't have to reconnect the computer to the internet to get access to the bitcoin in that wallet actually. You should be able to get the private key from from the wallet.dat file and then just import it to a new client.

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4203/how-can-i-ex...

If you end up getting rich, feel free to transfer some btc to 1P471RQS4Ga2xgakQWgbDL8WLajwPEdfMH as a thank you :)

Okay cool. I did try doing something similar before, by taking what appeared to be the private key out of the wallet.dat file and importing it elsewhere, and it showed my balance, but it wouldn't let me transfer the coins without 'proof of work'. I read online and I was lead to believe that I needed something more than just the private key for original mined coins in order to transfer them.

And I won't be rich, unfortunately. I only left it on for only a week and mined a single block, back when you could actually do so from your home computer. If only I had left it on for a couple of months back then I would be rich, though. This will only help me dig out of debt and maybe make a downpayment on a house.

As far as I know the private key should be enough, I wonder if it was an issue with the client you were trying to import them to.

Anyway, one block is still pretty good as far as getting free money goes! Best of luck recovering them.

I'm certainly not complaining, assuming I eventually can get these coins sold, and preferably not in the middle of a downturn. Not really looking forward to taxes taking a chunk out of it, but whatever. I'm just glad I don't have to stare at a ~$220/coin for months on end and saying to myself "If only I had sold when it was $1k a coin..." like I did two years ago.

Long term capital gains tax is 15% in the u.s.

Use the dumpprivkey command on the old wallet. Install a new wallet on your new pc. Use the command importprivkey. Then you can transfer the coins to an exchange, assuming the website you pasted your privkey into before didn't steal them.

There's absolutely nothing to worry about. There aren't remote exploits in old versions of bitcoin. In any case, you can download a new client from bitcoin.org and run that with the old wallet file.

Can't you load the latest client and then import your old wallet?

Supposedly it's more complicated than that for wallets made with old clients.

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