Topic: Trying to recover bitcoin from a legacy address given out by a trezor circa 2017 (Read 413 times)

Trezor is open source right? So if someone wanted to they could inspect the source code to figure out under what conditions a legacy account will become "greyed out". then we could know what was really going on. Should be a very simple matter.

Fairly sure that the wallet.trezor.io system didn't store "state"... and it certainly doesn't now. So, as soon as you unplug the device, everything is "forgotten". When you reconnect and unlock the device, then it does the account discovery again.


I've certainly never seen it show both "default" and "passphrased" accounts in the UI at the same time... and I've had my Trezor since 2016. But yes... it's possible that this behaviour changed at some point between then and now.

Could this be a case of a passphrased account? OP's sister added the passphrased account to their Trezor software (perhaps without even realizing they had used a passphrase), and then every time from then on they attached their Trezor (without the passphrase) the account in question was still displayed but inaccessible. Difficult to test given we don't know what version of software they were using.

No... I mean I haven't seen any cases of someone who had a "greyed out" legacy account that they were unable to send funds from, that disappeared after they updated their firmware and/or reset their device etc.

You are correct that Trezor doesn't "show" the list of Legacy accounts by default... but it shows the "Legacy Account" menu item and if you expand the menu item, it does show any existing "Legacy Accounts" with balance and transaction history. You don't have to explicitly go searching for them.


Unfortunately, what we're left with is that we're essentially "guessing" based on a 2nd hand description of something that happened 3-4 years ago.

That's easy to test: enter the address into Blockchair.com's search field. It will tell you on which chain(s) it has funds.

Are you certain that you've sent Bitcoin (BTC) to your sister and not Bitcoin Cash (BCH)?
Because in 2017, BCH's address is the same as Bitcoin's legacy address; thinking you/she might have remembered it incorrectly and it's Bitcoin Cash all along.

you haven't come across anyone that said they couldn't see their legacy wallet? i think it have to do with segwit and trezor dont like to showing legacy it preferred to using segwit.

You and me both...


I'm still confused as to how the address and/or balance would show up in the Trezor wallet (greyed out or otherwise) without being able to be to used and/or recreated when the wallet is restored.

Trezor, both the web version and the newer Trezor Suite, does NOT allow you to import addresses or private keys etc. You cannot create a wallet without the device. The web version would essentially recreate the wallet every time you started it up and unlocked your device.

It's certainly not something I've seen while using a Trezor... and I don't recall any similar cases either.

OP, have you perhaps overlooked this suggestion?
I also think that this could help you, but to better understand what happened to your transaction. It's official Trezor app https://suite.trezor.io/

He knows the bitcoin address lol. i the question is, did his sister or whoever she was how did she get that address into her trezor?? i doubt she would know how to create a watch only wallet and even if she did know how, why would she do that and where would she get the particular bitcoin address from to do that? the mystery deepens...

Wait a minute. You said that the coins were visible in an address when you imported it into a watch-only Electrum wallet. So why don't you try playing around with the derivation path on both seeds to change it to ones that could be probable Trezor paths? It's basically the first 3 numbers you need to manipulate. It goes down to the second and third numbers if you know the address prefix which you seem to know: Paths start with 44, 49 and 84 (I believe they are all hardened) for 1, 3 and bc1 addresses respectively.

i'm not sure I agree with our logic there but I get the general gist of it.

the main question that comes to my mind is before the firmware reset why was the thing "greyed out" and unable to be used?? that doesn't make any sense. maybe trezor would know since they are the ones that designed it. if i was the OP I would have contacted them right there and then and demanded to know why before doing anything else. but unfortunately they reset the firmware and when they did that it really messed things up. probably forever.

another mistake they made is losing their PIN and thus causing them to feel the need to reset the device. that was a big mistake.

Because the issue here is likely user error.

There are millions of users of Trezor devices, and issues such as this one are very rare. This is not the same as blockchain.com wallets, where issues are incredibly frequent and are far more likely due to bug or flaws in the code.

Using the wrong Trezor device. Using a different seed phrase. Using a passphrase. Using a different derivation path. There are multiple possibilities, and it sounds like OP's sister doesn't know what she did or how she did it, so user error is the most likely issue here.

If you base your decision on the experience of one user with a problem (who doesn't even share the story first-hand) instead of the millions of users who don't have problems, then indeed you shouldn't buy a Trezor.
By the same logic you should probably not use Windows. Or any software for that matter, because there's always someone who's had a problem with it somewhere.

I prefer this approach: before funding a wallet, I use iancoleman.io on an offline system running from memory to verify the addresses created by the hardware wallet can be recreated from the same seed without the device.
So far, I've never encountered any inconsistencies.

No it's not a dumb conclusion at all. Why would I want to use something that makes someone's bitcoin disappear??
From what the user said so far, it doesn't sound like they did ANYTHING wrong. If the money showed up in their trezor but then it disappeared how do you explain that?

You initially said the 24 word seed phrase did not recover anything:

But now you are saying the 24 word seed phrase does recover their accounts:

Is this the same 24 word seed phrase? Have you use any additional passphrases? Did you recover it differently on both these occasions?

It won't. Private keys are not transferable between addresses like that.

Have you had a chance to put this seed phrase in to Ian Coleman and cycle through multiple derivation paths?

Good luck with that

That's a dumb conclusion, it's much more likely the user did something wrong.

that's probably not going to work. how exactly would you go about picking this particular private key? interesting situation but remind me to never use a trezor.

I appreciate all the feedback.

I have entered the 24 word seed into a Trezor One I had on hand.  It does recover the account showing all their tx history including where they sent the 3 Bitcoin out on December 19, 2017.  But it does not show 3 bitcoin being received.  I also had it display the "Legacy" accounts over on the left of the screen as HCP was showing.  They are all empty. 

I am beginning to think that they acquired the address from some other source and not their Trezor One.  They are quite certain this is not the case.  They assure me they had no other wallets or accounts other then Coinbase and they are not there.

So I am left scratching my head.  The 3 bitcoin are in the address they sent me in their email back in 2017. They say it came from the Trezor One.  They say they saw the 3 bitcoin I sent back to them show up in the "Legacy Account" on the Trezor One but that they were greyed out.  They were unable to send them any where.  Then after they updated the firmware they claim the bitcoins quit showing up in the legacy account even as greyed out ones.  It is not clear to me whether the actual firmware update caused them to disappear or whether the cookies on their computer that had knowledge of the bitcoin expired.  But if the Ledger software was showing the coins as greyed out coins in a legacy account then surely the address came from the ledger?  I have both seed phrases they claimed to have used with the Trezor One.  They are adamant that there were no other seed phrases ever used.  The 12 word phrase first then later they re-set the trezor and used the 24 word phrase it gave them.  For what it's worth the 24 word seed phrase shows the history of them sending me the 3 Bitcoin.  So I feel when I returned it to them a few weeks later they would have given me an address out of the trezor using the 24 word seed.  But even if the address came from the 12 seed phrase it should show up when I recover it.  And the 3 bitcoins do not show up on the Trezor One in any of the accounts including the legacy account for either seed phrase.

So I am stumped.

At this point I am simply going to try crafting a manual bitcoin transaction using a private key derived from the 24-word seed phrase and see if when submitted the bitcoin network will move the coins for me.

I'll keep you posted as to any outcomes I achieve.

Thank you for taking the time to help out.

Yes. It should be as simple as hooking up the correct Trezor device which recovered the segwit wallet, and using either the Trezor software to re-add the legacy account or using Electrum to open a new wallet using P2PKH at m/44'/0'/0'.

It sounds like OP is trying to restore from a seed phrase which is the wrong seed phrase for the Trezor in question.