What happenedMid 2016, my cellphone broke down.
I recovered using my seed phrase. 0 BTC - coins missing.
Mid 2018, cellphone stolen.
Recovered again using seed phrase, now wallet showed missing coins before Mid 2016, but coins between Mid 2016 to Mid 2018 missing now.
Eventually I managed to find my coin.
I am sharing my experience hoping it could help someone recover their bitcoins, because I managed to recover mine.
If you found this useful please consider tipping: (BTC!) bc1qug9p4mgl2g9vsarwu4mv0k38sfl674qr7vx6p2
The FailuresThings I tried but were unsuccessful, but could be successful to you:
1. File recovery on old phone or computer for wallet.dat - I didn't manage to recover the dat file. I used file recovery softwares to scan the storage.
2. If a mystery involved something that has happened quite a while ago, do not trust yourself 100%. Meaning to say, your memory could be wrong. You could have not only remembered something wrongly, you could have also forgotten something. Recap your memory by going through your old digital "diary", such as the text messages, emails you have sent or received around that date (search gmail), or even sort your computer files by the Modification Date or Created Date to look at the files you edited/created around that date. Doing these will help you recall things. It was digging my old email that I come to know that my cellphone had broken down, because I had sent an email out informing someone so.
3. It was possible that coins received during that period were received in a different derivation path. Scan and try all major and possible derivation paths, such as m/0' , m/44'/0/0/0/ , m49'.... so on and so forth. You can use this link here to scan for transaction history, but take note that different default derivation paths would generate a different xPub.
https://blockpath.com/wallets/local/101?action=appxpub4. It was possible that the coins were received in a "far away" receiving address, which had a huge gap between itself and the last address that had received a coin. Meaning to say, if the 5th address received a coin, a wallet usually look for coin until the 25th address (20 as the default gap limit). If someone sent you coin using the 26th receiving address, the wallet may not detect it. Set your wallet to increase the gap limit to 50 or 100 to be safe. The above were done almost immediately after I discovered the missing the coins. I spent about 50 hours cracking my brain and running checks with very weird derivation paths just to find the coins.
My advice now is to take a break, put it away for some time, accept it in your heart that if the coins are destined to be gone, then it's gone. For my case, time was not sensitive as no one could steal those coins away from me. It's either to be recovered by myself, or left untouched forever. So recently Bitcoin short up to USD 55K each, I decided to give it a shot again. Having accepted that I most likely won't be able to get it back, I see it as a treasure hunt, or a mystery to be solved.
The key question I kept on asking myself is: How could this have happened? Which led to possibility (3), (4) and (5) and eventually (6) to be looked into.
5. It was possible that I could have mistyped the seed phrase when I was recovering in mid 2016, thus those 2 years' of bitcoins received actually went into another wallet I accidentally created with a mistyped seed phrased. As I had used MyCelium android app, I downloaded the same old version to try it myself, but the app did not allow mistyped seed phrase to be submitted as there is a checksum mechanism. Your wallet might not have this checksum verification so you might want to try.
6. It was also possible that I could have remembered wrongly about recovering from the seed phrase in Mid 2016. I might have simply created a new wallet. So, with the same old version of MyCelium android app, I tried to create a new wallet instead of the Restore option. It did not show me my new seed phrase. Someone might have gone on to use a new wallet, forgetting about saving the new seed phrase. Not for me. This possibility was struck down because under the Accounts tab for this app, a red font would remind the user to do a BACK UP. I could not have missed it for using it over 2 years. Furthermore, I remembered using a PIN lock on the mobile app. When I tried to set a PIN lock, the app required me to do a BACK UP of the seed phrase before allowing a PIN lock to be set. So, my missing coins were to be in another new wallet, then I must have seen a set of new seed phrase, for which I have absolutely no memory of.
Closing on to the Winning IdeaI was using Electrum and MyCelium app to do the tests. I noticed Electrum windows program did not ask for a passphrase when you try to do a BIP39 seed recovery, but the MyCelium mobile app did. I wondered: Maybe I used a passphrase when I did a recovery? No harm trying. It was crazy because if my last recovery using the seed phrase was without passphrase, why would I use a passphrase 2 years ago? It was not even required, and I had never written down a passphrase to go along with the seed phrase.
7. Seed recovery with a passphrase you didn't think you had
A passphrase can be of any length, any combination of characters. I did not perform so many recoveries to try each possible passphrase. Because I know one receiving address (public) for which I had received coins on for the missing coins, I could generate addresses on
https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ and see if that receiving address is listed as one of them. If you want to use this script, please consider the risks of exposing your seed phrase. You can save that page as HTML on your PC and disable your network connection, or download the open source script and host it locally to use it.
So I kept trying, just like a password guessing attack. I entered the seed phrase, repeatedly change the passphrase, clicking on the Ctrl+F search popup in Google Chrome to search the page for that public btc address. This went on for about 20 different passwords. Don't limit your imagination to long normal passwords. Try 4-digit or 6-digit pins you could have used.
The search function highlighted a public bitcoin address on the page, and I was so shocked I really couldn't believe my eyes!The cause of the mystery for my case was that I must have thought the passphrase in the seed recovery process in MyCelium app referred to the PIN lock, so I had keyed in the PIN as passphrase when I recovered in Mid June, causing my wallet to not show the Pre-Mid-2016 coins. Then when the phone got stolen, the next recovery I did was done properly - without the passphrase.
Good luck!
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