Topic: Unable to access BTC from change address on Blockchain.com wallet (Read 349 times)

Definitely, this service should not be recommended to anyone.
It is too unreliable, and their support is extremely indifferent and formal to user requests in case of problems. It is not for nothing that there is such a crazy number of complaints about this service on the forum, I think none of their competitors have such a number of outraged users. And this is of course a characteristic indicator that you need to think very carefully before using this service. It is also worth considering their invention with the establishment of some fines for users who violated something there. This is simply impudence and lawlessness.

At least a good outcome after several days of contacting their so called support, it's so rare for them to solve an issue actually for the past years when they integrated to broader platform (as an exchange, well, even before that too) this board is the living witness of those unsolved issues in the past.

Good, that explains the issue very well. (probably, you luckily got directed to their technical team)

That "Gap Limit" if working correctly, should pre-generate the specified number of keys/addresses after the last used one.
So in this particular case, instead of sending the change to the first unused change address index, it's sent to the 22nd.
A simple bug which should be solved after they receive multiple similar support tickets. (fingers crossed)

What they did is basically use another change address (2nd ~ 20th, 1-19 index should work) so that the "missing" 22nd change address will be pre-generated in your wallet according to the gap limit.

You already solved the issue but for reference, following my instructions should also work in that case plus it doesn't require you to create a dust output that could be more expensive to spend that its worth.

All, right before I wanted to follow the instructions given in this forum (thanks alot for your replies) I got a reaction from the blockchain.com support. They managed to help me to retrieve my bitcoins back. I will post the reaction(s) below, maybe this helps others aswell. I got my lost bitcoins back!

Reaction 1:

Hello,
 
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
 
Some of our users have reported that bitcoin sent to a change address (an address generated by one's own wallet) do not immediately reflect in their wallet balances. (Click here to learn more about change addresses.)
 
Don't worry; these funds are completely safe and should be shown in your Blockchain.com Wallet in 2-3 hours. Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused by this issue.
 
If the funds still do not reflect in your balance at that time, please reply to this message with the Segwit xPub associated with your wallet. You can find this by clicking “Settings” > “Wallets & Addresses.” To the right of "Private Key Wallet,” click “Manage”. While on the Segwit tab, press "Manage" again > "Show xPub". Read the important warning about sharing an xPub with an untrusted source, then copy the xPub text (not the QR code) and include it in your reply to us.
 
Kind regards,

Reaction 2 (after following the instructions in reaction 1):

Hello,
 
Thank you for circling back.
 
To explain what happened, the way Bitcoin transactions work is that the full amount from a Bitcoin wallet address in your DeFi wallet is sent to the mempool. The amount you want to send is directed to the wallet address you specified, while the remaining funds are sent to another wallet address within your DeFi wallet, known as the "change address." The change amount usually reflects in your account immediately, though sometimes it may take 2 to 3 hours.

In this case, the amount did not reflect due to what is called a gap limit. An HD wallet allows for billions of public and private key wallets to be generated from your seed phrase. However, our DeFi wallet only scans the first 20 unused addresses to comply with the BIP44 spec, which states that addresses of an xPub beyond this limit should not be checked for funds.

This means you have different addresses under your seed phrase where the change could be sent. Unfortunately, in this instance, when you sent the funds, the change was sent to the 22nd unused address in your Segwit xPub.

To address the gap limit, kindly send "dust funds" 0.000001 BTC to the wallet address below. Please be assured that the dust funds you send will also appear in your wallet:

 

You may refer to this xPub explorer link to view the wallet addresses under your Blockchain.com DeFi wallet:


This link was taken from your Segwit xPub, which we converted into a zpub so that the explorer could read the string of characters. Sending dust funds to it will bring down the unused addresses, addressing the gap limit and allowing your wallet to scan the wallet address where the missing funds went.

Kindly send dust funds to the bolded address above and let us know if this works or otherwise.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to resolve this issue.
 
Regards,

10-4 thanks for the confirmation.  I'll report back in a few days on my move to Trezor.

I'd recommend creating a new wallet with a new recovery phrase when you install the Trezor - it's very easy to follow the instructions when you first plug it in. Then send your BTC to your new Trezor wallet from Electrum.

A few days I had the same situation happen to me with my old Blockchain account (originally created before 2016).  I've only used my wallet a couple times.   A few years ago Blockchain had me change (or convert) my wallet from I think a 16 word to a 12 word seed phrase.  Everything went fine and I was able to sell some BTC.  A few days ago I tried to sell part of my BTC again, but this time the whole DeFi wallet went to zero after the transaction was completed.  After some research I found that the remainder of my BTC went to a "change address" of this converted wallet.  Luckily I found this forum and I've followed nc50lc instructions (Thanks nc50lc !!) and I've been able to retrieve the private key of the "change address".  I don't have a whole lot of BTC but it's enough that I don't want to throw away.  I'm following snapper1010's lead, so I have a Trezor coming so I can move away from Blockchain but I had a question before it gets here.

snapper1010:  Did you setup a new wallet on the Trezor and then use Electrum to send the funds to this new wallet?  I've googled restoring wallets with address and private key and Electrum software seems to be about the only way to go.  But I'm just not clear if a new wallet has to be created on the Trezor or if the "change address" can somehow be put back into the original wallet.  I agree with you, the Blockchain website is not the same as it was several years ago. 

I think nc50lc's instructions needs to be made into it's own website or something so other people like us know what to do when this happens.  I highly doubt the Blockchain website will be fixed anytime soon.

Based from this, I think the bug is: Blockchain somehow cannot scan for the change sent to its second 'Defi Wallet' (account_index '1') despite using it to receive the user's change.
Usually, it's sent to the first account index's -> internal chain.

Their new "Beta" wallet seems filled with quite dangerous bugs that may mislead their users that they've lost their BTC.
Bugs that I've seen so far:

• This, it fails to recognize the change leading to zero balance.
• Restored old Bitcoins that are moved to imported keys shows compressed WIF prvKey despite using uncompressed pubKey for generating the address. (reference)
• Not key-related related, Log-in will fail if the user's password previously doesn't contain any "special character", restoring the recovery phrase to set a new password solves this or import it to other wallet.

It's great to know that you were able to recover you Bitcoins. Hopeful @krav  also follows the same instructions and gets access to his Bitcoins.
Blockchain.com "support" just like most support of this big exchanges and other services is sometimes so useless. Some of them are even probably less technically gifted and have no clue on how to help a user in need.

This is why it's very important to avoid such wallets, especially when you see a lot of complaints about them in different forums and subreddits.

The change address holding the bitcoins was not recognised by the Blockchain.com OR Bluewallet web wallets but was still retrievable using the BIP39 tool using my Blockchain.com account recovery phrase.
Using nc50lc's instructions, I was able to retrieve the private key for the change address under "derived addresses" after changing the account index to 1.

Apologies if this doesn't make sense, it's a bit too technical to me to get my head around.

Happy to hear you were able to recover your coins, thanks to nc50lc guidance!
So, were the coins sent to a change address on the same account or on a different account?

This topic is just another example why no one should be using this wallet. I can’t even imagine how many of its users have lost their coins because of similar bugs!
You did the right thing by sending all your coins to your Trezor wallet

Good news - I followed this advice and have successfully recovered the bitcoin from the change address and it is now safely transferred to my trezor wallet!
Feeling very relieved, and grateful to you nc50lc for your excellent clear advice on this. I would have had no idea how to do it without your help. Some BTC coming your way, by way of thanks.

BTW I've still had no response from Blockchain.com "support" and I am baffled at how they can allow this to happen to multiple users without any acknowledgement. I've now removed all my funds and won't be back to that website. No wonder their reputation has tanked in the time since I first registered with them in 2013!

I'll list my replies based from the questions respectively;

• That would be "offline usage", not totally "Air-Gap", here's Air-Gap by definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gap_(networking)
  But if you do not have any other option, make sure that the PC is safe from malware and do not enable your internet until you've sent the transaction via the cold-storage spend method that I've mentioned,
  wait for at least 1 confirmation on the transaction before re-enabling your internet.
  
  
• You can download the release which is a stand-alone HTML file.
  That can then be run on any browser and will run like its online version except everything it needs to function is in that html file.
  
  
• Since the PC is Air-Gap, you cannot download it from there.
  Instead, use your online computer, download it from https://electrum.org/#download (recommended to verify its signature)
  Then copy the downloaded binary (appimage/installer/executable) to a USB Flash drive and plug it to the offline machine to install it there.

I believe what he was asking about is if he needs to download a third-party software like an interpreter or an IDE to be able to run the script.
The answer is no, you don’t need any of that, OP. Coinb.in script is written in JavaScript not in Python. So, you can use any web browser you like, as long as it supports JS (chrome, firefox..), to run it.

It is more than that because you will also remove the device WiFi card and Bluetooth.

There are many bitcoin wallet that can run on airgapped devices.

To download Electrum on USB drive and connect it to the device you want to install Electrum for the installation.

I have not been following this thread when I thought you may no more have coins on the wallet but I might be wrong. You can wait for a reply from nc50lc.

Thanks for your reply. I'm not really familiar with this so a few questions:
- By an Air-Gap machine, do you simply just mean to disconnect my PC from the internet?
- Do I need Python software to run the offline version of the tool?
- What do you mean by "use USB flash drive to install Electrum".

Thanks in advance.

My post above describes how you can manually derive your possible "bc1" change addresses of your 1st, 2nd and more blockchain DeFi-wallets.
If your change address starts with '1', switch to 'BIP44' tab instead of 'BIP84'.

Here's a short explanation:
Each of your Blockchain.com account's (non-trading) wallets are derived from succeeding 'account_index' starting from 0.
Each of those wallet's change addresses are derived from 'internal chain_index', which is '1'.

If you followed it correctly, you should be able to derive most of the change addresses that can be derived from your recovery phrase.
And safe too if you properly setup an Air-Gap machine (PC).
Now if you can't find it using those instructions, it was sent elsewhere due to a bug or something.

Hi all,

I have exactly the same problem as snapper. I transfered a small amount from my BTC DeFi wallet on Blockchain.com to a different exchange. Because I'm not very familiar with blockchain, I only transfered a small amount. When succesfull, I wanted to transfer the remaining amount. The transfer was succesfull, but the remaing BTC's got transfered to a change adress (I had to google what is going on here). The DeFi wallet I have on Blockchain.com also originates from 2017. I only deposited on there once, and never touched it again. Untill today.

The balance on my DeFi wallet is now zero... I know what the "change adress" is, I can see it in the "output" of the transaction. Could anyone explain to me how I can get access to this "change adress" via my blokchain.com account?

I would be very gratefull.

Kind regards,

Krav

Try to manually derive most of your possible change address using IanColeman's open-source BIP39 tool, only use it on an offline Air-Gap machine.
Link: https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39

Follow these steps:

• 1. Open the tool on the offline PC's browser, type your recovery phrase on "BIP39 Mnemonic" text box.
• 2. Scroll-Down to 'Derivation Path' below, and select "BIP84" tab.
• 3. In that tab, Change "External / Internal" from '0' to '1'. (that would be your change addresses of your 1st Blockchain.com wallet)
• 4. Then look for the address in the 'Derived Addresses' list below (use Show __ more addresses to generate more, recommended '100').
• 5. If it's not there, go back to 'Derivation Path' and change "Account" from '0' to '1' and keep the internal chain set to 1. (the address list will change to your 2nd Blockchain.com wallet's change addresses)
• 6. If it's also not in your 2nd, test up to '9' account_index to see if they have another bug that causes it to send to a change address of a higher account index.

If you found the address, copy its private key and import it to Electrum via new wallet option; "Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys" on the same Air-Gap machine.
(use USB flash drive to install Electrum, do not connect to internet)
Then on an online machine, create a "watch-only" Electrum wallet using its address (paste the address, not prvKey).
To spend, follow the steps on how to spend from a Cold-Storage Electrum setup: bitcoinelectrum.com/creating-a-cold-storage-wallet-in-electrum

If it's not in any of the given derivation path, Blockchain has another Bug and you may have to provide more information than what's given.
(not the private keys/recovery phrase of course)

Yes there is a wallet named "August2017" and a wallet named "DeFi wallet", the balance of both now reads as zero. There is only one recovery phrase under the Settings --> Security tab, and that's the one I've imported to BlueWallet. I have scoured the blockchain.com interface to see if I can find private keys for any other wallet under my account settings but I can't...

I think my only hope now is that the Blockchain.com support team will respond to my query and be able to sort this out for me... they haven't acknowledged my messages at all which makes me feel very nervous...

The only thing that somewhat reassures me is that I can still see the balance of BTC sitting in the change address from my transaction on the public blockchain.