Apologies, I mean that as the decade 2010-2019. I would guess 2013-2017 is a more accurate time range, but he didn't remember the specific year. Only that this was around the time Bitcoin's price was 2-4 figures.


I've tried it with Electrum - no accounts found. It does confirm the BIP 39 checksum though.

Pretty experienced in crypto so don't need the usual disclaimers about not sharing phrases, etc.

Over the holidays, an old friend of mine told me that he had a "12 word phrase" from the 2010s and had no idea what to do with it. He's very non-technical, and a friend of his had him experiment with Bitcoin in the early days. I have a copy of the passphrase, it's BIP-39. Restoring on Electrum produces 0 balance/0 transactions with all of the common derivation paths. He was "pretty sure" that he had at least acquired a couple bitcoin back in the day so I expect to see some balance or history of transactions.

Are there other wallets from the 2010s that used BIP-39 seed phrases but a different derivation function than Electrum supports? Any ideas on other wallets I should try here?

If it helps, he had written down the seed phrase with the odd numbered words first, even numbered words second. He said that was how it displayed in the wallet he used (perhaps odd on the left, even on the right).

BIP-39 checksum shows that it's a valid seed phrase, just trying to figure out the derivation.

I'd like to pretty exhaustively try the possibilities.