Background

This page describes how to get limited Bitcoin-Core (or Litecoin / Dogecoin / etc.) Wallet Information for Wallet Recovery Services (so that we cannot steal your bitcoins even if the wallet password is found)

Refer to the long forum thread at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=240779.0;all which discusses the safety of you sending your Limited wallet information to a service such as this.

Refer to https://github.com/joric/pywallet (see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Pywallet) and notes about it in previous forum postings, such as on bitcointalk.org

(Note that the instructions below are for Bitcoin Core/ Bitcoin-Qt / Litecoin / Dogecoin and most other alt-coin wallets, but do not apply to blockchain.info or multibit or Armory or electrum or Bitgo or BIP38 encoded wallets, nor Ethereum wallets)

Instructions

1) Download and install python 2.7 - eg for Windows,

http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.2/python-2.7.2.msi

2) Download the open source file named pywallet.py from here. (note that if you are dumping info from a Litecoin or altcoin wallet, you might need to tweak the directory in which the script searches for the wallet.dat file)

3) Then run the pywallet.py script to dump all the important information from your wallet. This step will dump out the encrypted information for you to see. (even though your wallet is encrypted with a forgotten password)

Start a windows command prompt (‘cmd’), and use:

   pywallet.py --dumpwallet > temp.txt

to put the information into a file named temp.txt

4) Then open the resulting temp.txt file in a text editor.
To attempt decoding the lost passphrase, we need the “mkey” section similar to:

  "mkey": {
      "crypted_key": "e34577ec23039d05a1b71a37996564ad9c48cd5b8bed7d8875eb88c3d34118e9e113e345631295b323a8ba48764ee51b", 
      "nDerivationMethod": 0, 
      "nDeriveIterations": 165130, 
      "nID": 1, 
      "salt": "89be7331b4068346", 
      "vchOtherDerivationParameters": ""
  }, 

And 2 or more of the address sections like:

   {
      "addr": "1DCHJoJidu95uJYZcyD9CgnNf6pLOO8XZU", 
      "ckey": "6dc8906af2b0dabf84e6c354f659a031b565ed48a6366a3d88cc43a53e49e9f6288c7c776d870e7bcafbf54708e2f86d",         "pubkey": "03f9d93ceb0d4ebd243ce90c06bed8b73d45668564e3b9e9406d8fe47186fbc58c", 
      "reserve": 1
   }

If you choose 2 of the above address sections that do not contain money (ie, have a ‘reserve’ line, not a ‘label’ line), then you can ensure that you do not send any information that will allow the theft of bitcoins, even by someone who can decode the wallet for you. (in other words, you will be only sending to us bitcoin addresses that have no money in them)

5) Email us the information