Bitcoin Forum

Hello, everyone,

I have a little problem with my Electrum Wallet. Since I am learning the topic Bitcoin right now, I unfortunately make mistakes. Biggest mistake not to have written down the SEED.

Today I sent BTC to my wallet, I wanted to forward it now. Electrum now asks for a 2FA code of the Google-Authenticator. Unfortunately I don't have it anymore and since I don't have a SEED I can't restore it either.

Can I get my BTCs somehow? Electrum unfortunately has no support, so I hope for help here. Of course I can name the whole transaction IDs etc. There must be some way to send my BTCs?

I am grateful for every tip.

Never dealt with 2FA enabled wallet so I have not much knowledge about it. However losing seed was a big mistake from your part. I suggest keep a back up of the wallet file. You will find it here: C:\Users\TOURpcNAME\AppData\Roaming\Electrum\wallets

By the way, if somehow you are able to send the btc then you need to empty this wallet.

I just made a backup of my wallet file. I was able to open my wallet file, to change passwort etc.
Now I am looking for a way to have access to my btcs. Its a lot of money unfortunately.

Wait! I think you can find the seeds. Give me few minutes. I will update this post.

Edit: Yeah! It's easy LOL.

Go to wallet > Seed

https://i.imgur.com/U76chev.png

https://i.imgur.com/it4BW3T.png

https://i.imgur.com/xz4vhbi.png

In the pop up you will see your seed.

Let me know if this helps.

You sir are a genius. Thank you very much. It didn't work right away, I had to try all the wallet files first, then it worked on a wallet where the BTCs were. Thank you very much. My hero.

No problem buddy. Happy to help someone in need.

Few advise from experience:
1. Always have backup of the seed. Write them somewhere safe. do not disclose it to other or store online.
2. It's a 2FA wallet so, backup the 2FA key. Might be useful
3. Additionally you can backup the wallet files.

See you around buddy.

One rule about 2FA is to always have your backups thats why many use authy 2fa app over google authentication app but since its preinstalled in the waller itself makes it more dangerous,there is no way to have access to your fund mate unless you have recovery seed or the electrum team are willing to help

I've never used 2FA on Electrum, but doesn't this make 2FA totally worthless?

It is really strange, when trying to create a wallet with 2fa on electrum this warning appears:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/12/6ufoj.png

And really:
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/12/6uyxG.png

The seed can only be seen if he already had a wallet restored from the same seed (which includes 2-of-3 keys). Otherwise, it should be grayed out.

Also, I never used 2FA on Electrum.
Question so how to safe them?
open notepad on your computer past your Electrum seed.

Example original seed.

Adding little word and print out(like paper print)
Customized seed.


don't forget remember to underline adding word. I hope no need 2FA for Electrum.

You will just have to hope that there are not some nasty Malware installed on your computer that are logging or tracking all activity on your computer, because you exposed your seed, when you extracted it. A simple screen capture will expose your seed and then someone else can restore that wallet on their side.

If I were you, I would transfer those coins to another wallet or Bitcoin address, just to be safe. Then learn more about Paper wallets and desktop wallets and start securing those coins properly.  :P

"Electrum team" won't be able to help you directly on recovering your wallet, all they can do is to inform you about the possible options.
They don't have access to your private keys, wallet files or even public keys.

That's not what she meant,
The problem is: if someone got access to the wallet file and its passphrase, he can just extract the SEED from it and restore into a 2FA disabled wallet; the 2FA Authenticator app wont be even needed by the culprit to steal the funds in it.

AFAK, "Wallet->SEED" should be grayed out for F2A wallets and will only be available if user disabled 2FA.
OP has multiple wallet files, let's wait for his reply.

Sorry misunderstanding, just shares Ignore electrum 2FA safe seed Somehow collected electrum seed After that It will be a bit difficult to manage or hack it.
other places  2FA using for safety on the fund(likely withdrawal processes).

I have never tried the 2FA option on Electrum but this thread is totally bugging me out.
What you are saying makes 2FA useless in protecting a users funds. If someone got access to a wallet file and the correct password he can do whatever he wants even with 2FA enabled ???
And If I remembered correctly you need to pay for this 2FA option as well.

No, that's not how it works. Even if the attacker gained access to the wallet which was not recovered, he would still have to either find the seed of the wallet which should be used to co-sign the transaction in case TrustedCoin is shut down or confirm the transaction on the TrustedCoin website. However, in the second case, user has 24 hours to cancel the transaction. The notification is sent via SMS and e-mail.

*Sigh*, guys, please read the discussion before replying.

OP somehow able to get the SEED using the wallet->SEED option that should be grayed-out for 2FA wallets,
with that, LoyceV mentioned:
And someone replied an irrelevant answer and I told him "that" reply.

To be precise: 2FA's purpose is to protect the user's funds even if the wallet file together with the passphrase got hacked.
If the (view) SEED option is enabled (which looks like the case here), then 2FA for that particular wallet file is worthless because a hacker can just view the SEED.

No one has mentioned it yet but I think this is very important. Do not write out your phrase words. Print them out offline. This reduced human error to 0. Make more then one copy and keep one in the safe and give another to a family member that lives out of your house just incase, say idk your house burns down one day? Think of it as insurance. Remeber there is no authority with crypto. You are in control. If something goes wrong it is your fault. So do not give yourself any room for error.

If you do decide to backup your wallet file which I recommend. Please encrypt them. You can easily do this using the free program 7zip. You simply click the toggle box to add a password and the encryption.
Don't keep only one copy of the wallet file. Keep multiple. Devices can fail and things go wrong so one day your usb hdd might not work and it has your backup on? There is a problem.
If you worried about safety having many backups all over the pc don't be. You are much more likely to lock yourself out your own wallet than to be hacked.

One more thing. If you copy and paste your privatekey just remember it will still remain in your clipboard. This is bad... You need to delete it from the clipboard. There is software for this too.

The ultimate way to backup things is a separate offline device. Your biggest protection against loss is your own head so use it. Think before you click on things and know what you are doing. Be aware. Antivirus and all this other protection is nice for scanning and stuff but really the best protection is you, yourself.

To avoid further troubles, always keep the private keys. Electrum might be unavailable a day.
You should have the private key of every public address you are holding some bitcoin in. I advise you to export the private key once you receive bitcoin in an address. Keep the private key offline in a safe place. In this way you will be always safe. You can even access your bitcoin without any need to Electrum. Having the private key is a guarantee that you will be always the owner of your bitcoins.
If you have the private key, you no longer need to seed, password or any file. Private key is enough to access your bitcoins. Just be cautious. Your private key should be never revealed to others.

There's no need for that, all you need is the recovery seed phrase/words.

Even without Electrum, you can restore your private keys with for instance iancoleman's Mnemonic Code Converter (https://iancoleman.io/bip39/).

Same here but when I was helping OP, I was experimenting on creating a 2FA wallet. I was semi successful to create one but somehow I was not getting right output for 2FA addition. It was keep saying 2FA error. But I had the seed. So whenever I was trying forgot 2FA or something like that feature it was asking me to enter the seed. But I knew that it would not be hard to set a correct 2FA.

In that process I noticed the response from OP that he was successful in accessing/sending his fund then I gave up that shit LOL

However, what I realized that this is waste of time to have a 2FA enabled wallet. Instead a MultiSig wallet do a better job. I always use 2/2 MultiSig wallet to store large sum of my stash. I feel safer than standard wallet.

Seed isn't stored in a 2fa wallet file so IDK what the OP did.

The only case where the seed is stored in the wallet file of a 2fa wallet is if the wallet has been restored from seed and the user chooses to disable 2fa protection at which point it ceases to be a 2fa wallet. But if that's the case it wouldn't prompt the OP for an OTP code when he tried to spend his coins. Yet he says he was prompted for it.

Quoted for Truth.

There is a lot of confusion and mis-information in this thread. I have no idea what the OP did either, but there is no way he was asked for a Google Authenticator code from a 2FA wallet that also had the seed in it...

Either he didn't actually have the coins in the 2FA wallet he was trying to use and the wallet he got the seed from was just a "standard" wallet that he found... or he already had a "restored" version of his 2FA wallet and found that copy of the 2FA wallet file in his wallet directory.


That isn't true... Ian Coleman's Mnemonic Code Converter doesn't work with Electrum seeds (without modification). Like this: https://github.com/FarCanary/ElectrumSeedTester