Bitcoin Forum

Just wondering if, way back in the beginning, passcodes were ever 10 words instead of 12? Thanks.

Do you mean seed phrases? They didn't exist in the beginning. The hierarchical deterministic wallets were introduced for the first time in 2012 if I'm not mistaken and the mnemonic algorithm was created in 2013.

Passcodes?

• BIP39 "Seed phrases" doesn't always consist of 12 words. It can be 3, 6, 9, 12, 15..... but not 10 since the entropy wont be a multiple of 32bits.
  
• "Passphrase" for Brainwallet can be 10-words since the input's number of words is irrelevant.
  
• Or are you thinking of a specific wallet/client with 10-words backup?

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For questions like this, it's better to be posted on "Beginners & Help" board instead (link (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=39.0)),
I'll also ask a mod to move this topic to that board.

You can encrypt your private key with a 10-word password of your choice, but in this case you need to keep the encrypted password in addition to the word card to decrypt, but if you're talking about seeds, you can't get them by 10 words (32 bits).

Any way wallet seed or any other types of seed need to be written so it doest make a differance between 10 or 12

At the beginning, there were no words. Just private keys and wallet files. These seed phrases (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Seed_phrase) of BIP39 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki) came along in 2013 with the HD (hierarchical deterministic) wallets (https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/hd-wallets) that are mentioned above.

No, the words were never 10 unless you used a brainwallet (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet). The seed phrases can be 12, 15, 18, 21 or 24 words long. You can also generate with 3, 6 or 9 words, but it's not recommended to due to less security.

I am pretty sure you have got the answer to your query now and it will be highly appreciated if you can lock this thread now. This will not only help you to gain a reputation here but will also help the forum in stopping spam. If you keep this thread open members will come here and start posting for no reason.

He went offline since the day he posted, so doubt he'd be doing that anytime soon...

Could try reporting it so the mod gets to lock it but there have been cases those necroposted threads remain open.

Thank you for the answer. Yes, seed phrase. Sorry, I am not very knowledgeable about Bitcoin.
 I bought Bitcoin in 2010 or early 2011. I kept track of it for a while but it wasn't worth much so I guess I lost interest. Of course, now I am interested! But I have lost the seed phrase. I do remember that there was a 10 word phrase. And a hypnosis session came up with 10 words.

I have a lot of learning to do. Thank you!

What wallet did you used? And what year you started using it? I bet this is not a recovery seed but something like a mnemonic phrase of blockchain.info legacy address but probably it's different since they have 15-word mnemonic phrase.

If you still into bitcoin now and using non-custodial wallet (e.g. electrum, trustwallet, mycelium), it's really recommended to have a backup (offline copy) of your recovery seed (12 or 24 word seed) in case the device got broken, stolen, etc.

I bought Bitcoin in late 2010 or early 2011, I don't remember the exact date. Since this was 10 years ago I do not remember what wallet. I do remember that the icon that was on my computer looked very similar to the Bitcoin symbol (the B that looks like a dollar sign, $). I no longer have the device that the wallet was on and I think I must have recycled the information that I had written down on paper.

Since I only have what may or may not be the correct 10 word phrase, I am seriously doubting that I will be able to recover this wallet. Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks for your response.

If there's no way you can remember those 10 word, as I assume it's something like a recovery seed/phrase to open the account/wallet but I doubt if the wallet is still operating now. So your only option is to leave those coins as lost forever.

As what I have mentioned, having backup of your recovery seed (12 or 24 words seed) will help you to recover your coins in case if something happen to your device.

 "I doubt if the wallet is still operating" Would this be because it is so old and has not been accessed in years?

This is one of the things we talked about here, it's very obvious that it can't be recovered, even the back up of recovery seed won't help at this point in time, automatically the user has lost the operating system code and nothing can actually happened in order to retrieve it, any coin that is there will remain till infinity provided it has been lost, i do see it here when people emphasised that we are supposed to manually have a documentation of our records or code manually in case of necessities, so that another measure can be taken to sort it out.

You're obviously talking about Bitcoin Core, and you seem to have encrypted your wallet with a passphrase. Bitcoin Core recommends a passphrase of at least 10 "random" characters or 8 words. Then your passphrase is maybe just one of your former passwords with a length of 10 characters and not a 10 words phrase. If you have the file of your wallet (wallet.dat) you should try each of your old passwords before trying to retrieve a random 8 or 10 words phrase IMO.

https://i.ibb.co/L57cWmm/bitcoincore-2021-11-21.png

Electrum (https://electrum.org/) has been around since 2011 and early versions were also using seed phrases although I believe they've always been 12 words by default not 10. But it is flexible and can let you use any length so it may be worth a try.
The icon also is a B sign like this (from the old 1.9.8 version):
https://i.imgur.com/TS5CTCC.png

Thanks for the info. I have been looking into this again and I think it was Bitcoin Core for the wallet. So, if I have what I think is the seed phrase, would I just install the wallet on my current computer and try the seed phrase?

Please forgive my ignorance. I really did not keep up with or even learn much about it after I purchased it.

Bitcoin Core never implemented any kind of mnemonic or seed phrase backup options.
The option has always been a digital backup which is a copy of the wallet file.

If it's Bitcoin Core, you should look for backups that has a ".dat" extension, specifically "wallet.dat".
Take note that not all .dat files are connected to Bitcoin Core.

Exactly, nothing to add. But just that any seed phrase lesser than 12 words are not secure. I understand you know this but in case for purpletea123 to also know.

Thank you for all of the information. Apparently, I will not be able to recover this and need to make peace with that. That's hard to do since it would be worth a lot of money now. Thanks again.

...set of words aren't always a seed phrase backup.

Have you tried the second in the list in my reply above (post#3)?
It could be a "brainwallet" and you've just imported the private key to Bitcoin Core.

Try to use this brainwallet generator on an offline PC: brainwalletx.github.io/#generator (http://brainwalletx.github.io/#generator) (download the source from GitHub link below)
Type your 10-words and see if the uncompressed or compressed address has any balance.
If any of it does, then you can import the private key to a wallet (like Bitcoin Core or Electrum) to be able to spend it.

So long as you have what may or may not be the correct 10 word phrase, try using it to know if it could be, cause you might be thinking it's not, and might be what you needed to get your wallet back.

Having an offline backup of your recovery phrase/seed or mnemonics is the only way to recover your wallet, and this is very important putting it in writing and safely kept. I had this same experience few days ago, where my device which I have all my passwords/phrase/mnemonics etc to all my accounts and even my bank details were stored was stolen, and this is a very big risky to me, if they know what the device contains. To an extent, if I can be helped on how to track my phone with the use of any software or company, I'll be very grateful. With this experience, I don't waste time to put my passwords and phrases in writing, cause it's very important, and without the phrase, your assets are totally gone for good.