Bitcoin Forum

I've read many topics about similar issue, nothing seems to apply...
I stored a small amount of mBTC on a wallet on 2016, i'm sure i spended a part of them, but there must have been at least a few residual and at least 1 transaction.
I'm not 100% sure what software i used, but must have been Electrum, so i installed Electrum and restored from seed selecting "standard wallet" and entering the seed phrase (12 words), the result is completely blank (no balance, no history).
Since i have the btc address of that wallet, i also tried importing it to create a read only wallet, but the result is the same.
Beside that previous approach on 2016, i'm completely newbie, then forgive me if my request seems naive...

any idea?

That makes it very likely there's really nothing on your address. You can enter your address (not the 12 words!) on Blockchair.com (https://blockchair.com/) to confirm this.

Does your seed phrase produce the same address in Electrum?

Perhaps you generated a new seed in those early days that and it had nothing related to the wallet in question or its of a different wallet with the uncertainty about your question. But, it shouldn't have restored if it isn't about right so, the first one goes for me as the possible explanation of what happened.

Should the address be completely right, then, blockchain.com has got to have all the history and transaction details not excluding the balance on that address. Even bitref.com too can help in reading through the address too as data stored on the blocks are not erased except in a 51% attack on the blockchain which affects only recent blocks and for a time.

I have an idea

Create a new electrum wallet and click "I already have a seed"

https://bitcoinelectrum.com/files/2017/07/restore-seed.jpg

Then you can try to create two different wallets, with bip39 checked and unchecked. Those will be different wallets, but with the same 12 words:

https://miro.medium.com/max/602/1*7xjjmMzFEhd7MaCufjv0vg.jpeg


If you have noted the 12 word correctly, you will see your balance in one of those wallets.

I've found the transactions by entering btc address, now i'm sure my wallet is empty. I bought 0,04 BTC for 20$ in 2016, if i kept i had 2000 bucks now  :-[
Likely, the seed phrase leads to a different wallet, as said.

Thanks.
 

Electrum has two seed formats: BIP-39 and a proprietary format (as well as a legacy format). Make sure you are selecting the right one.

Electrum also gives you the choice of 3 derivation paths. Make sure you are selecting the correct one.

If your seed has an associated passphrase, but you don't use it or get it wrong, you will get an empty wallet.

The symptom of any of these occurring is that the addresses in the wallet don't match the addresses that you expect.

You're not sure about that, since your wallet is standard, your wallet must have used "change address" and that won't be restored in a 'watch-only imported' wallet made using the receiving address.
One of your transactions' output must be your change.

Most likely, unless you have set a "passphrase" aka. "extension", "custom word" or "13th word", whatever they call it.

When you type in your 12 words, but before you click "Next", you should see some words pop up underneath the text box. What do they say? It should be something along the lines of either "BIP39 (checksum: ok)" or "Seed Type: xxx".
When you restored your wallet, what number or digit (1, 3, or b) did the addresses start with? Does this character match the first character of the receiving address you checked for funds?

I'm sure just because i remember i made no other BTC purchases beside the amount of the transactions i already found, then no need to investigate further.

Do you remember that you use a 2FA feature before?
The 12 words seed you have might be generated with 2FA enabled?

Can you try to recover your wallet using this tool below

- https://trustedcoin.com/static/recover/standalone.html

Download the whole page then turn off your internet then open that page again while offline and paste your seed to create a wallet file.
Now you can open that wallet file with Electrum. Let's see if the balance is there.

The seed version should indicate that it is a 2FA seed isn't it? Electrum automatically detects that.

Actually, it would detect as 2FA enabled but if it was generated from the old version of Electrum it won't base on the recent thread below

Look at the recent thread here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5317954.msg56372568#msg56372568

His seed doesn't show as 2FA enabled when importing it to the latest version of Electrum but since he mentions that it was generated on an old version of Electrum with 2FA enabled I give that link above and generated a new wallet file that solved his issue.

So I just trying to share the link above and maybe the seed he has is 2FA enabled.