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about 3 years ago I created my bit coin wallet and purchased few bit coins. I have done couple transactions with my wallet paying for things I bought in the internet.

I have no record of my wallet

I do have my private key

Recently I tried to import my private key in blockchain.info and got the message Invalid private key encoding

I know for sure that this is my private key

I will appreciate any helpin explaining what could be the reason for this error message

Also, how I can see transactions done with this private key

..and ofcourse any ideas to recover will be greatly appreciated

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    the priv key is possible in three formats. In 32 Bytes hex format (64chars), or as WIF key with 51 chars (beginning with "5"), or compressed WIF key with 52 chars (beginning with "K" or "L"). IF you know what you have, than you can enter this into different wallets. A good candidate would be Electrum... – pebwindkraft Dec 30 '17 at 19:16
  • Continue previous comment.... since it was done long time back. I don't have good record of any of this. I found the wallet-id but the private key does not seem to match that wallet. A new question... given the Wallet-ID and password is there a way to access the Wallet if I don't remember which company/site has issued it and I have no matching private key? – Yakove Dec 31 '17 at 19:48
  • huh, the private key doesn't match the wallet-id? The private key is "the root" of all logic in bitcoin. So if you have it, there is a way to get to your funds. But wallet-id? I think I can't help here. Need some help from other experts. Maybe you can state, which wallet you used, and if the private key matches any of the data, I mentioned before (don't post the provoke though - you will (!) get robbed. Keep it for you - only for you). Otherwise it will be difficult to help. – pebwindkraft Dec 31 '17 at 23:58
  • I am trying to dig more into the data. I think I have the wallet-id and password. I tried different sites like blockchain.info on login to set the wallet-id and password and it didn't help. From the reading I did, it seems that the wallet is not part of the block-chain of the transactions but I wander if there is any central management for wallet that I can access to get access to my wallet. I know that the wallet is nothing but a folder of private keys so I expect that there is a secured way to recover it. Maybe I am wrong. Here I am looking for the help of the expert to share their opinion. – Yakove Jan 2 '18 at 7:05
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The problem might be that blockchain.info wants the WIF (wallet import format) instead of the private key. You might try to find some tools for converting the keys you have in WIF and then try to import them.

Make sure not to give away your keys in the process of converting (I wouldn't trust online tools)

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  • I have made a python library that can do this. PrivateKey.from_hex('yourkeyhere').wif(compressed=False) – Mike D Apr 23 '18 at 8:22

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