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Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I bought bitcoin about 2 years ago. Put it in coinbase wallet. I have the lost my ability to log in and cannot remember my old phone# to reopen the wallet. I DO have my "share code #" for the bitcoin and I DO have the "Long"#.

Am I out of luck to get access to my bitcoin or is there another way to spend it or transfer it because I have the 2 different codes?

Can I spend my bitcoin without knowing how to get into my bitcoin wallet?

Please give me feedback THANKS!

jonathanbryan
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1 Answers1

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Technically the Bitcoin can only be spent if you have the private key for the address. The private key is stored in a wallet. If you do not have access to that wallet then you will not be able to spend the money.

Try to contact the customer service of CoinBase to see what you can do with the information you have, also tell them if you have made any backups or wrote down any initial parameters (do not give away the exact parameters as it might be used to recover your wallet, just the fact that you have it or not).

Update:

In the comment below you mentioned they told you to never tell anyone the "Long"# you received, this is good, it is very likely to be a private key (about 51 random lowercase and uppercase letters and numbers) or some kind of "seed" (English words).

In case of the former you need to download a client and try to import that key. If you have the disk space (133 GB) I suggest using the official Bitcoin Core client, then after the initial synchronization finishes load your private key in the debug window follownig the How do I import a private key into Bitcoin-Qt? question. (Note: you are really likely to need to skip step 5 as your wallet is not encrypted.)

For the latter (if the "Long"# is a "seed") you need to use the same website/software you used when generated it but I really cannot help you out more than directing you to the customer service.

Murch
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Gábor Héja
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  • I think the question is whether it is possible to recover the private key using the information that OP has. It will depend on what those numbers mean in the context of Coinbase. – Nate Eldredge Jun 28 '17 at 17:20
  • @NateEldredge: Thanks, I updated the answer. – Gábor Héja Jun 28 '17 at 17:34
  • I DO HAVE 2 KEYS. (One is a "share code" - a shorter #) and (I have a long # - i was told to never give that out) - Maybe the long code is the private key. Can I spend them with the long # or do I have to be able to get into the wallet? – jonathanbryan Jun 28 '17 at 20:39
  • (@JLBryan: comment is too short for a response, updated the answer.) – Gábor Héja Jun 28 '17 at 22:37
  • Thank you so much Gábor - I'll give it a try and let you know how it worked out. – jonathanbryan Jun 29 '17 at 11:49
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    GABOR HERA, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!! IT WORKED. I was able to retrieve my 4500 bitcoins! - Just kidding - only 1 : ) but $2500 is $2500. Thanks again. – jonathanbryan Jul 01 '17 at 14:34
  • I am happy you got it back :) Could you please mark this answer as correct then? Thanks! – Gábor Héja Jul 01 '17 at 15:30