Bitcoin Forum

Hello all,

hoping you can help me. I've just installed Electrum again and at first it identified the wallet file in my computer and I was able to open it with the long password I had.
This opened without an error, but there was nothing in the wallet.

I then tried to see if the restore phrase was OK, and one of the things I was able to do was to verify that the wallet I opened had the same phrase. Regardless, I created a new wallet to restore with the passphrase, but not really surpringly, it also opened with no contents.

How can I find out what has happened and if I've lost the coins now?

Thank you for all your help!

If you import the seed phrase correctly, your coins should be there. Recheck your seed phrase to make sure that it is correct. You can also check other addresses in the wallet to see if your coins is there. I hope you didn't use a passphrase, because if you do, and you cannot get the correct passphrase, then you will have no access to your the old wallet that your imported the seed phrase.

If you use a passphrase, you will need the passphrase with the seed phrase. If your wallet has synchronized with the blockchain and nothing showing but zero balance, that means you still used not the right seed phrase or the passphrase is not correct.

Make sure your wallet synchronized with the blockchain.

If you have the seed phrase to your wallet and you were not hacked, then you cannot lose your funds, except you extended your seed phrase with a passphrase and you cannot remember it anymore. Double check if you are really using the correct seed phrase and try to remember if you added a passphrase to this wallet.

See here for things you can try:

https://bitcoinelectrum.com/frequently-asked-questions/#why-does-restoring-my-wallet-from-seed-lead-to-a-different-wallet

Do you see any transaction in history tab?
If there are transactions there and the balance is zero, your wallet may have been compromised.

If your wallet is synced (the circle located at bottom right corner of the window is green) and you don't see any transaction, you have opened a wrong wallet.

Thank you all,

I see no transactions at all in the history tab and I've tried to investigate with the wallet address, but I am not sure where I can find the associated wallet address to search with in a blockchain investigation website.

Restoring from the wallet file which you said went through smoothly after password Should have definitely given you the right wallet and by double checking with seed phrase and still same thing signals one thing for me, you wallet is either not synced and if it is then your wallet is definitely compromised. Check out the transaction history tab and see through those transactions or better still if you have the address which Should contain the bitcoin then you can use an explorer to check it through. Seeing bitcoins on it will tell you that your recovery phrases and file are the wrong one while an empty address might show you an outgoing transaction which signifies a compromise

Edit: sorry your post beat me to it.

 
If you have performed any transaction before on that wallet then it is definitely the wrong wallet seed phrase and you should calm down to find out the right seed phrase

Seeing the old wallet(s) is normal even if you just installed Electrum if you previously uninstalled it without deleting your electrum data directory.
Given that this is your old wallet, old data directory and there's nothing in its history,
chance that it's empty to begin with is very likely because its previous history wont be deleted even if unused for a long time.
(if you're using the wallet before, why would it be empty?)

If you're really sure that you've transactions before, you might have been using a different wallet file from the one that you've opened.
Firstly, check the "Open" wallet menu to see if there are other wallet files available there.

If none, one probability is if you've been using a "Portable" Electrum and also used a Standard Installer/Executable before. (Windows has specific binaries)
Each uses a different data directory, so each has a different wallets directory and settings.
For example; if you've created a wallet in both versions but the one that you've funded is in the Portable Electrum,
the wallet file should be in "electrum_data/wallets" portable datadir located in the same folder where ElectrumPortable was saved.
Then fast forward today, if you've installed the Installer or Stand-alone, it used the default datadir instead where the empty wallet is located.
TL;DL: Look for "wallets" folder or "electrum_data" (then open the wallets folder inside), then check if there are other wallets inside the wallets folder.

Exchange withdrawal history, transactions from other wallets, etc. nothing? Hmm...

Do you see a green orb in the bottom right?



Go to view menu and make sure "addresses" is checked. Then switch to addresses tab to see all the addresses in your wallet. Your wallet has many addresses not just one.

The orb could also be blue instead of green if the user has setup a Tor proxy and the wallet is syncing fine. Only a red orb indicates issues with communication and syncing with connected Electrum servers. Syncing in progress is also indicated in the bottom left of the "status line" of a desktop Electrum wallet.

The mobile Android wallet has the orb "light" in the top right corner.

First go to an explorer and paste the respective address to see if that address actually holds Ny balance in it.

Restoring wallet with seeds has to be precise and if you had used extended seed word then it must be included as well to restore the actual wallet, missing anything will results in a creation of new wallet with new set of addresses.

I know that you said that you installed Electrum "again", but it's still worth asking: Was the original wallet created on Electrum or some other software?
During the recent restoration process, did Electrum ever ask you for a derivation path or type of addresses you want to scan? That could be a sign that it isn't an Electrum seed.

Are you sure that you didn't create a BIP-39 seed instead of an Electrum-native seed?
The passphrase you have must be entered exactly as you entered it back when you created your wallet. That includes capital/small letters and even empty spaces.

If the restored wallet shows no transaction history, then you have a wrong wallet that you never funded. Can you remember if you or someone using your computer ever created a second wallet for whatever purpose?

Try to compare the addresses you funded in the past to what you get when you restore your Electrum wallet from seed+passphrase. Did you send money to it from a different wallet, an exchange or maybe a friend did it? Find one of the addresses the coins came from and see if you can find the same one under Addresses in Electrum.   

The most common and possible reasons why you don't see any transaction on the history tab although you are sure you have used your wallet in the past are:
- you restored the wrong wallet.
- the wallet software is not synced (see abdussamad reply above).
- you used addresses which are above the gap limit. This is unlikely to be the cause but it's still a possibility. If this is the case, you need to increase the gap limit to something like 100.

It's theoretically possible, but I don't see a beginner increasing the default gap limit, unless someone else set up his wallet for him and had access to his computer. To increase the default gap limit you would have to enter a command in the console tab. I think that's the only way to do it, and that's why I think it's a small probability that this is what happened.

It's possible that someone receive fund at an address beyond the gap limit without going to console tab and increasing the gap limit. To do so, you should go to receive tab and generate more than 20 new addresses. If all first 20 addresses are unused, the 21st address will be beyond the gap limit and you won't see the fund if the 21st address has received fund and you recover the wallet from seed phrase.

Electrum displays a warning when generating an address beyond the gap limit and as you said, it's unlikely that OP has generated such address.

True, but again it's very unlikely that anyone, not just a newbie, would generate 20 addresses, not use any of them, and decide to use the 21st or the 31st. Perhaps there are cases where a bug in Electrum would do something like that automatically. That would then restore an empty wallet by default. Do you remember such an incident on Bitcointalk or have you seen it somewhere outside of the forum?

You are right. As I said in my previous post, it's unlikely that OP has generated an address beyond the gap limit.
My point was just that it's possible to have an address beyond the gap limit without going to console tab and using the corresponding command.


No.

I remember reading a topic where the OP was having a similar issue which was resolved after increasing the gap limit. I did a quick research but, unfortunately, I couldn't find it.


I agree with both of you. This is unlikely to be the cause of the problem especially if OP is using a new version. Electrum used to display a warning when you are about to exceed the gap limit but on the newest versions (at least on mobile) it will not generate a new address beyond the gap limit and will display this error message:
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/04/07/VKjad.jpeg

Although I don't like limiting users and preventing them from using a piece of software how they want to, I like this new feature. It's very rare that an ordinary user will need to generate over 20 addresses at once. And as soon as one of those first 20 deposit addresses gets funded, Electrum will make another batch of 20 available. This change can help prevent newbies from believing they have the wrong seed if they have funded addresses beyond the default gap limit. 

Right, that's how the android version works.
The desktop version allow you to generate more and more addresses even beyond the gap limit. Below is the warning displayed by desktop version of electrum when trying to generating an address beyond the gap limit.

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/04/08/VOfVz.jpeg

Electrum also highlight addresses that are beyond the gap limit in red to warn users.

I think that notification could be improved from Electrum's side. "The address won't be recovered automatically", ok. But then they say "you may need to add it manually." To me, that sounds like the only solution is to import the private keys of the missing address. That's something a user wouldn't have because the default gap limit doesn't allow him to see such addresses. Perhaps "you may need to add it manually or increase the gap limit" would be a more complete version. 

If it's an old wallet and the address starts with "1", you'll need to ensure you do not enable Segwit. It seems Electrum won't recognize original Bitcoin addresses if you create a Segwit or native Segwit wallet. The original addresses will not show up among the UTXO set although the key still controls them. Try creating a non-Segwit wallet.  :-\

Those script type (address type) options that you're talking about is only applicable to restored BIP39 seed phrase to Electrum,
It wont show in new or old Electrum seed because it already has the necessary data to tell Electrum which address type to restore.

Plus if you read the OP, his seed phrase seem to restore the same empty wallet that he already has.
OP mentioned that the empty wallet has the same seed phrase (so he used the "seed" menu to verify it).
And as mentioned in your own thread, an Electrum wallet with BIP39 seed phrase has a grayed-out "Wallet->seed" menu.