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I'm a total novice - sort of.

In 2013 I bought some Bitcoin through MTGox. I cannot recall how many, but not a huge amount (still would have been worth a small fortune today, but hey-ho) and some months later (2014) I sold them, but I think might have kept 2 or 3 back.

When I checked last - in 2016 I assumed/was told that if I had any they would have disappeared when MTGox went under. That was the last time I had any interest in Bitcoin.

By chance recently I found I still had my Bitcoin Core wallet on my iMac and opened it. That was two days ago and since then it has been synchronising and at present is 35pc progressed. Estimated time left fluctuates from 48 hours to - at present - 11 days. I have a couple of questions.

1/. Is there anyway of speeding this process up? (I have 60+Mps connection) 2/. Given my Bitcoin history is it possible what coins I may have, if any, are here? 3/. Given the last block time was late 2015, should i just stop the process, upgrade Bitcoin Core (if possible) and start again?

Many thanks for any help/advice

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1/. Is there anyway of speeding this process up? (I have 60+Mps connection)

Install a more recent version of Bitcoin Core. If you have spare RAM available on your system, you can add dbcache=<n> to your bitcoin.conf file where is the amount of RAM in MB which you are willing to give to the database cache (note that this is not the only RAM that Bitcoin Core will be using).

2/. Given my Bitcoin history is it possible what coins I may have, if any, are here?

If you still have the same wallet.dat file (if you did not delete it, it is probably still on your computer), then you will be able to recover your coins. You can go to the Bitcoin Core data directory and see if the wallet.dat file there was created recently or several years ago. If several years ago, it is may contain coins.

3/. Given the last block time was late 2015, should i just stop the process, upgrade Bitcoin Core (if possible) and start again?

Yes, you should do that. It will sync much faster. No progress will be lost and no data will be lost. If you did not touch Bitcoin since 2015, then your coins should already appear in the wallet. If you don't see them, it is likely that the wallet you are using does not hold your coins.

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  • Many thanks. It took five days but eventually it synched and my coins appeared. I do daily backups of my machine. I assume that process effectively backs up my coins?
    – redson48
    Commented Oct 25, 2017 at 16:53
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I had a similiar situation, albeight with a newer wallet. I didn't want to wait, til sync was finished. So I started up my wallet, and in the menu, I could go to "file" and receiving addresses. This allowed me to show the addresses, cut and paste them on blockchain.info, and see if funds where there. If so, I'd follow Andrew's comment on topic 3. I don't know how old your wallet file / software is, you might try 

listaddressgroupings

to see, what addresses are there, and check on blockchain.info, if you have values on it... and then there is "listaccounts" and "getaccountaddress". That saved me alot of time.

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