Please help! mycelium watch only account private keys

[sk89]

Hi guys. I am helping a friend out to cash out.
He has mycelium and the coins are in SA watch only account.

I tried to create backup for private keys.
But when I create a backup, QR codes are made for all the other accounts but not for this one so it' driving me crazy.

Is there a way to import private keys for this account if I don't have the keys encrypted nor the QR code?
Many thanks in advance!

[LoyceMobile]

How was the watch only account created?
Anyone can import a Bitcoin address into Mycelium to create a watch only wallet, but without the private key you can't do anything else.

[bob123]

He has mycelium and the coins are in SA watch only account.
[...]
Is there a way to import private keys for this account if I don't have the keys encrypted nor the QR code?

Sure, there is.

But you actually need to have/know the private key.
If you have the private key, you can simply import a "new account" and use that private key.

Without knowing the private key, you won't be able to spend the BTC. A watch-only wallet is just an imported address without any ability to spend from (therefore watch-only).
That's basically the same as looking at any random address. Without the private information required (the private key), you can't spend from it.


If your friend does not have any backup / QR / private key, he can't spend the coins.

[bL4nkcode]

If he doesn't have the private keys or recovery seed (12-word seed) to that address then there's no way he can transfer that funds from mycelium to another wallet addy.

Does your friend created the account in mycelium by the "advance" mode or "Add Bitcoin HD account"? or just imported the address there?

[AB de Royse777]

He has mycelium and the coins are in SA watch only account.

Having a watch only wallet means you can just watch the activities of the wallet but can not spend any coin. It's the same as watching an address in a blockchain explorer. The difference is that you can create a translation but can not broadcast it until you have the private key.

[sk89]

He has mycelium and the coins are in SA watch only account.

Having a watch only wallet means you can just watch the activities of the wallet but can not spend any coin. It's the same as watching an address in a blockchain explorer. The difference is that you can create a translation but can not broadcast it until you have the private key.

I thought I could change the watch only to a standard type wallet by importing private keys?? It works for all the other SA accounts as I created backup and gained QR codes and such, so I thought it was weird that this is the only one not doing it.

[LoyceV]

I thought I could change the watch only to a standard type wallet by importing private keys?

You said you don't have the private keys. If you have them: import them!

[sk89]

If he doesn't have the private keys or recovery seed (12-word seed) to that address then there's no way he can transfer that funds from mycelium to another wallet addy.

Does your friend created the account in mycelium by the "advance" mode or "Add Bitcoin HD account"? or just imported the address there?

Advanced->generate BTC SA account is what he believes he did.
He has the seed but the account being SA I seed seems kind of useless at this point..
He doesn't recall gaining a private key upon the creation of the account, is it possible or does he not know what he is talking about?!

[LoyceV]

He does not recall getting a private key when he created the account😭

Suggestion: create a new account in the same way (ideally on a different device), and see if any of the steps rings a bell.

Does this mean he cannot do anything but to watch it sit there?

Correct. The point of a watch-only wallet is that it can't be taken without extra information.

[khaled0111]

Mycelium hs a feature where you can change the SA account to a watch only wallet by deleting it's private key.
Since your friend believes he created an single-address account and didn't import a public key then I suppose he mistakengly deleted its private key which converted the wallet to a watch only wallet.

Unfortunately, after deleting the private key there is no way to recover it.

[sk89]

Mycelium hs a feature where you can change the SA account to a watch only wallet by deleting it's private key.
Since your friend believes he created an single-address account and didn't import a public key then I suppose he mistakengly deleted its private key which converted the wallet to a watch only wallet.
Unfortunately, after deleting the private key there is no way to recover it.

How do you delete private keys? He doesn't remember deleting anything from the account, so I'm trying to explain how this isn't going to work unless he recalls anything.

[AB de Royse777]

Mycelium hs a feature where you can change the SA account to a watch only wallet by deleting it's private key.
Since your friend believes he created an single-address account and didn't import a public key then I suppose he mistakengly deleted its private key which converted the wallet to a watch only wallet.

Unfortunately, after deleting the private key there is no way to recover it.

I would consider this a very poor feature. Do they have a warning message before executing this deletion? However, even if there is a warning, I always do not read them in full unless it's very short and very precise.

Anyway, if such thing is true then I think there are no hope left for OP.

[LoyceV]

I would consider this a very poor feature.

Well, it's under Advanced for a reason.

Do they have a warning message before executing this deletion?

Right after creating it, there's a warning:
Backup missing

When entering the wallet, the warning gets bigger:
No backup - no bitcoins! In
order not to lose your bitcoins
when your smartphone is lost
or broken please make a
backup of this address NOW
and keep it in a safe place!
It also gives the option to BACKUP NOW or BACKUP LATER.

When deleting the account, it asks:

Do you want to delete account "X" holding n mBTC?

There's an option to:

Only delete the private key and keep as a read-only account

After clicking YES, it gives a big popup with "Are You Sure? This cannot be undone!" and the addresses you're deleting.

However, even if there is a warning, I always do not read them in full unless it's very short and very precise.

That's on you

I've never used this feature, but after checking, it looks foolproof.
In short: I don't think it's a poor feature at all!

[bob123]

He doesn't recall gaining a private key upon the creation of the account, is it possible or does he not know what he is talking about?!

No, that's not possible.

If he generated the private key using mycelium, he definitely was told to back it up. He might have forgotten this. Or he didn't care.
If he imported an address, there was never any private key to start with.

Either way, this is a prime example on how fool proof methods can never be fool proof enough and that for the majority of non-techy people a wallet has to be as simple as using a credit card without any addresses, private keys, transactions, confirmations etc.
Basically for the mainstream user, you'd need to remove every technical aspect of bitcoin. And even then it wouldn't be fool proof enough..

[AB de Royse777]

In short: I don't think it's a poor feature at all!

Let say it's not and for users like us, it seems not poor but here we have an example - someone might deleted their key without reading all this information and now it seems the coins are gone. For a noob sometimes the easy terms are unknown like "watch only".

Obviously, it varies from people to people to get the insight of a message.

I always found Electrum a very good option for me.

[hulla]

He has the seed but the account being SA I seed seems kind of useless at this point..

No, seeds of wallet are not useless and if he has the wallet seeds according your above messages then he can still restore the mycelium wallet with or without the private keys and what he need to do is restore the wallet using another device. Click on restore backup  and select the seeds option.

[bob123]

No, seeds of wallet are not useless and if he has the wallet seeds according your above messages then he can still restore the mycelium wallet with or without the private keys and what he need to do is restore the wallet using another device.

In OP's specific case, the mnemonic code is kind of worthless.
At least, it is not usable to recover that one private key OP's friend is looking for.

The private key never was derived from the seed. It was added as an "additional account" (or similar) inside of Mycelium. It has nothing to do with the mnemonic code and the HD wallet itself.

[sk89]

No, seeds of wallet are not useless and if he has the wallet seeds according your above messages then he can still restore the mycelium wallet with or without the private keys and what he need to do is restore the wallet using another device.

In OP's specific case, the mnemonic code is kind of worthless.
At least, it is not usable to recover that one private key OP's friend is looking for.

The private key never was derived from the seed. It was added as an "additional account" (or similar) inside of Mycelium. It has nothing to do with the mnemonic code and the HD wallet itself.

I think this is what it is. HD wallet works fine but SA address needs private keys but my friend really has no idea what he did or didn't do.

It's pretty large amount and I have tried to figure it out for over a week, I even recieved a very suspicious e-mail from a 'Russian hacker' who insists he can help restoring the wallet by cracking code or whatever, but I think it's time to let this go. Thanks everyone for your help.

[sk89]

He doesn't recall gaining a private key upon the creation of the account, is it possible or does he not know what he is talking about?!

No, that's not possible.

If he generated the private key using mycelium, he definitely was told to back it up. He might have forgotten this. Or he didn't care.
If he imported an address, there was never any private key to start with.

Either way, this is a prime example on how fool proof methods can never be fool proof enough and that for the majority of non-techy people a wallet has to be as simple as using a credit card without any addresses, private keys, transactions, confirmations etc.
Basically for the mainstream user, you'd need to remove every technical aspect of bitcoin. And even then it wouldn't be fool proof enough..

He loaned some cash to a guy and he got paid back with the coins, and he isn't bitcoin savvy, so at this point I'm thinking it's either the guy who paid him back gave him a wrong instruction(whether onpurpose or not) or he accidently deleted the keys and don't remember.

One thing for sure is this guy is extremely cautious and probably read every single instruction very thoroughly, so I wanted to believe he didn't leave any information behind and it would be possible to recover.

Well it seems like there's no possible ways to do so, so we are giving up on it. Thank you all so much for your help.

[khaled0111]

Try to reach out to that guy (who sent the coins) and ask him about the instructions he gave to your friend. It might help to figure out what happened because knowing how the watch-only wallet was created is the key to solve this problem.

You will receive more emails/pms from newbies offering to help you. Do not trust them and ask them to post here if they want to help.