Quote from: nodc3 on August 01, 2025, 08:05:09 PM

Quote from: Franctoshi on August 01, 2025, 05:29:52 PM

Quote from: nodc3 on July 31, 2025, 05:39:07 PM

Five months ago I created a bitcoin wallet in electrum. I created the seed phrase in electrum (I'm 90% sure) on a macbook. I put a small amount there, deleted the wallet file, deleted electrum. I immediately reinstalled electrum, entered the seed phrase, the wallet was restored, the amount was displayed on the balance. The seed phrase is absolutely correct, I rewrote it many times and remembered it, entered it exactly from a piece of paper. The seed phrase was 12 words without an additional word. I transferred a larger sum there.

After that, I deleted the wallet file. Then restored it. Then deleted it again.

5 months later I am trying to restore it, the balance is 0. I found the address in the blockchain where I transferred the money, btc is there, but this address is not in the list of wallet addresses. I tried to restore the wallet in BlueWallet, it identified the seed phrase as electrum segwit. 0 ballance.

Any ideas what to do now?

This situation can be worrying and annoying at the same time, but let's get something clearer: you said you wrote it many times on different places or just one place? That's my question. If the answer is that you wrote it in different places, do well to compare your seed phrases you wrote down in other places; maybe the one you used to try to gain back access to your electrum wallet after months back might have a bit of an error or differ.

I had printed it in 3 copies, later I copied it to metal plates. I also remember the phrase quite well.
I currently have 2 theories:
1) I for some reason used extended seed phrase (20% chance). Tried all my passwords as a 13th word, tried both electrum native segwit and BIP39.
2) I generated a seed phrase in Electrum. Then recovered the wallet, but using BEP39 option. (80%) I remember I was changing letters "h" for ' in derivation path. Probably I was copying the derivation path from some web article, so it should be smth fairly standard. Address starts with bc1q, so there are less options. I tried standard derivation paths, nothing worked. (If someone has a list I can manually bruteforce with - I'd be thankful).
Tried checking browser history from that day - nothing, its gone. Tried google activity - nothing that day, prolly used incognito. Tried recovering deleted wallet file on my macbook - nothing. Somehow cannot even recover the one I've deleted today. Going to have some sleep and hope to get more ideas tomorrow. To be honest, I don't get, how I could fk up so bad. I remember I was double checking everything I was doing to be sure I would be able to repeat that.

All these actions remind us of the rule that "the best is always the enemy of the good."
Sometimes users resort to such paranoid settings that they regularly change passwords, phrases, and syllables, which causes great confusion. Since this topic is in the section for beginners, I can advise for those starting their journey here: do not be too inventive; simplicity is sometimes the best solution. Create a seed phrase, write it down in a place where prying eyes cannot see, and that's it; no more witchcraft is needed. Buying a hardware wallet is also a wise decision.