Bitcoin Forum

A friend of mine received 1 BTC in his Bitcoin.com iPhone wallet on August 18 of 2017.

He recently updated the app and this balance disappeared. He does not have a backup or seed phrase available.

Could it be possible to manually recover his 1 BTC balance by perhaps rolling back to a previous version of the app or by some type of manual recovery?

Ask him to do this:

1. Click on his Bitcoin Core wallet, the three dots at the top-right corner and "Show my recovery phrase". This should show his seed.

2. Download Electrum (electrum.org), create a new wallet by clicking on "I already have a seed", write the seed from the app, click Options and select "BIP39 seed", click next and select "legacy (p2pkh)". He should then have access to his wallet.

I know. I mean, in the Bitcoin wallet by Bitcoin.com, they call Bitcoin "Bitcoin Core". I'm talking about the iOS wallet. I see how this looks confusing.

When you open the app in the new version (redesigned), there should be a card "Bitcoin Core", where he should click to get the seed and do the steps above.

After Updating, did bitcoin.com create an entirely new wallet for him?

Going to give this a try now. Thank you so much!



We don't know. What is the best way to determine this?


Apparently, the update created an entirely new wallet as the Electrum import also has a zero balance.

this is unlikely, but could the wallet files be backed up in his icloud? i know the coinbase wallet app supports icloud backups, but i'm not familiar with the bitcoin.com wallet.

otherwise the prospects for recovery don't sound good: (https://support.bitcoin.com/en/articles/3680131-how-do-i-backup-my-bitcoin-com-wallet)

Maybe you can try contacting their support to see if there is any way he can downgrade his wallet or restore it somehow:

https://bitcoinbch.typeform.com/to/oLmju8
(taken from https://www.bitcoin.com/contact-us/)

And even posting this on /r/BTC which is basically Bitcoin Cash's sub but there are far more people that use this wallet there (since it's owned by Roger Ver).

Thank you. I've got a nice reddit thread started.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/gf9vm6/lost_btc_in_iphone_wallet_by_bitcoincom/

it is possible that bitcoin.com is pulling their old scam again this time in their wallet. the scam is that they dump their altcoin on anybody who uses their service and then call it "BTC" which has led to a lot of newbie confusion in the past. see if the wallet changed its network or has a way to change coins from bitcoin to that altcoin. ;)

From what can be read on Reddit topic, it seems that the backup made by iTunes could be a saving solution. Although such a backup will restore things to a state before installing a new version of the wallet (all settings/information will be deleted), iTunes will make new backup before that so after wallet recovery everything can be restored to its previous state.

You should try all the other options though, because it's really weird that the update deletes the old wallet, and you should definitely check that it's not a problem with the derivation path when restoring via seed on Electrum.

I would never use wallet from bitcoin.com for storing BTC.
Who knows how many people made mistake thinking Bcash is Bitcoin, and in general I am not fan of keeping Bitcoin in phone wallets.

If you have private key/seed you can import to other wallets and you can check your address on explorer

Not all people are techy, so for sure they will select a device where they are much comfortable to use with, that's why some people will use phone wallets for them to store Bitcoins which also it is much easy to access yet too risky and not safe at all just what the OP stated.
I also agree on @TryNinja to contact their support, if the user doesn't have any keys backed up, this is the last option to recover yet a very small chance.

You have enough knowledge about the risks of using phone wallets and that's why you are keeping yourself far from using less secure phone wallets. I wanna add little extra with you that most new crypto users haven't got enough information about web wallet, cold wallet, hardware wallet and most interesting thing is that some of them only introduced with blockchain & coinbase only. So as per their experience they are not enough aware about funds safety too. From my personal experiences i can say that people love to use mobile apps related bitcoin wallets which gives them easy access like other social media apps.

I think you are talking about the wrong point. Regardless of the paper wallet, hardware wallet, mobile wallet, or desktop wallet, all of their private keys or seed keys need to be stored securely. If our friend mentioned above had stored their seed keys securely, they would now have easy access to their funds. It is necessary to talk about the importance of taking backups rather than the reliability of the wallets. Even if he had a hardware wallet and lost his private key, he would have experienced the current issue.

One way or another, we have to be always extra cautious when we are using crypto-wallets. I have lost my Trust wallets seed keys and my assets went with it also. So I know I never get back them but I think I took my lessons.

You missed to read my post, OP friend is have backup on his iTunes could, so that would be the best solution. I don't know why he hesitates to try this option, because as far as I can see on Reddit the problem is not solved yet. Only way to get old version (and restore old files) is via that backup, or that some expert is try to find out if the old wallet is still present somewhere on the phone storage.

I did not notice that this problem had been solved and therefore if the currencies did not move from the address after it was confirmed, then the problem is technical.

Try to modify the derivation path because it appears that they have modified the path from (m/44'/0'/0') to /m/44'/145'/0'  ---> watch this^[1].
Perhaps this is the reason why your coins do not appear after the update or when you try them on Electrum.

I found this old discussion and you can view it here[2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKaTmrwpYtY
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/9deoaq/btc_or_bch_the_bitcoincom_wallet_hd_derivation/e5hlndq/

ETFbitcoin, it is possible that the problem has been solved, in the end it is confirmed that there is a backup which is actually the best option that exists. If this does not work for some reason, the next step would be to seek the help of experts, but of course if the price of such a service is not too high.

There are services like this https://drivesaversdatarecovery.com/ , and I guess these are pretty expensive services given the complexity of the job. The question is how much someone would be willing to pay to recover 1BTC, is 20% or maybe 30% good price?

Have once used the wallet OP mentioned to check it out maybe it will provide some awesome service but the only thing i can find is disappointment because the wallet usually create another new wallet whenever an update is done and i have leave the btc inside the created then. Meanwhile, I'm still surprised that the wallet balance was said to be zero after been imported to electrum wallet.

I read the thread created by the OP on r/btc (https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/gf9vm6/lost_btc_in_iphone_wallet_by_bitcoincom/) issue is not resolved. My advise to people is to stay away from that kind of wallet.