Topic: Recovering wallet from passphrase (Read 524 times)

The BitWallet support people told me that the Derivation Path is user customisable... so you can pick whatever you want... but that the default was the m/i’/0/k one. However, I'm not sure if they ALWAYS used this default, to be honest, I got the impression that the people answering my email queries were not very "technical"



Sort of... as an SPV wallet, it uses "Bloom Filters" to lookup transactions in an indexed database maintained by a node. This is a LOT faster than having to scan block by block like Armory does... but potentially gives up some privacy as you're passing those addresses to an external node.

Yes, I've used the same wallet on iOS and it gives several options when importing that I don't remember when I first generated it (but that was in 2014 so I assume the software evolved).
All options give me a wallet with 0 transactions.  And I definitely had a few transactions depositing and withdrawing.  I do find it strange how quickly it decides there are no transactions (Armory takes forever to re-scan the blockchain for my cold storage wallet) - but I guess its using something like an online blockchain explorer to quickly (insecurely) get the data.

The only thing I can imagine is that the software changed (and the algorithm they used for the seed/addresses from the words), or I made a stupid mistake and backed up the wallet but then deleted it and created a new one.

I hate to state the obvious, but did you try installing your original bitWallet on your same iPhone, and entering the word phrase there?

You won't need password guesses, the word phrase doesn't have a password.

Thanks for that.  Unfortunately still no luck finding any transactions.  I'm going to do a bit more research into BIP39 and write a script to try generating master public keys from all derivation paths and feed them to a block explorer to see if one finds any transactions.  If that fails, I'll just post the words here and someone else can try to retrieve them

I emailed the BitWallet support... they say the Default BitWallet Derivation path is: "m/i’/0/k"

This would equate to a Derivation Path of: m/0'/0

So in Electrum try and import your 24 word seed, click "Options", select BIP39 and then set the derivation path to m/0'/0 and see if that works.

No luck with Electrum.  I used the default derivation path and no transactions show up. Either the derivation path I'm using is wrong, or I made some stupid mistake like starting fresh with a new wallet and not rewriting the new words (

I'm pretty sure it was bitWallet on iOS.  I am going to try Electrum now.  Many thanks for the replies

As long as you have your seed written down properly your coins are recoverable.
Do you remember which wallet you used to store these coins? This would simplify the search for the right derivation path a lot.
You also have to consider that if you already spend btc's from this wallet your coins may be stored in a change address.
/0/0 is usually 1. account recieve addresses and in /0/1 is 1. account change addresses. But this varys from wallet to wallet.

Did you try to use electrum desktop wallet here. I tried to import my 24-word recovery phrase on electrum before and it works fine on it. You should try it too. Just make sure that you paste the 24-word correctly ordered and spelled.

Bump. No ideas to try all possible seeds from these words to find a wallet that has some transactions?

Hi all,

A while back (around 1 year ago) my iPhone got stuck in a boot loop and I ended up wiping/resetting it.
Because of that, I lost a small amount of Bitcoin (<1) that I kept on the phone just in case I ever went somewhere that accepted it as payment.
My other bitcoin are safe in an offline Armory wallet.

I had not put any effort into trying to recover them, but with the current valuation its worth putting a bit of effort in
I have a 24 word phrase I wrote down for the wallet, but importing it I have multiple options and none I have tried so far result in any bitcoin or transactions for the addresses generated.

So what options are available to me to try to find addresses with transactions from all possible wallets of this 24 word phrase?  I tried to use https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ to get some keys from it to try and import in Armory, but I don't know if its BIP32, BIP44, BIP49 or something else, nor do I know the derivation path, etc.  And I'm not sure if I used a password as well but would have a few guesses at what it would be if I did.

Ideally I want a tool that lets me enter the 24 words, a few password guesses, and determines if there is a corresponding wallet with any transactions from all possible combinations.
Does something like that exist?

BTW, the wallet was bitWallet on iOS.

Thanks