Bitcoin Forum

Experts, can these Bitcoins be transferred from the 12 keywords to Electrum?

1. I have the phase with the 12 words.

2. I have installed Electrum on a Windows computer.

3. In the step do you want to... I select => I already have a seed, right?

4. In Enter the seed I enter the 12 words.

5. But then the "next" field remains inactive.

6. Under Options you can select BIP 39 or SLIP39.

I don't have the information about what I have to do next.

Please give me your advice. Many thanks and regards, Tom

You only have 9 words? I'm not aware of any software that does that. Do you remember where you first generated this paper wallet? If so, it might help to post a link for that. Usually, people use a paper wallet generator like bitaddress to generate a single private key, and then sweep them to Electrum when they want to spend the funds.

You have 12 words seed phrase or 9 words? If it is 12 words, check ✔️ BIP39 to proceed.

Edit:
Give us a link to the Von paper wallet site or tool that you used to generate the wallet. For us to know if it is legit or not. I check online but I saw nothing about Von paper wallet.

Do you have 9 words or 12 words?
First, you said that you have 12 words and then you said that you entered 9 words? Why did you enter just 9 words, if you have 12 words?


It may worth mentioning that it's not recommended to import a paper wallet into an online device, esecially if you have a big amount of bitcoin.
A paper wallet should be kept offline, otherwise you would defeat the purpose of a paper wallet.

I see that you have now edited your post and now it says that you have all twelve words of the seed phrase.
Assuming you have entered all the words without error and if it is a valid BIP-39 phrase, you should be able to click on the "Next" button and the screen should look something like this:

https://coinguides.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/bip39-checksum-ok.png

However, if you still cannot proceed, there might be an issue with your seed phrase (the checksum doesnt match). As others mentioned, in that case, it would be helpful to know how you generated your wallet and seed phrase initially.

I did that alreay . All views are empty. The only thing is that on the register addresses there are 20 adresses has the status receiving (green) the oher 10 has the status change and yellow highlighted. What is the next step?

Check the history tab. If no transaction there and your wallet has zero balance, either the wallet is not funded or you have the wrong seed phrase.

That is how Electrum is. Your receiving address is the address your coins are sent to when you received coins from someone. The change address is the address that your change goes to when your transaction that has extra UTXO which will go back to your wallet another address as change.

It's  normal to see this...
Check your seed phrase  again and make sure you're not making a wrong combination maybe reverifying from where you kept it initially  to be sure of what is really happening.

Why not tell us more about how you generated this Von paper wallet or what site or wallet did you generated this 12-word seed?
We do not know exactly if what type of wallet you using or how you generated your wallet is but if you can add more information about your wallet maybe we can point you to the right procedure to recover your wallet sometimes you just need to change the derivation path to be able to find the right wallet.

Is your wallet synced? The circle loccated at the bottom right corner of the scressn should be green.

Another question:
Do you know the bitcoin address(es) which should have received the fund? Or all your have is a seed phrase?
I hope you have not been scammed.

You should not post your seed phrase, even if it is just an explanatory image and not your true seed phrase. Newbies might see it and follow your example, thinking it is a safe thing to do. - just my two cents.

First, make sure you imported the correct seed. Second, check if your wallet is fully synchronized (the circle at the bottom right corner must be green as hosseinimr already explained). Finally, make sure you chose the correct wallet type from the options provided (p2pkh, p2wkph-p2sh or p2wpkh. You might need to set a custom  derivation path, depending on the tool that you used to create your wallet).
Those are the most common reasons why your wallet doesn't show the correct balance.

The first question is how do you come about with the wallet seed phrase because we have certainly heard in the past about how people get scammed paying for a seed phrase with a promise that there is funds in it. If you’ve seen bitcoin before on that wallet then you need to check again which address is that bitcoin on. The address format will then be how you will choose your derivation path as stated above. Cross check the imported wallet and check if the address is corresponding with what you have that’s the only way to be sure you’re of recovering the right address. If at all everything is ok and still no funds in it. Then it might be that you have been scammed.

Make sure all this recovery are done offline to prevent your wallet coming online

With "BIP39 seed" option, the "Next" button will be available regardless of the validity of the seed phrase.

You must manually check the BIP39 message below if it has a valid checksum or not and with the correct words.
If it's not, what you typed isn't a BIP39 seed and can't be restored through Electrum or other BIP39-compatible wallets.

If it's valid;
Enabling that "BIP39 seed" option will add a script type (address type) prompt in the next window.
You must select the correct script type that your paper wallet used, and also, the default standard derivation path for each script type is written (editable) below it.
Derivation path should match the derivation path used by your paper wallet or the addresses that will be restored will be different.

Also, Electrum has a "Detect Existing Accounts" feature in that script type selection window that can search for couple of script types and derivation paths,
Try it. (needs the wallet to be online)
If there's no result, the derivation path used by "Von" may not be standard and not in the non-standard paths searched by Electrum.
In this case, link the tool/page where you generated the paper wallet so users can check it themselves.

It is possible that OP has German, Austrian or Swiss roots and he sprinkled the German word "von" into his topic title instead of the correct English word "from". German "von" is usually used in the same way you'd use "from" in English language. I could be right, I could be wrong. Tom03 would need to clarify this.

Good that you mentioned Electrum's "Detect Existing Accounts" option which is offered when restauring BIP39 wallets. It is indeed pretty good and checks the most common derivation paths and a few varieties.

It would help if OP could disclose which particular software or whatever he used to create his "paper wallet". (I wouldn't use this term for a wallet with recovery words that lead to a HD wallet. For me a paper wallet is an individual private key and its derived public address, not a complete HD wallet recovered from its mnemonic recovery words.)

As far as I know, the information in the paper wallet is the public and private keys. This type of wallet usually does not include a seed phrase.

In addition, if the OP gets a Bitcoin Paper wallet like the one listed at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitcoinPaperWallet (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitcoinPaperWallet), he should be careful. If there are still assets, moving them to a new wallet immediately is best instead of using them even with seed/private key imports into Electrum.

If you had a more or less decent amount on a paperwallet created by the malicious successor of formerly clean Canton Becker's Bitcoin paperwallet generator, you likely don't have time to move your coins away because your coins would've been stolen rather quickly.

Canton Becker's original paperwallet generator code is clean (it's still available on his Github) and can generate rather safe paperwallets if you trust Javascript's crypto functions to generate good enough entropy (that's a debate I don't want to emphasize upon).

As the Bitcoin wiki page indicates in red, the current version of the paperwallet generator website is malicious and would give you paperwallets known to the malicious owner of the website, even if you run the generator offline, because it uses predetermined entropy.
The site's code pretends that a user can add entropy by moving his mouse, but that's all fake and fog candles...

You are right. If the user uses a version that a backdoor has infiltrated, then the opportunity for assets to be stolen can be faster before the user has time to move it to another wallet.

However, when the crypto assets owned by the OP are still accessible (for example, he is using from a tool that has not been compromised), it is better to move to a new wallet than to continue using the address of the previously created Paper wallet.

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It seems that the information on the wiki has been updated, including the GitHub link: https://github.com/cantonbecker/bitcoinpaperwallet (I saw the last update in October 2022).

I had previously read o_e_l_e_o's post before the update: BitcoinPaperWallet a likely scam - page needs updated (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5248345.msg54428310#msg54428310).

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Here is one more explanation: