How can I get the orderly arrangement of mnemonic words after missed up?

[Zaguru12]

I'm a newbie here and also in crypto currency. I have been reading on private Key, public key and generation of 12-24 mnemonic phrases. As I believe it's the fundamental in bitcoin.
So when reading I found that the lost of this keys and phrases automatically result in too lost of wallet or not been able to back it up and that once someone has these details, it gives such person assess to your wallets.
Now my question is about the recovery of the wallet in case of lost.
1. Can only the private key be use in back up of the wallet if the mnemonic phrases cannot be found or remember or maybe generate a new mnemonic phrase from the private key

2. If accidentally the mnemonic key is missed up like the arrangement of the words are not orderly. Can it be use in any order for back up or is the a way to get its arrangements.

I am sorry if the questions seems silly. Thank you

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[ranochigo]

1. Can only the private key be use in back up of the wallet if the mnemonic phrases cannot be found or remember or maybe generate a new mnemonic phrase from the private key

You can use those private keys, if your funds are in there.

You cannot get your mnemonic from your private key. Your mnemonic goes through a one-way function to generate the keys. You cannot reverse the private keys to get your master private keys, your seeds or your mnemonic.

2. If accidentally the mnemonic key is missed up like the arrangement of the words are not orderly. Can it be use in any order for back up or is the a way to get its arrangements.

It has to be in the same order, but you can unscramble it. If you have 24 words and you've jumbled them up, then there are only 24! number of possible permutations and lesser after you factor in the checksum. There are ways to unscramble and get the entire mnemonic in the correct order so long as you know at least one of the address.

Don't think the checksum actually narrows it down too much, so yeah. It can be done, but it probably won't be possible.

[HeRetiK]

2. If accidentally the mnemonic key is missed up like the arrangement of the words are not orderly. Can it be use in any order for back up or is the a way to get its arrangements.

It has to be in the same order, but you can unscramble it. If you have 24 words and you've jumbled them up, then there are only 24! number of possible permutations and lesser after you factor in the checksum. There are ways to unscramble and get the entire mnemonic in the correct order so long as you know at least one of the address.

Be aware that 24! is quite a large number (10^23 or about 2^79) so bruteforcing the correct combination is not really feasible unless you have a lot of time and computational power at hand.

(in short: don't scramble your seed words or your coins will be inaccessible)

[o_e_l_e_o]

A 12 word seed phrase can be unscrambled in a matter of minutes or hours, depending on how good your hardware is.
A 24 word seed phrase would take billions of years, even with vast amounts of rented hardware. It is effectively impossible.

[PawGo]

1. Can only the private key be use in back up of the wallet if the mnemonic phrases cannot be found or remember or maybe generate a new mnemonic phrase from the private key

From the mnemonic phrase you may obtain master private key which will give you access to all the addresses (is somehow "the root" for addresses tree). But for each address you may obtain it's private key, but then it is 1-1 relation. One private key will not help if you want to recreate other "sister" addresses.
I invite you to play a little with https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ webpage, to see what is produced from the given mnemonic phrase.

2. If accidentally the mnemonic key is missed up like the arrangement of the words are not orderly. Can it be use in any order for back up or is the a way to get its arrangements.

If you do not know our address (any of your addresses) it is difficult. Of course you may check balance of addresses each of generated mnemonic phrase, but it is very time consuming. If you know address which you are looking for, it is easier and all depends on number of words in your seed. 12 words out-of-order are quite an easy task, see the example of solving it here:
https://btcrecover.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Usage_Examples/2020-05-02_Descrambling_a_12_word_seed/Example_Descrambling_a_12_word_seed/
With bigger number of words very quickly it becomes "undoable"

[Victorik]

A 12 word seed phrase can be unscrambled in a matter of minutes or hours, depending on how good your hardware is.
A 24 word seed phrase would take billions of years, even with vast amounts of rented hardware. It is effectively impossible.

Really? I am just getting to know this now. I thought it is impossible to unscramble a 12 word seed phrase.
Anyways, it is better to save than sorry. That's why I always write out my seed phrase because I do not have the time and the computing power to unscramble.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Really? I am just getting to know this now. I thought it is impossible to unscramble a 12 word seed phrase.

12! is "only" 479 million combinations, and for a BIP39 seed phrase 93.75% of the possible permutations can be immediately discarded due to an incorrect checksum. The benchmarks for btcrecover say you can unscramble this in less than 4 hours, even with fairly modest hardware.

24!, on the other hand, is more than 1 million billion times larger than this. If 12 words took you an hour, 24 words would take you 147 billion years.

Anyways, it is better to save than sorry. That's why I always write out my seed phrase because I do not have the time and the computing power to unscramble.

There is never a good reason to scramble your seed phrase when backing it up. If you are worried about it being found, then either find a more secure location to store it, or use additional protection such as passphrases or multi-sig.

[crytolad]

If you are currently using the wallet but only made a mismatch of the seed phrase, you can try to export the private key. Though, I don't know if this would work, I'm only thinking out loud.

[o_e_l_e_o]

If you are currently using the wallet but only made a mismatch of the seed phrase, you can try to export the private key. Though, I don't know if this would work, I'm only thinking out loud.

It would work, but depending on which wallet software you are using it could be very easy or very difficult to do.

Some wallets will let you display your seed phrase, so you can make a fresh back up if you have somehow messed up your first one. Some wallets will let you export a master private key, which will let you recover all you coins in that account, but not in other accounts. Some wallets might only let you export individual private keys, and so you would need to export the private key for each and every address within your wallet. Some wallets might not let you do any of those things, and so you would need to open your wallet file in a text editor and poke around to try to find the relevant keys to export.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you do not have a back up of your wallet and you cannot safely create one, but you still have access to your wallet, then the best thing to do is to create a new wallet with a new seed phrase (backed up properly) and send all your coins across to this new wallet.

[decodx]

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you do not have a back up of your wallet and you cannot safely create one, but you still have access to your wallet, then the best thing to do is to create a new wallet with a new seed phrase (backed up properly) and send all your coins across to this new wallet.

I agree with this. However, even in this case, it may not be such a bad idea to keep a backup of private keys from old addresses. At least the ones that have been used in the past. You never know when they might come in handy again.

I think even satoshi once said that old wallets should never be deleted completely.

[Rufsilf]

Just to avoid any missed up in your keys, seeds phrases, or passwords - it is highly recommended to have some backup, or else, you can no longer access your wallet once lost. And in this case, you'll have to move on.

It is just some risk about crypto - that is why we should have to take care of it and write everything in a note to have some files to review once it compromises. We never know the situation and even putting in the computer is not a smart idea, It was best to have written on paper and kept properly.

[o_e_l_e_o]

However, even in this case, it may not be such a bad idea to keep a backup of private keys from old addresses.

Absolutely. Even if you don't have the seed phrase, definitely keep the wallet file (maybe even a couple of copies of it) just in case you accidentally receive some bitcoin to one of these old addresses in the future.

I think even satoshi once said that old wallets should never be deleted completely.

Yes. Here is the quote:

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

it is highly recommended to have some backup

Not just "some" back up, but multiple back ups, with at least one stored off site (i.e. in a different location to your wallet). No point having your only back up stored in the drawer of the desk your computer sits on if your house then burns down and you lose both.