1 Year Trying to Crack My 2013 Bitcoin Wallet — Need Expert Advice

[hsc_learner]

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some guidance from those with experience in password recovery/cracking.
For nearly a year, I’ve been trying to recover access to an old Bitcoin wallet (wallet.dat from 2013). I extracted the hash and have been attempting to crack it using an RTX 3060, but haven’t had any success so far.
Recently, I discovered Vast.ai and was able to run jobs on more powerful GPUs (including an RTX 5090). I was hopeful this would make a difference, but unfortunately, I still haven’t had any luck.

So far, I’ve tried:

• Variations of old passwords I may have used
  
• Brute force with numeric ranges (0–10 digits)
  
• Short brute-force masks (1–5 characters, all character sets)
  
• Large wordlists (including weakpass and similar sources)
  

At this point, I’m considering expanding brute-force attempts to longer character lengths, but I’m concerned about cost vs. benefit.
I’d really appreciate advice on:

• The most efficient GPU(s) for this type of workload
  
• Cost-effective strategies (especially when using rented compute like Vast.ai)
  
• Smarter approaches beyond pure brute force (mask strategies, rule-based attacks, etc.)
  

Any tips or insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[jimby]

Have a look at comboleetor, available at https://www.jimby.name/techbits/recent/comboleetor/

It's useful for generating passwords that are combinations of words, numbers, punctuation.  It's particularly good if you used to use a password "system" like "lastname+randomnumer+punctuation+otherword" or something like that.

The basic idea is that you use word blocks, number, punctuation, and leetspeak in any order and comboleetor generates a password file that you can then use with hashcat or john.

Best of luck!