Bitcoin Forum

A lot of people posting that they successfully recover their funds for along time but how about those who have lost their Bitcoin? Is it possible in the future that there will be a technology that is specialized in recovering lost in just a matter of minutes or an hour? But on the other side Bitcoin holder are in trouble too as their funds might also be vulnerable and be compromise.
Please more answer to do this please.

If it is about bitcoin, any lost bitcoin is just a gain for all other bitcoin holders as the supply in circulation reduces. No way to recover lost bitcoin unless you have found its seed phrase or private key, else it is lost forever.

It is what the community do not support and they will do anything possible to make sure this kind of thing is not possible. If you do not have the key, it is not your coin.

alot of posts advertising recovery systems are more then likely scammers

any protocol that allows movement of funds without a signature by using the correct keypairs. is a system that is broke.

the whole point and security of bitcoin is funds only move due to a valid signature

No one  knows what future brings, but that seems unlikely to me because if you can easily recover your lost bitcoin without seed/private key, what would stop you from stealing someone else's bitcoin?

If there would have been any technology regarding the recovery of lost Bitcoin, we could have been worried about an attempt at such technology being under development. 

Everyone prays for the best, but if that happens, then such technology can also be used to steal users' funds without notice. If it can access a lost wallet and recover the lost phrase, the same method can be used to access a user's wallet and retrieve the user's phrase and make off with the user's fund without the users notice. 

Just like the way the blockchain technology is built, everyone is responsible for their own security, and that's the best. 

A lost Bitcoin, I believe, is lost forever unless the real owner can be able to remember where he/she misplaced the security to the wallet. 

All of the lost bitcoin is lost forever without the private key it is impossible to recover your bitcoin, Usually most of the people who offer ways to recover your bitcoin was a scammer, we all know that all you need is the private key to recover it. Except if you're talking about custodial wallets since you could just contact the support to recover your account etc.

I guess it is possible since it's technology, we never know how technology could develop in the future and at some point, they might crack the bitcoin code or any wallets possible. But at the same time, security could keep up with the technology. If somehow they find a way to it, it might be the end of bitcoin since it already crack and there's always a possibility of accessing your bitcoin and taking your funds at that point since they can access a wallet without even the need of the seed phrase or private key or just calculating the possible combination of your privatekey.

Those people who claimed that they retrieved their lost btc most likely to be a scammers, because once you lost your seed or private key then it would be impossible to retrieve your btc. But for sure there's tech to save your private keys and seed but for restoring it would be a miracle to save what's lost. It's like you've revive the dead. Don't click any link or follow any tutorials on how to recover your lost of btc.  ;D

So far what still makes sense is that without a personal phrase or key then nothing can be done but to let the amount of bitcoin be buried. But talking about the future with any technological sophistication can happen, it's just that it will be opposed by many people even though the purpose is to help but will have an impact on the stability of Bitcoin that has been easily lost by certain parties for negative purposes.

Say someone has found the tool and can restore the missing bitcoin, instead of publishing it, so I am sure that people will save it for themselves.

You asked this class of question because you have exceptionally low knowledge about how Bitcoin works, there is never going to be a way to recover any lost Bitcoin. If your Bitcoin got stolen through phishing, the person on the other side will need to be controlled to send back your Bitcoin, tell me how technology is going to make this happen unless you have some mind-controlling Voodoo power or you are a sorcerer.

If you mistakenly lost or forget your recovery seed, it is going to remain lost forever,  I read a story about a millionaire who wants to get back his lost Bitcoin key with everything he has, this person hired professionals, till this day he failed to recover the wallet keys, I think it has something to do with his hard disk storage getting spoilt or damage. They failed to recover the Bitcoin.  

BTC recovery services are scams, there is no service that can help you recover your stolen money. BTC transactions are irreversible, and if the hacker or thief is smart, they would not send the funds to a centralized exchange that is linked to them, but even if your stolen money is sent to a KYC exchange, you still need the help of the police and government to recover it, which is so hard to obtain.
If there is a technology that can guess correctly the keys to lost BTC, then the technology would also be able to steal people's BTC even when they have the keys to the funds, how then would the technology benefit bitcoiners in the network.

Some cases of lost access can actually be resolved without "future" technology if the private key is not actually physically or visually lost. It can happen due to memory factors such as you forget where to store the privkey, or accidental factors such as your mother throwing away the old book where the privkey was written. It's just that bitcoin can be recovered by anyone who finds the privkey.

On the other hand, if the privkey is really gone, you can actually find some answers on this forum on topical questions like how to generate a privkey with a previously funded address or find a privkey from an address.

OP I doubt if there could ever be such technology and if there is any possibility of that happening, then it would be resisted and the process truncated because no one member of the blockchain community would allow that to happen. If it should be allowed it means that blockchain is no longer safe to store assets and as far as I am concerned, this is the beauty of blockchain which no one can ever comprehend. Only you should have access or know the private key to your wallet and if it happens otherwise that their is a breach or loss of private keys,  your assets  are all gone. Now tell me if it happens that a private key predictor is developed in the sense that any wallet been imported it opens up immediately do you think your wallet and assets would be safe?

I believe Bitcoin will no longer exist if this technology will be available in the future because this only means that they can access any Bitcoin wallet using the technology they are using. We know how innovation develops fast and those impossible things before is now possible. I will never remove the chance for having this kind of technology in the future because I believe humanity usually pursue to discover the current impossible things.

But again. Bitcoin in general will be in danger if this technology invented because all assets is not safe anymore.

From what I have learned so far and also experienced I don't think it's possible to recover your private key from public address, once you lose access to your private key or secret phrases then it's time you bid your coins bye-bye I don't think they're ways to recover it. If eventually you meet someone claiming that they have devices or means to help you recover your wallet with the use of private key or your secret phrases just have it in the back of your mind that they want to scam you or do something malicious to you or to your system and we do have alot of them out there.

You have to be specific with the type of "lost bitcoin". You may either loose access to your bitcoins or you loose your bitcoins to theft. For both situations I do not think that you should be in expectation that a technology will come soon to be able to recover access or recover bitcoins when locked out or lost to hackers respectively. As someone who has bitcoins, you focus should be how to not just to buy bitcoins, but also how to keep your seed phrase safe and your bitcoins away from hackers. Preventing something from happening is always easier than finding solution to it when it happens.

They're talking about quantum computers that might break the network security of blockchains and PoS in nature. We don't know what's gotta be the future but all of those are the same as the crypto market, they're all speculative. Been hearing that a lot that there will be a technology that shall replace blockchain and kick out bitcoin on its ranking and that's the same with the topic about there could be a possible technology that might recover those lost bitcoins forever. It's just being talked about but never seen it happen in actuality.

That’s funny actually. We first ask for the unbreakable technology and then when it becomes really full proof we then start asking whether this technology can be broken somehow.  :P

I think bitcoin is all fine as it is and the intention was to have most secured, irreversible technology which will help us have our coin ownership and do the transaction likewise.

I just hope there comes no such technology which can break the Ice here. Anyways that’s gonna be dream of a hacker but would love to see what others has to say about it.

Your question is rather if there will be a way to spend bitcoin you don't have. The popular notion is that lots of lost bitcoins will be recovered if their public keys are known, because it is believed that the public key to private key reversal will someday be possible, within then next 20-30 years. This reversal will only happen to lost coins, because long before it becomes possible, we will have moved our coins to cryptographically stronger scripts. However, lost coins (with public keys known) will most likely not return to their real owners.

Other lost coins, which only have a RIPEMD-160 hash revealed, will take much longer to move (if ever), and isn't even a concern.

No I don’t think there will be a tech to recover lost bitcoin. If the blockchain was ever able to be rewinded so people could claim lost access to coins then the price would go to $0. There would be scam attempts left, right & center.

Bitcoin is an irreversible ledger designed to be the most secure method of transferring money. There are no refunds & no chargebacks. Look after the access to your coins, don’t expect anybody else to.

A Quantum computer also won't be able to recover bitcoins, even if it looks like a supercomputer.
But bitcoin security has been designed to address the threats that Quantum Computers might pose.

Bitcoin uses Post-Quantum Encryption Technologies, such as Lattice-based cryptography or Hash-based cryptography.
Bitcoin also uses the ECDSA cryptographic security with a 256-bit size.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice-based_cryptography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash-based_cryptography

Speculation that Bitcoin can be recovered when keys are lost is just nonsense.
There will be no such technology today or for the next few decades.
If that happens the bitcoin system will collapse.

and the replacement for blockchain is just bullshit as well, Blockchain is still the best ledger technology and many use blockchain as an Example of another ledger development.

Only possible if they have hint to help the brute-force progress. Without any hint, it is impossible to do that successfully and brute-force private key or mnemonic seed is impossible if you have to start it from 0 with all seed words, all characters.

If that happen, all bitcoin will have zero value because such technology will help to not only recover lost bitcoin wallets but also can brute-force all bitcoin wallets. What you own even with private key, mnemonic seed will be no longer belong to you.

The saying "Not your keys, not your coins" will no longer be true!

Imagine about that super hard mission with this example from The frequency of a vanity pattern (1KidsCharity) and average search time on a desktop PC (https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/ch04.asciidoc#generating-vanity-addresses) in Mastering Bitcoin.

It should be a technology which have insane speed to find missing words, if such kind thing happen in the future, I think every of our social medias will easily get hacked since it's more easier to find someone password rather than find missing words. It's not about Bitcoin, but we will have a big problem regarding our digital life. I don't think there's a good security which higher than cryptography.

There's no way someone will loss funds in bitcoin wallets when your private key is intact. But in a case where you misplaced or lost your key, that apparently become the fault of the holders. I don't think bitcoin would focus on any issues of recovering technology system because the system is already built with private keys to make safety of your funds. And any holder that will be vulnerable or being comprise maybe due to ignorance or greediness to make a lot of money on a scam sites or fraudulent links.

So long your private key is safe, your funds are safe too. The key is individuals private key not even your partner should have access to it.

Technology moves forward unstoppably and we can only guess what will be possible in 20 or even 50 years, and I'm sure that a lot will change in the future. The computers and smartphones we use today will probably be so outdated that they will be exhibited in museums, and all these changes will certainly have a certain impact on Bitcoin as well.

I'm not an expert in cryptography and I can fully understand what some people are trying to do, but the article is interesting and even contains several links from our forum. Thanks @vroom for sharing.

Like as a feature added to Bitcoin? No, because that wouldn't be a feature that would be a weakness. If there is a way to recover lost bitcoin then there is a way to steal people's bitcoin.


From what I understand though quantum computing will one day be able to "recover" aka steal any bitcoin still sitting in the original pay-to-pubkey address type which is about 2 million bitcoin include Satoshi's, though I'm sure at least a little bit of that isn't lost and will get moved before this quantum threat appears.

Is there a technology to recover a gold coin that you dropped in the market square, and didn't realise it for a month. You might find it if you go back to the market, but the chances are virtually nil. It's much the same with Bitcoin, so make sure you use a secure wallet or storage mechanism, and you safeguard the details.

I don't think it's possible. I mean, without a seed phrase or private key, it's not possible to recover lost Bitcoins. If anyone claims they can do it, it's a scam. If anyone claims they truly recovered their lost fund and get access to their old wallet, either they did it with seed phrases/Private keys, Or, it's just a scam. Do not believe such services.

As Rikafip already said, If it's possible to recover Bitcoins (access to a wallet) without seed phrases/private keys, people will start stealing others' coins. If it's possible, then why people would use Bitcoin for security?

For starters, People that manage to recover their coins either use passwords that could be brute forced or have a few words to complete a mnemonic and find the missing piece... otherwise not everyone gets lucky and if you have no private key to a wallet these coins will be lost forever unless the key is found/used.

Brute forcing is one such technology but success rates are still low, but either way I don't see such a technology which will be used to crack open people's wallets at will as this could make crypto unattractive to many and hope this doesn't happen.

If someone will be considering holding coins for a long time,proper backup solutions need to be used so as not to be locked out or be in trouble as you have put it .

True, the future is unknown, but I think that technologies in this direction will develop for sure. If bitcoin rises in price very much, then there will be a large demand for restoring access to lost wallets. In fact, such a need still exists, but when the difference between the effort expended and the cost of btc is pronounced, then there will certainly be people interested in this. They will create new technologies. It is here that the danger will lurk: whether these technologies will harm the entire bitcoin system and whether there will be a problem with thefts BTC from other people's wallets.

Even if there is such a technology in the future, it will be the beginning of the collapse of bitcoin, because once the technology is successfully created, isn't it very easy for them to steal other people's bitcoins without a seed key.
From my personal point of view, no matter how advanced technology will develop in the future, but we will not see a technology that can recover lost bitcoins as easy as you said, last year we heard about super quantum computer technology rumored to be able to break the bitcoin algorithm by easy and many people think that super quantum computers can be a threat to the security of bitcoin, but in fact until now this technology has not been successfully developed.

It's possible if the bitcoins are on the Centralize Exchange, there are many ways for recovery and can be negotiated, but if the Centralize exchange refuses, chances are they are using the Bitcoin in your account wallet. But bitcoins that stand on a decentralized network where usually the owner is in full control of the wallet I don't think has any hope of getting your bitcoins back if you forget your seed phrase.
We don't know how crazy and how sophisticated the technology will be in the future, but in my mind it's absolutely impossible, even if it were possible the funds in dead wallets could be withdrawn.

People claiming to recover their coins does not mean much if you did not explain or include what problem in the first place they are encountered and the way of the recovery. It is too obscure and vague to be addressed if you only put that information.


What kind of "lost" that you mean? people losing their private keys? Are people losing some parts of the seed phrase? or what?

People losing their private key or all the seed phrases certainly will lose their coins, no doubt about that, and there is no way back or recovery mechanism. If there is a recovery mechanism, bitcoin itself won't sustain any longer. After all, how can we distunguish a lost coin? a coin that is certainly unused in some wallet or a coin that is claimed to be lost.

I don't understand, those who lost their bitcoins, are the ones who are recovering their funds, right? So, what's the point of this sentence? I don't understand.

There is a technology that is specialized in recovering of lost data. You can see a list of data recovery companies (https://99firms.com/data-recovery-companies/#gref). If in recovery you mean a company that will recover your bitcoins by providing them your bitcoin address, then, no, such a thing doesn't happen and will never happen because it means one can hack the whole network.

So, you got the point. If someone can recover address in hours by bruteforcing seed phrases, this means that bitcoin network is hacked, dead.

To do what?

Perhaps. There is already something like that for Ethereum, after all. I do not know if you heard about the newest Update of ETH (ERC-4337) which will be able to supposedly alter how users interact with wallet services. There is also a “social recovery system” feature where designated users can restore access to a wallet even if you lost access to it. Not sure how stable and how safe the system is yet, though. So lets wait and see how it plays out.

After a while, Bitcoin might find its own unique solution.

But I think the solution will be a wallet solution. Bitcoin itself is fine as it is.

It is not possible to recover lost bitcoin even any decentralised crypto. If you have heard any such news then you have heard wrong or someone has lured you to hack your wallet. So you don't login your wallet anywhere.  Then your wallet may be hacked. be careful with that. Because I know that lost bitcoins can never be recovered.

Not sure what you mean that there are people successfully recover their funds, because we all know that once you lost your Bitcoin it's hard to recover. At least you found your lost private key or mnemonic phrase then you can get it back. But let's say there is one key phrase, it might be very hard even with a help of those supposedly individuals or companies and it could be scam after all. So just be careful though. For those long term holders, maybe they protected their bitcoin and knows how to practice security hygiene and keep their private key safe.

So far there isn't, but we can't shoot in the gloom that's uncertain about the new technology of the future. But that shouldn't happen because they say, once you lose the keys to your bitcoin you will no longer have a way to move your bitcoin permanently.

But I'm not ruling out that in the future there may be tremendous technological improvements that someone can recover their bitcoin as long as they have certain things to prove it's theirs.

I do not think this kind of technology makes anyone safe from someone stealing their coin without their knowledge. The things we wish for should sometimes be taken with caution. My trust is in the system's ability to prevent it and stop it at its earliest stages.

No one can say what is gonna happening in the future, Because if you see there is nothing that man cannot do, the impossible becomes possible through ages or time. So from this point of view I have to keep some possibility, but if it is in the case of bitcoin or block chain system then I think blockchain will not have much value in the future.
Also, for example, if you look at a lock that we use, if the key is not found, there is no other way but to break the lock and that broken lock is never usable again, I am thinking of the same consequences.

 I don't think it will ever be possible because there was a saying that not your keys, not your coin. Whatever it is you need that private key to recover your bitcoins.
Attempting to find lost private keys with clues may be speeded up by some such technology, but I don't think bitcoin can ever be recovered with a clueless or lost  private key. And if it was possible then bitcoin would have no value or this powerful block chain system would be useless.  Since Bitcoin, the blocks of the blockchain system work much like a chain, if one of them breaks, the entire system becomes weak.  And if this is the case, we will have to face the question about the security of bitcoin. So I think it will never be possible.

Exactly! If something like this were possible in the future, all bitcoins would be in danger and the entire system would collapse. After all, who can say which bitcoins are really lost? Maybe the bitcoins also belong to someone who has just been holding their coins for a very long time. If you could suddenly move this bitcoin without the right keys, it would be a disaster. So I think and hope this will never happen. Otherwise trust in bitcoin would be lost.  :(

As the value of Bitcoin increases and the number of Bitcoin lost by its owner, it is possible that there are certain individual or group that is dedicated to creating an application that can hack into the bitcoin system and recover the lost BTC.  I think this kind of technology is more on hacking the system and also might compromise the whole network if successfully created.  

But the future is unknown so we can only say that there is a possibility but as long as the Bitcoin developer does not agree on this procedure then I believe there is a slim chance for that to happen since the Bitcoin developer will continue to strengthen and upgrade the security of the network if needed.

That will break the news for sure if it happens but as I've said, we still haven't seen it done by someone successfully. I guess there were attempts and there will be more as bitcoin becomes valuable every after the halving happens.
But whether we like it or not, as of the moment, it's impossible to recover those bitcoins that have been gone forever. People that are new to the market might feel that they don't like it but there's the positive thing about it as if they're donated to the entire economy of bitcoin as it reduces the entire supply in the economy.

i dont know that thing really happen in near future. Bitcoin is designed to be a decentralized and secure digital currency, which means that transactions cannot be easily reversed or altered once they have been confirmed on the blockchain. If someone loses their Bitcoin due to a mistake or a hack, it can be very difficult or even impossible to recover the lost funds.

There are some companies and services that claim to be able to recover lost Bitcoin, but many of these are scams or have limited success rates. It is always important to do your research and be cautious when dealing with any company or service that claims to be able to recover lost Bitcoin.

so, the best option is we need to take proper security for own asset.

Since I have been in this space this has been one of my prayers that one day we could be able to recover not just bitcoin but anyother asset of importance they have lost and I think any recovery have to do with wallets because that's where the assets are stored. I have once read where a writer said that if we could recover our lost wallets we probably misplaced their PK's that means we ain't in decentralized system and people ain't responsible for their wallets. But I truly want a remedy to this coz many of us are affected.

I think most people are forgetting the difference between live bitcoin and "burned" bitcoin. In the future when tech gets bigger and better, maybe you can protect your coins a lot better as well, which means even with better tech, others can't hack into your account and steal your bitcoins, plus you would be moving it around with new blockchains as well.

However, there are over a million bitcoins that stays the same place without moving much, which means that with a better tech, those that hasn't moved in a long time, nearly since the first days, could be in trouble because we are talking about a situation where it would not be getting any protection.

There will be a new technology to recover lost of Bitcoin.Yes, because the technology is still in its infancy stage, so there are not many people who understand it well. However, there is a chance that someday this technology can be applied to Bitcoin by implementing it with the right features.

There is no better way than an airgapped device. I don't want to sound absolute, but there just isn't. If you know to properly install a live OS offline, with Electrum pre-installed, in an airgapped machine, then you have everything needed to generate a seed phrase securely. From that point on, it's what you do with the seed that affects your security.

Bitcoin wallet is no account, new blockchains are irrelevant, and hackers generally don't intervene in math and cryptography to gain access to a wallet.

I don't think so, because the system was perfectly developed to not allow such recoveries. People need to learn the importance of keeping their keys and passwords safely stored, without expecting an alternative solution is going to appear in order to allow them recover their coins, because it's actually not going to happen at all. Otherwise, it would mean the end of bitcoin, as others said, due to the fact it would be possible to "recover" (steal) coins from other people's wallets.

The system is ok for now but the advancement of technology may allow such a program to be created.  But of course, developers won't just be idle and will do their best to prevent that.  Lost Bitcoin will forever be nourishment to the value of Bitcoin in circulation and that is one very good reason that we should let lost Bitcoin be lost forever because the moment someone is able to recover lost Bitcoin, that is the end of the Bitcoin economy.

If we have the opportunity to recover lost bitcoins and other crypto-currencies, at the same time this means that the possibility of hacking and existing cryptocurrency wallets will be found. Whether this will ever happen, no one knows. With great apprehension, we now look at the rapid development of quantum computers. In principle, any technology can eventually be hacked by more advanced technologies. This has always been the case and there is no reason to hope that this will not happen in the future.

Despite the fact that the affected people, basically the ones that lost their private keys in one way or the other and also the ones who are also gonna fall victim of losing their keys in the coming future would want such a technology like to be in place, in general it will no longer make sense because it will put the security of Bitcoin at risk,  in terms of altering the system that makes Bitcoin most secured crypto, which allows the only person with the keys/signature to have access to the wallet.

Having a technology like this means that our wallets will no longer be secured when it has become recoverable alternatively other than private keys. However losing your private keys is one of the risk aspect of Bitcoin and there is no technology without its own risk.

In fact, it wouldn't make sense if there was a technology that allows you to recover your private key, because it would mean that you can recover any key and therefore all wallets would be at risk. Fortunately there is not yet but there is a debate about quantum computers and that in all probability in the next 25 years we would get to decrict sha256 .

although the development of technology is increasingly sophisticated, to recover bitcoins that have been lost will be impossible to do, because the supply of bitcoin is limited and recovery on bitcoin certainly cannot be done unless they use improper methods such as hackers, and all crypto users today really hope that the recovery can be done because very many of their assets have disappeared due to the loss of privekey.

I'm not sure if there is someone who is focusing on discovering technology that could trace your keys. But at this time, a lost of your keys will be considered as a lost of your Bitcoin forever. That is why we should back up our keys or passwords to the safest place as we can no longer access our wallets once it was gone. We don't have to wait the moment to happen to us in the first place and if we have experienced losing our keys, I think we have to move on and forget about it coz we have no chance to get it back.

I agree with this. I think that those makes good effect on the economy since those lost bitcoin will still be in the blockchain. And, with that, it can make the value of bitcoin slightly higher since it will be taken as a holding that would never be able to sell. So, in my opinion, it would be better off that recovery of bitcoin won't be pushed since it would also serve as a reminder to be careful in every transaction that you would do in cryptocurrency exchanges.

I don't believe there are many BTC users that want that, people who use BTC have to understand that transactions are irreversible once it is confirmed in the network, this way they would safely hold their coins and learn how to protect it from scammers who want to steal it from them. If there is a way to recover lost BTC, people would become lazy in protecting their funds, and there is no way to ensure that a technology to recover lost BTC would not be used to steal BTC from people who still have their keys, so it may destroy the network if that happens, and i don't think many BTC users want that to happen.

Our keys is our responsibility, If you dont want to lose it, make sure to keep it safe, write it down on a notebook, maybe store it in your on social media account and sent it to yourself. Anything you can do as long as others wont see it so they wont have access on your wallet. I guess when the time where someone discover how to recover someone lost key is like they can also do hacking to other people wallet. Imagine they find out a way to know your private keys even you are not giving them any info then they will easily have access on it and do any transaction they want with your coin.

I think if said technology exists would imply in a dangerous zone for bitcoin as a whole cause it would probably involve Quantum computing, to rapidly recover seeds, creating more problems than solutions in the bigger picture.

Is such a function necessary?We all know that the amount of bitcoin is strictly limited, which means that every lost bitcoin will only benefit everyone else. Yes, it sounds strange.But it also has a useful function.I know a person who lost several bitcoins, he simply could not recover them from his disk and there are a lot of people like him, maybe in the future it will only benefit the price.