It is a poor practice to recommend wallet without sharing main tips for newbies

[Cookdata]

There are a few things that matter sometimes, especially when giving advice to newbies. It happens that creates a seed phrase from Electrum due to its lightweight with just the block height of transactions and fast synchronization, in addition, it can be used online with airgap devices that are not connected to the internet like on the operating system of Ubuntu and TailOS. This is the recommendation you get from most of the replies in the Beginner & Help board when anyone wants to set up a wallet environment and is limited to hardware wallets like Tezors and Ledger, but I was hooked when I wanted to create a legacy wallet address from my already existing recovery phrase.

When I tried to construct a new wallet with the original seed phrase I used to get a regular segwit address, it didn't work until I read this guy old comments:

You can't "convert" your existing Electrum wallet from SegWit to Legacy, you would need to create a completely new wallet (File -> New\Restore -> Standard Wallet -> Create New Seed) and then specify the "Legacy" option when asked what seed type you want to use:

You can't use the segwit address seed phrase to create a Legacy address in an Electrum wallet due to the wallet's unique seed scheme. I was aware that Electrum has a different standard for generating BIP-39 seed words, but it'll be a lot of work to secure two different recovery phrases and manage bitcoins on two different wallets.

Please always share the necessary information when making recommendations for newbies, it's been almost 7 months since I generated a segwit address, and I only tried to build a legacy from it yesterday but it didn't work, but I'm relieved now.

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[paid2]

The only answer to give to newbies is to suggest to do their own researches. There is literature everywhere, we are not in 2010 anymore.

[Husires]

Keep tracking your coins using block explorer and be sure that no one moves them then when you sure that you have kept the seeds correctly you will not have many problems.

As for the cause of this problem it is due to BIP 84 (native SegWit addresses) derivation path beginning with “m/84’/”.
address generation will start from “m/84’/0’/0’/0/0”. not “m/44'/0'/0'“

It can be exciting, especially for a newbie who can't find his coins, but with a little research will discover the problem.
I remember that the same thing happened to me when I opened NEW wallet seed using MetaMask.

[Welsh]

The only thing about this is, its almost impossible to cover every basis, unless you've written a very thorough guide. Since, there's plenty of things users could run into that could give them a problem, regardless of the wallet. Ideally, they'd be coming into Bitcoin with some sort of base line knowledge, but that isn't the reality, since most are eager to use it, which means they'll likely make mistakes.

Hell, I've made mistakes. Definitely, have learned from them, and luckily it didn't result in loss of coins. I basically came into Bitcoin to give it a try, and potentially earn some money on the side. I don't think I appreciated the actual capability of Bitcoin before using it. I learned that gradually over the first few months, and years.  

The only answer to give to newbies is to suggest to do their own researches. There is literature everywhere

That's true, although its often broken up into multiple sources or doesn't cover every problem that someone could run into, it's usually the most common, which is decent enough. However, not exactly fail safe.

If I had a criticism of Bitcoin, would be lack of simplicity. However, I don't see a easy way around it, so it's a pretty weak criticism. I guess it's more of observation then. I actually believe it's one of the reasons we haven't achieved more adoption, than we have.

Bitcoin isn't easy, and to use Bitcoin safely you need to do research. You don't have to do that with cash. Over time, it has become to simple, and dumb downed, that they teach children at a young age about money now.

[khaled0111]

It's impossible as Welsh said especially when we talk about answers to questions (comments) and not detailed guides. For example, how could the one who suggested you to use Electrum know that after seven months you will try/need to use your segwit seed to generate a legacy wallet.

Many members are doing their best to help newbies and answer their questions, but newbies have to do their own research too and seek the information from different sources.
Anyway, the good thing about this forum is that you can ask questions whenever you want but you have to be very specific and provide as many details as you can so others can help you and provide you with accurate answers.

[pooya87]

You can't use the segwit address seed phrase to create a Legacy address in an Electrum wallet due to the wallet's unique seed scheme.

It is not because of the scheme, it is because the wallet has to be recoverable and if you create different address types from a single seed phrase the recovery process becomes more complicated since the wallet would have to generate all address types at different derivation paths which would also increase the time it takes to create the wallet for the first time.
But if you only create one type, the recovery is pretty easy.
The same challenge is present if the mnemonic type is BIP39.

[Cookdata]

The only answer to give to newbies is to suggest to do their own researches. There is literature everywhere, we are not in 2010 anymore.

A response should be concise, you don't need pages of paper to get some info.

You can't use the segwit address seed phrase to create a Legacy address in an Electrum wallet due to the wallet's unique seed scheme.

It is not because of the scheme, it is because the wallet has to be recoverable and if you create different address types from a single seed phrase the recovery process becomes more complicated since the wallet would have to generate all address types at different derivation paths which would also increase the time it takes to create the wallet for the first time.
But if you only create one type, the recovery is pretty easy.
The same challenge is present if the mnemonic type is BIP39.

Is there complexity to encoded random numbers? is BIP 39 not just to encode random numbers for humans to easily understand instead of writing down bits of randomly generated numbers.
When you create a wallet from seed, you have a bunch of trees of addresses to handle as every extended key can create child keys and I think BIP 43 and BIP 44 already solve those problems.
So, irrespective of any seed phrase that you have, the derivation path should help you locate your coins as long as the seed phrase is the standard from 2048 words.

For example, I derived a seed phrase below:

repair fold vacuum wheat concert blast rail vivid absurd reject frog badge seminar bus habit

This is a 15 word mnemonic word or 160 bits of entropy (165 when you add the checksum) and if I want to create two different wallet addresses, that should be enough to generate a Legacy address (1xxxxxx....) and segwit (bcq1xxxx.....) with different derivation path:

Either m/44'/0'/0'/0 for my legacy address and m/84'/0'/0'/0 for segwit

But the problem with Electrum wallet is that, it doesn't work like that, any seed phrase you generate to create a segwit address, you cannot use the same seed phrase to generate a legacy address, and it will be much work to have two seed phrase as storage.

[NeuroticFish]

But the problem with Electrum wallet is that, it doesn't work like that, any seed phrase you generate to create a segwit address, you cannot use the same seed phrase to generate a legacy address, and it will be much work to have two seed phrase as storage.

The things is that lately Electrum kinda tries to convince its users to go for SegWit (bech32) addresses. Which is OK, since they can benefit of lower fees and LN too.

If you don't want to have multiple sets of seed words, you can generate a seed with a different tool and then import it into Electrum, just don't forget to check the Bip39 checkbox.
One tool at hand is IanColeman's, just you have to use it safely offline and you have to acknowledge that some consider the entropy of web-based apps not good enough for the best safety of the seed.

[pooya87]

When you create a wallet from seed, you have a bunch of trees of addresses to handle as every extended key can create child keys and I think BIP 43 and BIP 44 already solve those problems.

When you use deterministic wallet you have a way of deriving many keys deterministically. What type of address you derive from those keys is optional but some suggested standards exist (some BIPs like 44 and 84).

The problem is that when you have a BIP39 mnemonic it doesn't have any information to tell the wallet what derivation path to use and what type of addresses to derive so these information have to be entered manually which is not newbie friendly at all.
This is solved in Electrum by including a version number that carries this information. This is why you can't automatically derive another type of address at a different derivation path using an Electrum mnemonic (the wallet decides it automatically). But technically nothing is stopping you from using one of your keys to get a different type of address manually.

Either m/44'/0'/0'/0 for my legacy address and m/84'/0'/0'/0 for segwit

But the problem with Electrum wallet is that, it doesn't work like that, any seed phrase you generate to create a segwit address, you cannot use the same seed phrase to generate a legacy address, and it will be much work to have two seed phrase as storage.

Not automatically since as I said the goal is to make things easy for all users.
You can manually derive a key at m/44'/0'/0'/0 and use it for your SegWit address and another at m/12'/34'/5'/6 and use that for your legacy address. But you won't be able to recover this wallet automatically since the wallet can't guess these things. And if such feature were added, it would make things very complicated for newbies.

[DaveF]

And without asking questions. I have pointed this out many times going back years:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5205304

Telling people to use this or that without asking or informing MAY help.
It MAY NOT help. We all have our "just do this" line. Even years after posting the above I still do it.

But asking a few quick questions will probably help a lot of new users have a better time of it.

-Dave

[Zilon]

Either m/44'/0'/0'/0 for my legacy address and m/84'/0'/0'/0 for segwit

But the problem with Electrum wallet is that, it doesn't work like that, any seed phrase you generate to create a segwit address, you cannot use the same seed phrase to generate a legacy address, and it will be much work to have two seed phrase as storage.

Not automatically since as I said the goal is to make things easy for all users.
You can manually derive a key at m/44'/0'/0'/0 and use it for your SegWit address and another at m/12'/34'/5'/6 and use that for your legacy address. But you won't be able to recover this wallet automatically since the wallet can't guess these things. And if such feature were added, it would make things very complicated for newbies.

Since the wallets can't be recovered automatically is it best to have different seed phrase for both addresses? so as to avoid the complexity and the stress of manually entering this  address which as you pointed is not newbie friendly and the wallets too can't guess this process of manually derived keys for both addresses

[Cookdata]

Thank you for coming through, Pooya87. I've been trapped in ch05.asciidoc, struggling to finish the derivation path, but you helped me out.

This is solved in Electrum by including a version number that carries this information.

I think this is where the problem lies and I have done more investigation on it. You can manually generate the derivation path in any way that you prefer but most often, each wallet has its default settings, however, the Electrum wallet does not produce BIP39 seed words due to the inherent version number. To verify this statement, I tried to create a new legacy wallet using the seed word I generated earlier, but it always detected it as segwit, and when I changed the option to BIP39 seed, the checksum was invalid, which proves the electrum seed phrase is not BIP39.


I blur some part of the seed phrase, it is for test

For further satisfaction, I used https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ to verify the same seed phrase, it says invalid Mnemonic, which means that it is the seed phrase generated from electrum wallet and not derivation path.

I played with the Iancoleman converter to flip between BIP44 and BIP84, and I discovered how versatile a seed phrase can be when creating segwit and legacy addresses. The cool thing is that when you produce a seed phrase with https://iancoleman.io/bip39/, it gives you a default derivation path for segwit as m/84'/0'/0'/0 and m/44'/0'/0'/0 for legacy, but the structures and addresses changes when I modify the values of each level.

[pooya87]

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Since the wallets can't be recovered automatically is it best to have different seed phrase for both addresses? so as to avoid the complexity and the stress of manually entering this  address which as you pointed is not newbie friendly and the wallets too can't guess this process of manually derived keys for both addresses

It comes down to why you need to create a legacy address. After 5 years, there shouldn't be any place that doesn't recognize SegWit addresses and I'd argue that any service that doesn't should be avoided because they may not be secure either.
But yes, creating 2 separate seed phrases is the easiest way to go. But any special case may need a special solution. For example maybe you are running a service that needs to receive payments and you need to also generate legacy addresses, in which case a modified code could be used to generate child keys from the same seed at different derivation paths.

[lovesmayfamilis]

I always assumed that if a beginner wants to learn something, then he must understand that this will require his brain and quick wits. Isn't it?

Having advised an Electrum wallet, it would probably be fair to find a guide and learn in-depth all its subtleties.

There are a lot of instructions on the forum regarding this wallet, which is, frankly, stupid to be in your situation.

It's time to understand that it is impossible to teach a person strictly according to the fads until that person himself begins to search additionally.

If you are given a new phone with a lot of features, will you only use it for calls, or will you still read the manual?

[jrrsparkles]

Sometimes its better to say what is actually needed for them because too much of information may confuse them so they are chances that they don't even understand anything at all, now most of the platform support segwit address except very few so no need to create one unless its really needed.

[Pmalek]

It also depends on the wallet.

If you use Electrum, then yes. You have to create a new legacy wallet.
If you have a Ledger hardware wallet and use Ledger Live, you can create new Bitcoin accounts for all 3 types of Bitcoin addresses. 4 if you consider Taproot as well. Be default, LL will create a native segwit account, but with a few clicks you can change it to legacy if needed. Why a legacy wallet would be needed in 2022 is a different story.

[Fortify]

There are a few things that matter sometimes, especially when giving advice to newbies. It happens that creates a seed phrase from Electrum due to its lightweight with just the block height of transactions and fast synchronization, in addition, it can be used online with airgap devices that are not connected to the internet like on the operating system of Ubuntu and TailOS. This is the recommendation you get from most of the replies in the Beginner & Help board when anyone wants to set up a wallet environment and is limited to hardware wallets like Tezors and Ledger, but I was hooked when I wanted to create a legacy wallet address from my already existing recovery phrase.

When I tried to construct a new wallet with the original seed phrase I used to get a regular segwit address, it didn't work until I read this guy old comments:

You can't "convert" your existing Electrum wallet from SegWit to Legacy, you would need to create a completely new wallet (File -> New\Restore -> Standard Wallet -> Create New Seed) and then specify the "Legacy" option when asked what seed type you want to use:

You can't use the segwit address seed phrase to create a Legacy address in an Electrum wallet due to the wallet's unique seed scheme. I was aware that Electrum has a different standard for generating BIP-39 seed words, but it'll be a lot of work to secure two different recovery phrases and manage bitcoins on two different wallets.

Please always share the necessary information when making recommendations for newbies, it's been almost 7 months since I generated a segwit address, and I only tried to build a legacy from it yesterday but it didn't work, but I'm relieved now.

Regardless of what some people here might think, for the vast majority of the population it actually makes far more sense to use an exchange to store their funds - especially if we're talking about smaller amounts like a few hundred dollars. If you stick with one of the larger exchanges like coinbase, which let's face it have an excellent record for security, then it will give them all the convenience they need. Running your own wallet can have all sorts of extra complications, like waiting for the blockchain to catch up if you don't use it regularly. New users generally want to experience Bitcoin but not have to deal with all of the technical side of it.