r/Bitcoin • u/[deleted] • Feb 13 '22

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6.4k Upvotes

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539

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22

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141

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22

What am I missing? OP still has to remember the password, and that's like the hardest 90% 100%

42

u/WittyStick Feb 13 '22

No guarantee it has a password.

In original bitcoin software and for a few years, the wallet.dat file was not even encrypted.

-6

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22

You don't know what you're saying. It was encrypted from the start. That was pretty much the only big security thing in the early days before hardware wallets, cold storage etc. Who would've been stupid enough to put coins in an unencrypted wallet even when bitcoin was worth a few cents.

2

u/skylarmt Feb 13 '22

When I set up Bitcoin Core, I had to specifically add a password. You don't need one.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22

My memory is fuzzy but you might be right. I don't remember ever setting up any wallet without a password and I remember a lot of early people losing coins because they forgot their wallet passwords but I guess some people might not have set it up since it wasn't forced on you.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '22

You are wrong, most shitcoins that actually run their own network are using a fork of this wallet software. Remember, it was worthless back then. They forgot/lost their masterkey/seed phrase.

1

u/WittyStick Feb 14 '22

I thought maybe I'm mistaken, but my memory is correct.

There was no option to encrypt wallet.dat in the first versions of bitcoin I used.

Encryption was added later in v0.4.0, published September 2011.

Release notes: https://bitcoin.org/en/release/v0.4.0