Developers Warn Bitcoin Core Users of Critical Migration Bug

A Dangerous Bug Affects Bitcoin Core Users

Developers of Bitcoin Core have cautioned users of versions 30.0 and 30.1 against migrating old wallets after a bug was discovered that can delete all files from a wallet directory if the migration fails. This issue arises under specific conditions and affects the migration from Bitcoin Core wallets that have never been renamed or updated.

Lacie Zhang, a market analyst at Bitget Wallet, explained that the bug is triggered when the software attempts to migrate an untouched old wallet file "wallet.dat" stored in a custom wallet directory. In these cases, the migration may appear to have been successfully completed, but the cleanup logic accidentally deletes the entire wallet directory, and if the user does not have an external backup, "loss of access to funds is effectively guaranteed."

Shawn Odonaghue, community leader at the layer-3 blockchain Orbs, noted that the bug primarily affects "very old wallet configurations" and that users with a modern hardware or software wallet are unlikely to experience these issues.

The Bitcoin Core project has announced that users should refrain from using wallet migration tools until a corrective version, Bitcoin Core 30.2, is released. Zhang recommended that users check their versions and perform a complete backup of their data directory before proceeding with any migration.