I have private keys from years ago to wallets that I've abandoned. Even though I don't use them and never plan to, I have a fear that I'll accidentally fund an old wallet from something that I forgot about (old exchange, someone tipping me to an old address, who-knows-what).
I was imagining some little self-hosted app on my node that checks new blocks against known archived wallets and lets me know if a transaction matches – or for larger amounts, sweeps the funds automatically.
I don't have anything like this, so I have copies of private keys and (for more recent wallets) seed phrases backed up in various places. I'm sure that I should be more organized about it, but what's the best way? I could see it getting out of hand easily and taking ages to go through everything on the regular to check balances.
I look forward to a discussion on the best way to handle this. What are your ideas/solutions?
Posted by LazyTech8315
2 Comments
When I first started buying I would make electrum wallets then write them on paper but eventually I transitioned to BlueWallet. Once I bought bitcoin on HodlHodl and forgot it was my old address saved, the bitcoin was sent and I thought it was lost until I put my old seed into electrum and the funds were there.
Moral of the story never delete a wallet, have a usb drive or box with paper keys of old wallets.
How would you accidentally send funds to an old wallet? Are you commonly reusing addresses? What would generate an address for an old wallet otherwise? How would one go about “archiving” a private key?