Seeking Advice on Old Wallet File from 2010 DOS Mining

Hey guys, I've got this old hard drive from 2010 when I was mining Bitcoin via MS DOS. Back then, Bitcoin Core didn’t even exist. I managed to mine about 12 BTC but stopped because I found it more fun to play League of Legends instead. When I sold my PC, I backed everything up and now, 14 years later, I recovered the data but all the files are unknown. I’ve got around 3,000 files, and I’m trying to figure out which one is my wallet.

Really? You could mine like that? I always thought you needed the Bitcoin software, like Bitcoin-Qt back in the day, to mine on a PC.

Yeah, I’m calling shenanigans on that. You can’t just mine 12 BTC in 2010 solo. The block reward was 50 BTC, and you’d have had serious competition. That file you shared doesn’t even look like a crypto-related file.

I mined 8 BTC in 30 minutes with just a GTX 9800! Back then, it was kinda crazy. Bitcoin was only worth a quarter, and I was trying to make a hundred bucks a day. If I could’ve played League without lag, I wouldn’t have stopped.

It’s gotta be the wallet.dat file then. That’s what Bitcoin-Qt used, as far as I remember. Never heard of anything else being called a wallet. By the way, Slush’s pool was the first mining pool back in 2010.

Doubt you could’ve made $100 a day on a GPU, though. If you could, why not just keep mining?

Anyone knows when wallet files started using Berkeley DB? I remember early Bitcoin Core versions didn’t have many dependencies. Would help narrow down the files.

Couldn’t tell you for sure. But if you rule out some files, that might help. Your backup sounds kinda sketchy too. Random file names suggest recovery data rather than a clean backup.

The version I had was its own thing. Just a folder with files and I set it all up through the DOS command prompt. There was a site listing pool addresses back then too mostly from forums.

For those 3,000 files, try using Notepad++ to search through them with multiple keywords. You might find something that has keywords like 'key!' or 'address' in it.

That's a shot in the dark, but maybe it’s worth a try.

LOL, are you serious? You really think that’s going to help?

Didn’t mention earlier, but if you can access the HDD, you might want to check out a tool called pywallet. It can scan for Bitcoin wallet files automatically.

Yeah, saw OP’s command prompt mention. I think he used Windows Command Prompt instead of true DOS.

Sounds about right. Early Bitcoin mining was through a simple setup in command line. Kind of wild that no one seems to mention it.

But did you even set up a wallet? Did you ever have an actual BTC address? You need that to prove you mined something.

You’re the one claiming some wild stuff, so where’s your evidence? You probably weren’t one of the earliest miners.

No idea about a wallet set up. Just followed some guide I found on this very forum. Most of those early threads don’t exist anymore.

Old posts are still around, though. Satoshi’s back-and-forth from 2009 to 2010 is still viewable. Thought you’d find it interesting.

If the thread with the download for DOS software is gone, it might’ve been shady or even malware. Sounds like a scam to me.