Can a deleted wallet with deleted seed phrase be recovered?

[Karl_3000]

A friend of mine has just told me this.

Someone sent him $4459.77 of coin but he has deleted the wallet. The person has sent him coins just ones before, but he did not tell him that he wants to send another coin to him. After he has sent my friend the coin, he called my friend about it. If he had called him before sending the coin, my friend would have given him another address so that he will not sent it to an address he does not use anymore.

My friend wants to help him because they are very close, but he wants to know if there is a way that the deleted wallet can be recovered on his phone. He does not have the seed phrase anymore.

[OmegaStarScream]

If he have no seedphrase, no private keys... There's sadly nothing much he can do to recover the wallet. Which wallet was it? Any chance something that uses cloud backups where he could restore it from?

[Mia Chloe]

~snip

They are only two ways to get access to a wallet and it's either you have the seed phrases or the private keys most people just use the phrase because it is easier to read understand and also store. In this case there's nothing you can do if he has deleted the seed phrases from the wallet without any backup.

This is why a seed phrase backup is constantly sang with across the forum. If he's probably using an exchange wallet they might be able to retrieve it for him. If you have way more details than this then there might be a chance.

[promise444c5]

All he has to do is find the seed phrase/ private key backup… Without those backup, there is nothing he can do to recover it.

The wallet is just software that retains data(like the seed , prv key, …)  locally. Once deleted, everything is wiped along with it unless the particular data is duplicated on the device separately from its initial directory, holds true only with a self-custody wallet though  .

Beyond that, we need to know what type of wallet the friend is using, I believe most wallet using “seed” will be self-custody anyway.

[goldkingcoiner]

A friend of mine has just told me this.

Someone sent him $4459.77 of coin but he has deleted the wallet. The person has sent him coins just ones before, but he did not tell him that he wants to send another coin to him. After he has sent my friend the coin, he called my friend about it. If he had called him before sending the coin, my friend would have given him another address so that he will not sent it to an address he does not use anymore.

My friend wants to help him because they are very close, but he wants to know if there is a way that the deleted wallet can be recovered on his phone. He does not have the seed phrase anymore.

The deletion of a wallet or even the seed phrase does absolutely nothing. As long as you remember the seed phrase or have it copied/written down somewhere then you can always access the wallet address with all the money inside, no matter where you are in the world (as long as you have an internet connection).

But if you lose the seed phrase and have no way or recovering it, then the wallet will be lost forever, never to be accessed again.

The "wallet" on your device itself is basically just a user interface.

[Karl_3000]

If he have no seedphrase, no private keys... There's sadly nothing much he can do to recover the wallet. Which wallet was it? Any chance something that uses cloud backups where he could restore it from?

He did not backup the seed phrase.

They are only two ways to get access to a wallet and it's either you have the seed phrases or the private keys most people just use the phrase because it is easier to read understand and also store. In this case there's nothing you can do if he has deleted the seed phrases from the wallet without any backup.

Another one is through the wallet file.

If he's probably using an exchange wallet they might be able to retrieve it for him. If you have way more details than this then there might be a chance.

He is using a self-custody wallet.

[Amphenomenon]

Someone sent him $4459.77 of coin but he has deleted the wallet. The person has sent him coins just ones before, but he did not tell him that he wants to send another coin to him. After he has sent my friend the coin, he called my friend about it. If he had called him before sending the coin, my friend would have given him another address so that he will not sent it to an address he does not use anymore.

Sadly your friend might not be able to recover this except he can get the seed phrase or private key.

This is a bad practice, I can recall there have been posts speaking about individuals keeping their past wallet address seed phrase safe even if they want to use it again because of issues like this. Someone can send bitcoin to that address based on previous transactions or other reasons without their notice.

[Findingnemo]

A friend of mine has just told me this.

Someone sent him $4459.77 of coin but he has deleted the wallet. The person has sent him coins just ones before, but he did not tell him that he wants to send another coin to him. After he has sent my friend the coin, he called my friend about it. If he had called him before sending the coin, my friend would have given him another address so that he will not sent it to an address he does not use anymore.

My friend wants to help him because they are very close, but he wants to know if there is a way that the deleted wallet can be recovered on his phone. He does not have the seed phrase anymore.

Please give us more details.

What is the name of the wallet? Is it custodial or non-custodial.

And if you had the seeds or recovery seeds and simply deleted it then you will likely have a chance if the data is not overwritten by some other data. Use the data recovery tool and see if you can find anything?

[promise444c5]

If he have no seedphrase, no private keys... There's sadly nothing much he can do to recover the wallet. Which wallet was it? Any chance something that uses cloud backups where he could restore it from?

He did not backup the seed phrase.

It’s probably gone, you should know better.
A reminder that might be helpful to someone, never dispose your wallets backups just because you aren’t using them again.. Keep them , you never know if you might need them in the future.

[LoyceV]

A reminder that might be helpful to someone, never dispose your wallets backups just because you aren’t using them again.. Keep them , you never know if you might need them in the future.

A wise man once said:

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

[Mia Chloe]

A wise man once said:

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

Can't remember vividly but I think 1miau created a topic about this in the past where he explained that you should never get rid of a seed phrase the worse you could do is keep them aside and come to think of it it does make more sense since you barely care about the ones you no longer use.

One other thing is to try as much as possible to avoid changing seeds too frequently because it gets more difficult to store and manage past seed phrases if you have too many of them.

[Xylber]

The deletion of a wallet or even the seed phrase does absolutely nothing. As long as you remember the seed phrase or have it copied/written down somewhere then you can always access the wallet address with all the money inside.

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The "wallet" on your device itself is basically just a user interface.

That's the answer. I'll add:
The only reason we "backup" the seed phrase or private key in a paper is because they are hard to remember.

[Cricktor]

Short answer: no, you can't recover a wallet if you have no backups at all, no file backups, no recovery words backup(s) if it's a wallet that uses mnemonic recovery words to recreate it (not in your lifetime, not with the energy available on this planet or solar system).

Bitcoin private keys are like vaults with no door. The "only" problem is, there are an uncomprehensible vast number of them, that you can't find an open vault or more specifically "your open vaults" with coins in it by any chance and in millenia of time searching for it.


I find the story a bit odd. Why would "someone" send ~4500$ without prior notice and negotiation/verification that the receiver still has control over funds sent to the receiving address, i.e. still controls the private key of that public address. Who does this out of the blue?

And as Satoshi already said and was cited in this topic: never completely delete a wallet, it makes no sense and causes potentially more harm than benefit.

You could've forgotten that you have used a wallet's address as withdrawal address at some exchange or other service. If you completely delete such a wallet and later do a withdrawal without thinking about the destination address... dang! You just lost coins!

Frankly and bluntly, who is so stupid to not have any backup for a wallet? Seriously! Self-custody comes with responsibilities. If you ignore them, you have a well working recipe for desaster, likely more sooner than later.


Post edit:
I remembered the original post with less details and should've re-read it less hastily.

[Stalker22]

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He did not backup the seed phrase.
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Another one is through the wallet file.
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He is using a self-custody wallet.

Technically speaking, there is a small possibility of recovering deleted files from the phone memory, even after deleting the application itself (wallet).  But the chances are very small, and they become less and less every day you use your smartphone because the memory is continuously filled with new data.  So, if the application was removed a long time ago and the phone was actively used after that, the chances of recovery are almost zero.

[nc50lc]

My friend wants to help him because they are very close, but he wants to know if there is a way that the deleted wallet can be recovered on his phone. He does not have the seed phrase anymore.

There should be a chance, but if he keeps on using that phone ever since, the chance that he can recover it intact will just drop.
So, inform him to shut it down ASAP.

But unfortunately, you'll need an expert on the recovering data from a phone's root storage.
Doing it himself/yourself will likely damage the recoverable data even further if the one's who's doing it doesn't know what he's doing.

And to reduce the search area and to lessen the false-positives, you'll need to know the wallet's original path which could be troublesome if it's closed-source.
This can be skipped by searching the whole storage though.

[Cricktor]

I have some doubts that you can actually recover deleted data from mobile phone flash storage. Both Android and iOS are based on an unixoid OS and handling of flash storage on such devices is likely optimized to preserve wear of flash storage.

This is commonly done by quickly marking deleted data via TRIM or similar things for garbage collection and wear leveling, allowing such regions of deleted data to be re-used for new data and re-mapped for wear leveling. And we don't know how each flash storage controller handles TRIMed storage blocks; some report the original data, some report garbage, some report all zeroes when reading prior TRIMed data blocks.

I would also assume that an expert data recovery on a mobile phone by someone who knows what they're doing likely costs a significant amount of money compared to the amount of lost coins here.

AFAIK, iPhones use data encryption on their flash storage and decryption keys are likely burried in the secure enclave which is Apple propriatary stuff, binding device's flash storage to the SoC and secure enclave.
Here's some Apple propaganda - https://support.apple.com/guide/security/intro-to-apple-platform-security-seccd5016d31/web

Many newer Android versions and devices apply similar data encryption to their flash storage. What I want to say is, that you can't get your data by desoldering the flash storage chip(s) and reading off raw data from those flash memory chips. You will only see encrypted data garbage.

And yes, quite true, continued use of the phone diminishes chances of data recovery of deleted data.