Back around 2012–2013, I purchased some Bitcoin on what I believe was a centralized exchange. I never touched them since, and I’m now trying to recover access.
Here’s what I still have:
- My old email address used to register
- A 5-digit code (possibly a PIN or account identifier)
- A 32-character string that looks like an MD5 hash or similar cryptographic fingerprint — it’s too short to be a private key, and contains non-hex characters, which suggests it might be a platform-specific token or session ID rather than a standard hash
I do NOT have:
- The name of the platform (I genuinely can’t remember)
- A seed phrase or private key
- A wallet.dat file (as far as I know)
My questions:
- Could this MD5-like string help identify which platform I used?
- Is there a way to trace back which exchange was associated with my old email, based on the type of identifiers they used at the time?
- What were the most common centralized exchanges before 2013 that I should try first (Mt. Gox, Blockchain.info, Coinbase, BTC-e…)?
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
