In 2013, when Bitcoin was hovering around 100 USD per Bitcoin, a French family made a strategic decision. They bought 120 Bitcoin for all 7 family members depositing the BTC to separate Multibit wallets. Then, they asked a friend to encrypt them and put them into cold storage.
It was a very timed and wise decision, if it wasn’t for the choice of software or the help they received. The head of the family was not very technically skilled, so he asked a friends son, if he could help them purchase and store the Bitcoin in a secure way.
They decided to use Multibit Legacy, or Multibit Classic Wallet which was then the to go wallet in 2013. It was simple, offered multiple key storage in one file, and it was self custodial. A perfect deal so it seemed. Since the family was big, the head of the family wanted each member have their own encrypted file with their bitcoins stored securely.
It was not until 2021 when Bitcoin started to climb and reached 68k, that they realized they would like to cash out. Unfortunately, the person who helped them encrypt the wallet was not able to. He claimed that the wallet became corrupted and the password he used to encrypt them with did not work.
A bitcoin wallet works in a way that it consists of two parts. One is the public key, which is registering the amount of Bitcoin inside. And the second part is a private key used to sign transactions when you want to move the Bitcoin out.
So, without access to the private keys encrypted inside the Multibit Classic Wallets, the family was at a loss, and there was nothing they could do.
They tried for several years without luck, only to be told by the freelancer more absurd excuses as to why the Bitcoin did not unlock. He also became paranoid and did not want any outside help because the Bitcoin would be stolen.
After a while, the head of the family lost faith in him and started to look for services that were experienced in that particular wallet type. He found a Key Recovery Service based in Switzerland that seemed experienced with good reputation online. After checking the Trustpilot reviews and several interviews and YouTube keynotes, he decided to contact KeychainX AG in Zug, Switzerland.
With a brief introduction e-mail, a zoom call was scheduled where the situation was explained and various scenarios were discussed. After signing a contract the head of the family decided to send a smaller wallet with just a few coins to evaluate the service.
A password hint was given based on the friend’s son’s memory, but since it was encrypted 10 years before, a very vague key hint remained.
After 2 months without any progress in sight, a decision was made to try to find different backups. Multibit classic has known bugs like how many iterations are used to encrypt the wallet keys. It also had many different wallet formats like .key .wallet .cipher etc. And since the software was discontinued there was no chance to talk to the developers to figure out why the files did not unlock.
Autumn became winter, and Bitcoin price started to wake up slowly from a 2-year-old bear market.
The family started to become frustrated and when asked if they kept any old backups, they looked inside an old barn where they stored laptops and unused drives. They found a stash of computer hardware that was decade old and started to go through the data with the Wallet Recovery Service that they found online. A meeting was scheduled the following weekend to go through the vast amount of data.
After a few hours, KeychainX found inconsistency in the way the files were encrypted and pointed out to a folder that used a different encryption.
By importing the files to a custom developed tool, it was possible to jog through various encryption techniques that were used by Multibit Classic core software to decrypt the private keys.
BOOM!
They got a hit and one wallet containing 26 BTC was recovered and synced with the blockchain, which made it possible to be moved out.
The normal procedure would be to move all the funds out to a safe new wallet address since several people could have access to the files. But the head of the family insisted the files needed to be kept separated. Another aspect was various blockchain parsers looking for old Bitcoin waking up and moving, which could unmask the family’s identity by broadcasting tweets regarding the decade-old coins that moved.
A strategic decision was made to keep the coins separated and move them in smaller trenches to keep the privacy intact.
In the end, over 120 BTC were recovered, and this article has slightly changed some details to keep the integrity and privacy of the owners.
LESSONS LEARNED!
If you keep any decade-old Bitcoin in Multibit Classic or Multibit HD, even if your password is correct, the various encryption methods used cause some encrypted wallets to become “damaged” or impossible to decrypt. Make sure to contact an experienced Crypto Recovery Service like KeychainX to help you with the recovery of your long lost Bitcoin.
ABOUT KEYCHAINX
KeychainX AG is based in the canton of Zug, Switzerland and has been helping recover lost Bitcoin and Ethereum Presale wallets since 2017. The company has helped hundreds of clients around the world in very complex situations. If you would like to confidentially discuss the recovery of your crypto, please write to keychainx@protonmail.com or use telegram @KeychainX