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I haven used electrum for years.. opened it and remembered i had some left over btc from 2016.. but now the wallet appears as watching only.. i created it some years ago on my computer.. i had some seeds written down and tried to recover from that but it seems it not the same because it shows as 0 btc.. i didnt do anything the wallet just appeared as watching only.. is still on the same computer i used to create it years ago.. it had no local password nothing.. is there anything i can do to recover it? im lost.. back then it was no money but now is 5000 !!!

If you think it is the seed phrase, you will need to remember if you use passphrase along when you created the wallet. If used, you will need to input it along while restoring the wallet from newly downloaded wallet.

Also know that watch-only wallet only contain the public key, no private key. The wallet can not be used for signing transaction, which means you can only see the balance but can not spend from the wallet.

To be able to spend, you need the private key to the public key of the watch-only wallet. And to get that, you need to get the original seed phrase, or along with it passphrase if used. Or the private key to the public of the watch-only wallet.

The wallet doesn't become a watch-only if there's no human intervention. Is there any other wallets on the computer that you can open using Electrum from the same directory?

Unless you're able to find either the correct wallet file or the correct seeds, you cannot convert your watch-only into a spendable wallet.

Electrum when launched will load the wallet file that it last opened; so in your case, you might have created/opened that watching-only wallet then left Electrum.
Try to find other wallet files in the data directory wallets folder using the "File->Open" Menu in Electrum, it will open to the location of your current wallet file.
If it's not in the default directory, browse to the default data directory (https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq.html#where-is-the-electrum-datadir-located).

As said above, it wont suddenly become watching-only unless it's watch-only to begin with. Corruption wont result with that either.

First follow the advice above about looking for other wallet files.

Secondly, what version of Electrum are you using? If you haven't updated it since 2016, then regardless of what wallet you open it will not sync, as older versions are prevented from syncing due to a vulnerability. This means if you are restoring from a seed phrase it will always show a balance of zero, even if the seed phrase is correct. Download and verify version 4.0.9 from here: https://electrum.org/#download

Thirdly, what happens when you restore the seed phrase(s) you have written down?
After you enter the seed phrase in Electrum, what words show up under the text box (something along the lines of "Seed Type: legacy" or "BIP39 (checksum: ok))?
When you recover the wallet, do you see any of the same addresses just with no balance, or are the addresses all totally different?
Were the seed phrases originally created using Electrum or were they imported from somewhere else?

i have several empty wallets on the same folder.. the one thats on "watch only" is there..

https://imgur.com/jF1QvEb

when I do the restore from seed it shows seed type: standard
and then a totally empty wallet appears with no history of transactions.. nothing like the one thats watch only.. i think it might be something different..

any local file i could search for that might help or something? I honestly dont remember why this happened.. it was like this in 2016 and i simply erased it from my mind? no clue..

Can you open the watch only wallet and the wallet you recovered from your seed phrase and check if the addresses are same?
If they are different, then you are recovering the wrong wallet. Either you have the wrong seed phrase and need to find the right one, or you used additional words when you first set up the wallet which you also need to remember and enter. On the screen where you type in your seed phrase, you would click "Options" then check the box marked "Extend this seed with custom words" and enter the custom words on the next screen.

Look in the default data directory as suggested by nc50lc above. Otherwise you could try searching for other files named "nueva" (same as the watch only wallet).

The main reason users create a watching-only wallet is to monitor the balance and make transactions for their cold-storage Electrum.
Given that, do you remember creating a "cold-storage" or "air-gap" Electrum in an offline machine?
Or it could be a watching-only-wallet-copy of your other non-electrum Bitcoin wallet created from that wallet's "master public key".

Also, does the addresses in the 'addresses' tab start with '3' or 'bc1'? ('View->Show Addresses' to display)
Because you might have created the original non-watching-only wallet in a weird way like restoring it as BIP39 despite the wrong checksum.
You can try to restore your seed phrases with "BIP39 seed" in the "options" ticked, then select the address type that matched that watching-only wallet.

thanks just checked.. different addresses so i guess different wallets.. thats why the one i recovered with the seed seems empty.. ffff... ??? i guess I lost 5k this wallet was part of a scrip on a site that was linked to a shopping cart and would automatically generate adresses to receive payment.. i dont know what the f i did..

no. the adresses all start with a 1

I think this happened when trying to update electrum from a very old version back in the day

Okay, so it was from a merchant API or something... the thing is, the master public key that you should've pasted to the API should be from a standard electrum, not from a watching-only wallet.
But it's weird that it also contains outbound transactions proving that you had access to the non-watching-only wallet when it was last used.

If they started with a "1", then you'll need to select "legacy" when it'll ask you to choose the addresses' type. Did you do that step? Or just chose the default "native segwit"?


To be precise, it just stores the address. Whether the address has revealed its public key or not, it won't show you any public keys on a watch-only wallet. (except if you've imported a master public key)

exactly.. i HAD access to it.. used it for a while and then somehow screw it up... besides the seed.. is there anything else i could use? i can check the php files i uploaded to the site i was running or something like that?

Impossible to tell, and to be honest I haven't fully understood what you did back then with your seed. Why would a seed be inside a php script? You do get that a seed recovers your money right? This is its only use.

It never asks me anything like that... what im doing is.. open electrum---file--new/restore .. then it asks me for a new name for it... lets say "test"  ..then it asks for what kind of wallet i would like.. I  select standard wallet.. then it asks if i want to create a new seed.. or restore with a seed.. i select "I already have a seed" then it asks me for all the words.. i do and thats it.. empty wallet

If you've ensured that the addresses are legacy (begin with "1"), then you'll have to check BIP39 on the options. (I guess that back in 2016 you wouldn't have any other options like "3" or "bc1") (Extra parenthesis: I don't know if electrum used BIP39 in 2016, an electrum expert could only answer this)


Some questions:

• What electrum version are you using?
• Did you generate the phrase with electrum? Or with a different wallet software?
• Can you see the public keys of your addresses? That would mean that you imported a master public key.  In order to check if you can see the public keys "View" --> "Show Addresses" -- > Right click on any address and choose "Details". If the "Public keys" input field is empty, it means that you just imported the addresses. Nothing else.
• Any ideas of how did you end up with a watch-only wallet? If you are the owner of the funds, then you are the one who did this purposely.

It's never advised nor a reason to store the secret part of the wallet in the script of a website, you won't find anything there except for the 'master public key' that will create the same watching-only wallet.
My guess is it's in another device since the watching-only wallet is in that PC.

What about the other possibilities I've mentioned in my previous reply? (post #8 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5327469.msg56682016#msg56682016))

It will if you ticked "BIP39 seed" in the 'option' under the text box where you paste/type the seed phrase.
That will forcefully create a totally different legacy wallet in a non-standard way; I've suggested this in my previous reply.

Ok im trying with your method.. and now its asking me to.. choose the type of adresses on my wallet.. options are:

Legacy (p2pkh)
p2sh-segwit (p2wpkh-p2sh)
native segwit (p2wpkh)

witch should i choose?

Legacy (p2pkh)

just tried the new method and nothing so i guess the seed i found is for another waller..

• What electrum version are you using?

4.0.9 now

• Did you generate the phrase with electrum? Or with a different wallet software?

electum is the only software i used back then and now also

• Can you see the public keys of your addresses? That would mean that you imported a master public key.  In order to check if you can see the public keys "View" --> "Show Addresses" -- > Right click on any address and choose "Details". If the "Public keys" input field is empty, it means that you just imported the addresses. Nothing else.

I can see the public keys of the addresses yes..

• Any ideas of how did you end up with a watch-only wallet? If you are the owner of the funds, then you are the one who did this purposely.

NO clue how it happened I used to use the wallet there where transactions made

So you can see the public keys of each address, but not the private keys? This means that when you created this specific wallet you imported a master public key such as:

Does this xpub text remind you anything?

It could be that the php scrip for the shopping cart gave me a code like that ... to generate a wallet with that?

What kind of php scripts were these that they generated you a master public key to import it as a "wallet". I read about shopping cart and I understand that it'd most probably generate new addresses to give to the clients. Did you download these php scripts from github? Can you link us to the repository? You obviously didn't write those.

If inside any php script or any other script/file you find a text that starts with "xprv", then you'll be able to access the funds on the addresses shown on the watch-only wallet.

And did you actually use Electrum back in 2016 to make transactions, or did you make all your transaction via this shopping site and just use Electrum to keep an eye on your wallet?

As above. Did you use Electrum to actually make transactions, or did you make transactions only on the shopping site? If you used Electrum to make transactions, was it on the same computer you are trying on now, and has this computer been formatted or had Electrum deleted/uninstalled/reinstalled since then?

We still haven't explored a passphrase in conjunction with the seed phrase you have yet. Do you remember setting anything along the lines of a password, passphrase, extension words, extra words, etc., when you generated this wallet? It would be worth trying to restore your seed phrase along with any passwords you were using in 2016 as additional words as I explained earlier in the thread.

Electrum actually never adopted BIP39 as their seed generation standards. They merely started support it in the more recent versions. BIP39 won't include any version byte at the start which allows the wallet to determine what addresses to generate so not really ideal for Electrum's usage.

I wouldn't say "ideal" it is just harder from the user's standpoint because with BIP39 seed phrases the wallet now has to add a new step asking the user to enter the address/script type to derive the child keys and maybe even let them choose the derivation path too. In other words it is just not newbie friendly otherwise I think it is a pretty good flexibility to have in a wallet.

They did introduce the "Detect Existing Accounts" button on the page you select your script type and derivation path for recovering BIP39 seed phrases. Hitting this button will search 13 commonly used derivation paths (listed here: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/electrum/bip39_wallet_formats.json), as well as scan the next account up for any non-Samourai wallets in which it detects a used address. This makes it far more newbie friendly, while still allowing users who know what they are doing to specify their own script type and derivation path manually.

Electrum does have different types of wallet, 2FA and normal (segwit/legacy) for example. Having a method to identify the type of seed it is will reduce any confusion if the user forgets the type of seeds that it has. Using a seed created with TrustedCoin will result in Electrum automatically restore it as such with the 2 main keys needed for signing, detecting if the user used segwit or legacy, etc. Perhaps not ideal for but better[1].



[1] https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/seedphrase.html#motivation