Bitcoin Forum

I was dumb years ago and wrote a seed phrase down, but with no info about what the wallet is.

It's a 16 word seed where the 13th word is custom. My hunch is a weird HD wallet on blockchain.info, but I don't see where I can recover with 16 words. I've reached out to their support. It could also be metamask or myethereum wallet, but looks like those don't work. MEW didn't work. I'm positive it is not a hardware wallet.

I don't think there is much crypto on this wallet (somewhere between $0 and $1k at 2017 prices), but I will give the person who helps me solve this mystery 10%.

Try recovering the wallet through electrum, provided the crypto you are talking about in the address is Bitcoin, if it's not Bitcoin, then don't wast your time.

On your electrum PC version, go to Create new wallet, then Standard Wallet Select I already have seed Under enter send Click on options and select Extend this seed with custom words Click on OK and enter your seed minus the custom word, Click next and then enter your custom word, click next and see if any balance shows up

Edit: I hope this is not one of those earlier wallet seeds from Blockchain.info if so, then It might not work. You might need to get the login credentials from your email address.

Don't expect an instant response from them it takes days before you get a response from them.

Anyway, for a non-HD blockchain wallet, you can use this link https://login.blockchain.com/wallet/forgot-password
I believe that 16 words seed will work on this link and it will give you the password and login link.

Itis not actually BIP39 seed phrase, like I read on a post on this forum that it is called Wallet Recovery Mnemonic, this was specifically designed for blockchain.info at the time before the creation of BIP39 seed phrase on the site.

There are two likely options that can be used to recover back this. The first is the Wallet Recovery Mnemonic while the second is through aes.json file backup.

BitMaxz link can be helpful

Or

Do you have a copy of the .json file?
The 16 words you have aren't a wallet seed. They are used to recover your blockcain's password in case you lose it. And if am not wrong (didn't sign in to blockchain since a long time), you'll need your wallet's id too to access your blockcain account.

You should start checking your words against the BIP39 word lists (found here (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/bip-0039-wordlists.md), most probably only the English is needed) to make sure what you have has the possibility of being a valid mnemonic. This also helps if some words aren't in there (like 4 last ones) that may mean the first 12 are your mnemonic and the rest are your password.
Otherwise it may not even be one and as you guessed it could be some weird implementation with its own custom words. blockchain.com used to use a much longer word list with weird words in which case only their support can help you.

I have written a script that convert the 16 words to a wallet ID and password (if you created the wallet pre 2013 it might only have a username.and password)

it will not work to import to electrum.as this has nothing to do with a hd wallet or mnemonic, its blockchains own format based ona 60k+ wordlist

/KX

Did you try this?  https://login.blockchain.com/wallet/forgot-password

Your phrase might be a legacy blockchain.info seed and this is where would you recover your account using it.

Hi All - No luck on getting this figured out, but I really really appreciate all the responses.

I don't have the JSON and using blockchain.info's online recovery isn't working with 16 word seed phrases.

Try variations while following post number 2.
Because the "custom word(s)" can be the 13th, 14th, 15th to 16th words.

So in Electrum, you should only paste 12 in the "enter seed", tick both boxes in the "Options", and if it says "BIP39 (checksum: ok)", proceed and click "next".
If false it's not a 'BIP39 seed', uncheck BIP39 and see if "next" is clickable, if not, it's not an 'Electrum seed',
If 12 didn't work, try variations like different number of words (first 3,6,9,15) with 'BIP39' ticked.

In the next window, paste the 'rest' of the words, 'two' or 'last' of them; then finish creating the wallet and see if your address shows up in the address tab ("View->Show Addresses" to display), if you don't know an address from your wallet, wait for a few minutes to sync.

Do you get errors on the blockchain recovery? Like invalid checksum?


What I think is to host the old wallet version of Blockchain.info which is the legacy wallet.
You can try to download the old web wallet of blockchain.info here https://github.com/blockchain/unused-My-Wallet
And then host it for yourself and then try to recover your wallet with your seed.

Can you check your 16 words seed under this https://github.com/blockchain/unused-My-Wallet/blob/master/mnemonic_words_v3.html
Let see if all words from your seed are correct if one of the words from your seed is not on that list then maybe it's not actually generated from a blockchain.info wallet.

You know what they (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard) say: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Until proven, I don't believe you're "immensely more effective".

Why do people recommend using Electrum for recovery? 16 words long seed phrase is definitely not an Electrum option, unless they extended it with custom words, which is highly unlikely as they don't even remember what was the wallet software.

Yeah. You don't remember what was the wallet software. Not even if it was a software or a hardware wallet. Why don't I buy this?  ::)
If you don't remember what was the software you used, I highly doubt we can help you.

Proposals that require private messaging to work, and contain extraordinary claims as said, should not be taken seriously. You're a scam.

If I remember that correctly it is like this: The "Seed Phrase" that you have is not actually a BIP39 Seed that contains the private key to a wallet. It is a blockchain.info password recovery seed phrase that you can use to get back your wallet password. You then need the Wallet ID that was send to you by them in an email (or you wrote it down). With the Wallet ID and the password from the "seed phrase" you can access your coins.
Try here to get the password: https://login.blockchain.com/wallet/forgot-password