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I have a debug.log showing approximately 80 rewards from january 2009 to roughly sometime 2011.

I am using bitcoin 0.8.6-beta with Gen=1 and I've ran my wallet through bitcoin 0.8.6 a few times. I've seen 20 rewards pop up, I've seen one reward pop up, I've seen 9 rewards pop-up - and from what I've gathered, as well as what I remember the initial developer state. The rewards are there. When they show up in the mempool, they will be finalized and show up in my wallet. But, January 2009 - I dont have that .exe any longer, nor can I find it. The initial developer, lets call him satoshi. Satoshi said, they will be scraped and deposited, when I run the bitcoin qt core with gen=1, reindex=1, and rescan wallet. But, I should use the initial bitcoin qt to do so.

I've also come across forks that happened in 2013, which is when 0.8.6 was released. Though I have 0.8.6 files that show to be from 2011, according to the time stamp of each file last being used. Either way, the Fork was said to be fixing the blockchain, to not process these rewards, as there were apparently a lot of people trying to hack the blockchain using these mined blocks. So, 0.8.6 is apparently not going to allow me to recieve these rewards.

So, I have two things I'd like to do.

A.) Compile a Bitcoin QT (Core) that reimplements gen=0|1 so that the rewards will be generated.
and
B.) Fix the 2013 Fork, so that these Initial Mined Rewards can be generated into the Wallet.
or
C.) Compile all of the Bitcoin Cores and work with some volunteers to create a Bitcoin Core that does both of the above interests as well as other interests.

I know that Bitcoin QT is basically Java - or was. I haven't been paying attention much as of late. Nor am I a big fan of programming. I know my way around. But, I dislike programming. So, I would prefer some help compiling, or I'll just study and learn how to compile bitcoin qt myself.

Can anyone explain to me if I'll ever see these rewards that my bitcoin qt wallet mined between 2009 and 2011? And, if I should use the original bitcoin client, or compile it myself, or how difficult it will be to compile a bitcoin qt client to incorporate gen=0|1 myself????

Any other thoughts?

Thanks -=[~

Hate-Me-If-You-Must! 11/10/2023-8:12PM(PST)

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If you had any software between 2009 and 2011 which sucessfully mined Bitcoin, the globally replicated list of blocks of transactions we call the blockchain will include the coinbase transactions in the blocks you mined. Those coinbase transactions created unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) that paid block-reward money into addresses in your wallet. Addresses from which money can be spent using the private keys from which those addresses were ultimately derived.

If you still have those keys, you can spend those UTXOs

You do not need an archaic version of Bitcoin Core to spend that money. The current version or any non-custodial wallet will allow you to see your balance and spend that money. What you need to do is to import or sweep the keys into a wallet application.

I would expect a current Bitcoin core to be able to read a copy of any ancient wallet.dat or backup file.

Notes:

  • Bitcoin core is written in C++ not Java.
  • Block rewards that were generated in 2009-2011 do not need to be generated again and cannot be regenerated. Old blocks and their rewards never expire, never disappear, are never forgotten by the network. The existence of blocks and their rewards are in no way dependent on your continuing software installation or equipment. Everything is in the blockchain and thousands of nodes hold copies of the whole blockchain. Even pruned nodes contain all the transaction outputs (TXOs) ever created which remain unspent (UTXOs).
  • The existence of your money does not depend on you. Your ability to spend it does.
  • If you no longer have the keys, your money is lost to you and no amount of messing around with old software will ever change that.

Related:

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  • My debug log showed a number that led me to this article - showing that my mined rewards are not finalized - I understand all the gen=1 rewards, but my wallet has rewards that haven't been gen=1 generated, they were gen=0 mined but not generated - now my wallet is generating them, and they have to find their way into the mempool - and the mempool is clogged - but, I need an updated client that can gen=1 with todays forks. bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/87376/121859
    – Thasthllfe
    Nov 11 at 11:26
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    There is no such thing as "gen=0 mined". They were mined, or they were not mined. If they're mined, you can access them by loading the wallet.dat file, or importing the keys. In all other cases, the coins are lost. They cannot be regenerated or anything like that.
    – Pieter Wuille
    Nov 11 at 14:43
  • I asked the developer at bitcoin.org back in 2009-2011 and they told me to run gen=1 in the config file along with reindex and rescan and it would find the rewards from the mined blocks that still are mined even with gen=0 in the config file being set.
    – Thasthllfe
    Nov 12 at 1:32
  • You either misremember, or you were misinformed.
    – Pieter Wuille
    Nov 12 at 1:56
  • Its' really sad how none of you seem to know much of anything about Bitcoin gen feature. But you deleted it from the Bitcoin QT citing its not needed anymore.
    – Thasthllfe
    Nov 13 at 2:43

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