May have found an old wallet from 2013 - need help - reward offered.

Hey all,

Bit of a story, bear with me here - in 2013 I had a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 which held several bitcoins that I mined using a single budget spec AMD card over several months, if I recall correctly, bitcoin was barely worth $20ea at the time and there were not many places in which they could be used, I remember at the time you could maybe buy alpaca socks and cheap novelty items from not well-known places online.

The coins were held on my phone using this app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet&hl=en_AU&gl=US

I'm quite sure at the time it may have only been available to download from the developer's site and not in the Google play store(?)

In late 2013 I stupidly wiped my phone as I was doing something for work at the time as my phone was playing up, it was only after the fact that I realized what I had done, I don't ever remember making a backup via the app of my wallet either, not even sure that feature was available then, could be wrong - the app is quite different to what it was back then.

Anyway, yesterday I managed to recover data off an old 2011 macbook which I had at the time using recovery software as it does not pickup when plugged into a computer, its clicks and wines so not a healthy drive, I scoured the entire contents of the drive and came across a folder titled "phone backup - 2013"

Don't even remember doing this at the time so was amazed to find it, I manically when through each folder looking for any sort of evidence or files indicating my old wallet, tried doing all search terms like "wallet.dat" "backup" "coin" "cyrpto" "phrase" "string" "key" "bitcoin-wallet"... pretty much any and all things related i could think of, though nothing came of it. The only evidence I can find in the folders are old home-screen screenshots of my wallet showing the balance and transactions/public key, so this confirms that my wallet had to be there at some point.

I downloaded the electrum wallet on my current macbook and imported the "public" key which still shows the current balance still intact, there are 3.7 bitcoins - (watch only wallet).

Right now, i'm trying to wrap my head around if there is any sort of possibility i can restore the wallet, in my head, I'm thinking there must be a way in which i can have an android emulator where I can replace the core files using the ones i recovered, though I can't seem to find anything like this, I tried bluestacks though i can't seem to replace the emualted folders using my own. - The APK for the bitcoin wallet is amongst the file structure as well.

I tried contacting the devloper in hopes that he can tell me where the core files of the wallet are stored, though have yet to get a response.

Does anyone here know if such a thing is possible? Right now i'm more than willing to give someone a few thou if they are able to help me successfully recover them.

I've looked into bitcoin recovery services online though most state I need a password, I was never given the option to create a password or seed phrase at the time of using the wallet, the features did not exist according to old reviews from the store, i'm hoping that maybe theres a private key hidden away amongst the android app/data folder.

Thanks in advance.

• I've posted this in 2 subs so far and it's getting auto removed since i'm new, my account is older than 60 days yet it's still happening, I barely use reddit or have time to farm karma.... if this happens again can someone recommend to me a forum i can ask instead of here, i'm supposed to be working right now lol and this is frustrating.

• edit: sorry i've used the same phrase "at the time" a heap, i'm at work so trying to type as fast as i can in secret since i'd get busted if anyone sees me on my phone.

Submitted October 28, 2021 at 09:41AM by 1990humanboy https://bit.ly/3pJzJcQ