Bitcoin Core is the very first wallet software that came to exist. It was developed by the creator of Bitcoin itself, Satoshi Nakamoto, and was released in 2009. It still exists as of today, but many people prefer other wallet software that are easier and more convenient to use.
If you bought Bitcoins in the very first years of its existence, you may have used Bitcoin Core to store your coins. However, if it has been a long time since you have accessed your Bitcoins, you may not even know where the Bitcoin Core wallet is stored on your computer.
If you are wondering how to find your Bitcoin Core wallet, follow this tutorial.
The manual way
One approach is to look for a file named wallet.dat on your computer. Once you find it, you can open it with Bitcoin
Core, which can be downloaded by clicking on this link.
On Windows, the wallet.dat file is normally found in the following folders:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\BitcoinC:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Bitcoin
On Mac, the wallet.dat file is normally found in the following folder:
/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin
If you cannot find any of the folders above, or if they don’t contain any wallet files, you can instead use your
operating system’s search function and search for a file named wallet.dat.
The automatic way
The method above will not work if you took steps to hide your wallet files, for instance by renaming them or moving them elsewhere. In such a case, you will need to use my software, Treasure Hunter. It will scan your computer and let you know if it has found any Bitcoin Core wallets, and all you have to do is press a few buttons while the software does the heavy lifting! Treasure Hunter works on Mac, Windows and Linux. It’s a free and open-source software.