Multibit Classic and Multibit HD were two popular wallet software during the 2010s, but they were abandoned in 2017. During that time, many people bought Bitcoins, used Multibit to store them and forgot about them… until recently, when they realized that Bitcoin was worth a lot of money. Now, they would like to access their Bitcoins, but they are not sure where the wallet files are on their computer. How do you find them?
The manual way
One approach is to look for certain files or folders on your computer. If you are able to find the folders mentioned
below, there’s a good chance you can find the wallet files inside them. Multibit wallets have filenames that end
with .key, .wallet or .wallet.aes.
Once you have found a wallet file, you can open it with Multibit. If you don’t have a working copy of the software, you can download it by clicking on this link.
On Windows, you should look for the following folders:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\MultiBitC:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\MultiBitC:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\MultiBitHDC:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\MultiBitHD
On Mac, you should look for the following folders:
/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/MultiBit/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/MultiBitHD
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 files whose name end with .key, .wallet or .wallet.aes. You
can then open the files that were found in Multibit.
The automatic way
While the method above works, it has a few drawbacks. Notably, it may fail if you took steps to hide your wallet, for instance by renaming the file or moving it somewhere else. Moreover, the manual approach is tedious as you have to scour your entire computer for obscure files and folders, and hope you don’t overlook any of them.
This is why I have created the software Treasure Hunter. With it, you don’t have to go through each file and folder by hand: instead, you tell Treasure Hunter which drive or folder to scan and it does the work for you. It can even scan removable storage devices such as USB keys. Once it is done, it will let you know if it has found any Multibit wallet files.
Treasure Hunter works on Mac, Windows and Linux. It’s a free and open-source software.