Don’t use Multibit and get your Bitcoin out of MultibitHD

Yesterday I wanted to see how some of my Bitcoins were doing. I use Multibit HD 0.4.1. Suddenly MultibitHD showed the whole wallet being unconfirmed. That means that I couldn’t send any Bitcoins or that Multibit HD has lost its bookkeeping. I find this unacceptable. Who can work with a wallet that can’t do the bookkeeping correctly? So first start to fix the issue and then look for a better wallet.

I tried to repair the wallet several times but only a part would become confirmed. So, I still couldn’t get at my money. Even restoring from the seed didn’t help.

When you look at the issue tracker on Github, you see that a lot more people have issues. Especially the closed issue tracker, leaves people in the dust without their money. These issues have been popping up since October 2016 and I haven’t seen a warning since. A wallet project should do a good disclosure on any bugs it finds and issue a recommendation to stop using the wallet until the issue is found and dealt with.
https://github.com/keepkey/multibit-hd/issues

I was able to extract my bitcoins by downgrading to Multibit 0.1.1 and do a repair of my wallet.

I became skeptical after the Multibit people sold the software to KeepKey. Also I needed to repair my wallet last year, which also scared the bejeezus out of me. Any project that produces a wallet that has a big button called “repair” shoudl do a better job. Those worries are now confirmed. Now getting the heck out of here towards a more sane client like electrum.

Photo: used and modified under Creative Commons license thanks to BTCKeychain

9 thoughts on “Don’t use Multibit and get your Bitcoin out of MultibitHD

  • Hi, I had 2 bitcoin in a multi-bit wallet and now can’t get into wallet, tried restore from wallet words but it just says “working” and does nothing.
    Is it possible I was hacked as I was using wallet earlier and sent bitcoin, all worked fine.

    Is there any way to get my bitcoin?

  • Hey there
    I have an old multibit wallet and it seems to have lost half my bitcoins (the balance shrunk when I reset the blockchain and transactions -I did this because it only gave me a spendable amount- which seems to amount now to the amount that is now missing from my multibit wallet). I checked my address on Blockchain and at least the correct amount is still there- however I am afraid to move my bitcoins from the Multibit wallet, not that I know how to anyhow- any advice on what to do? I would ideally like to move my bitcoins (or keys) to Blockchain so that I can store them safely there but I am afraid to do anything with multibit now that this has happened.

  • Hi thanks for response , to be honest I don’t understand the technology yet, so I will have to research your response. The version of multibit I have is 0.5.16 – is that bad?

      • Should I upload the keys into a Multibit HD wallet?
        Will that restore my correct balance?
        thanks for your help by the way..

        • You use the old version of MultibitHD to recreate your wallet with the proper funds, based on the magic 12 words (mnemonic). Then send them to a proper wallet like Electrum, where you have created a new wallet.

          If you have the private keys, then it’s easier. Import them in the client Electrum as shown below.

          https://bitcoinelectrum.com/importing-your-private-keys-into-electrum/
          Just keep on trying. Just know where you send your Bitcoins/BCH.

          • thanks again, this is very good advice. The thing is though i can’t remember if there is a mnemonic 12 word password on my bitcoin, would there be one? I used another just normal password to import them into the old Multibit waller- do you think that is it? or maybe I have lost the mnemonic ? I hope not.

  • I have the private keys I think, should I just try and import them into Electrum? do you think that will recover my full balance? Thanks again..

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