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My husband died recently. He had a Bitcoin-Qt wallet with some bitcoins. I don't know the password and the wallet is locked and encrypted. Is there anyway to regain access to the wallet?
How do I recover an encrypted bitcoin wallet to which I don't know the password?
Answers
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Sorry for your loss.
If he used early versions of Bitcoin, he may have made an unencrypted backup of his wallet.dat file somewhere. Cracking a password may be impossible, so this might be your next best option.
Wallet encryption is a feature that was implemented in version 0.4.0 on 23rd Sep 2011, so if you do find a wallet.dat file older than that it's probably not encrypted.
Bitcoin users that are aware they are holding a substantial amount of bitcoins also are probably aware that they need to back their wallet.dat file up to a location different to their PC's hard disk in case of failure. You might find it on a DVD, thumb drive, or maybe somewhere like Google Drive.
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There is a discussion about the subject, including a script for password cracking, at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85495.0;all
