Bitcoin Forum

Hi there,

I lost my Bitcoin Core wallet from 2018

All I have is the list of 12 secret words ...is there ANY chance to get back access to my wallet only with that ?

BR
Gawan

AFAIK, bitcoin core does not use a mnemonic recovery seed... Are you 100% sure those 12 words are linked to your bitcoin core wallet?

Yes, 100%

When I download Bitcoin core and create a new wallet, I am asked for a passphrase containing at least 8 words.
Unfortunately this passphrase is all I have :(

BR
Gawan

Bitcoin Core has never used seed phrases.

The possibilities here are:
You generated the seed phrase somewhere else.
You have used a fake version of Bitcoin Core which is designed to scam you.
The words are actually your wallet password.

Where did you download Bitcoin Core from? Where did you get the words from originally? Did you pick them yourself? Do all the words appear on this list: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt?

---

What you have is a passphrase to unlock your wallet.dat file, not a seed phrase. Without that wallet.dat file, your words are useless I'm afraid.

Without the wallet file it'll be irrecoverable. Do you have the hard drive the wallet was made on? How full is that drive also?

If you're on windows, try going to %appdata%\local\bitcoin or %appdata%\roaming\bitcoin or search the drive for "wallet.dat". For Linux and mac it should be in ~/.bitcoin.

There's a big difference between a passphrase and a 12 word mnemonic seed phrase.

With a 12 word mnemonic seed phrase, it should be possible to recover an HD wallet. A passphrase, however, is used to encrypt a wallet, it's not used to derive your master private key but merely encrypts it. You'll need the original wallet to recover your funds.

So, if you're 100% sure you used bitcoin core, the 12 words are not a mnemonic seed phrase (since bitcoin core doesn't use mnemonic seed phrases), but merely a passphrase used to encrypt your wallet...

I'd say the odds of this are astronomical

There was a shady wallet from a (now defunct) website called "bitsblock.io" that looked like Bitcoin Core and would email you a "12 word recovery seed" when you set up an account... it was a total scam, and it's good to see that the website is no longer active.

Can you please take a screenshot for what you are being asked for when you try to create a new wallet? ??? It would help immensely to clear up the confusion as to which wallet you are actually using, and what it is actually asking you for.

Maybe you use the words as a passphrase, old bitcoin core wallets asks you to encrypt the wallet with at least 8 words or a 10 character long pass
You can also go to https://iancoleman.io and enter your 12 words to see if you address shows up

Good luck
/KX

First, are you sure that you were using bitcoin core?
Core doesn't work with mnemonic codes. The backup of a core wallet is the wallet file itself (by default: wallet.dat).

You need this wallet file to access your coins. If you have used a passphrase to encrypt it, you need this too.


Maybe you have used a different wallet? Are you absolutely sure it was core? Do you remember downloading 300GB+ of blockchain data and waiting days/weeks for it to be synced?

If OP would have taken his xpriv and converted it into whatever himself, i am sure he would remember.
And then the post wouldn't just be "... lost bitcoin core wallet ... only have 12 words ...".

In fact, he probably could restore his wallet on his own if he'd be techy enough to use a random script/technique to convert his xpriv into a sequence of words himself.

You can't turn a master private key back in to a seed phrase. A seed phrase goes through first 2048 rounds of HMAC-SHA512 to generate a seed number, and then further HMAC-SHA512 to generate a master private key. All of these are irreversible processes.

You can convert an xprv in to a sequence of words in the same way you can convert any data in to a sequence of words, but it is not a seed phrase and would generate different addresses if used as one.