BTCRecover is an open source wallet password and seed recovery tool.
For source-based recovery, this is primarily useful in situations where you have lost/forgotten part of your mnemonic or made a mistake while deciphering it. (So you either see an empty wallet or you get an error that your seed is invalid)
To recover a wallet password or passphrase is primarily helpful if you have a reasonable idea of what your password might be.
First step to install BTCRecover
There are several basic steps to install BTCRecover.
1) Download and unzip the BTCRecover script
2) Download and install Python3
3) Install required packages via Python PIP
4) (Optional) Install the PyOpenCL module for GPU acceleration.
5) Check your installation (optional but good idea)
These steps are also described in the videos below for each supported operating system.
Note. Depending on your operating system and Python environment, you may need to replace the python command with python3. (The default command used will be python on Windows and python3 on Linux). Most non-technical users work on Windows, so all example commands will use python to match the defaults for that platform.
Getting support BTCRecover
If you need help, your best bet is to check out my BTCRecover YouTube playlist and ask a question in the comments section for any video that is closest to your situation.
If you find a bug, please open an issue on Github here: https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover/issues.
Functions
- Restoring the seed/passphrase in the following cases: (recovery without a known address requires an address database)
- Avalanche
- bitcoin
- Bitcoin Cash
- Cardano (Shelley-era addresses)
- Space (Atom)
- Rush up
- DigiByte
- Dogecoin
- Ethereum
- Groestlcoin
- helium
- litecoin
- Monacoin
- Polkadot (sr25519, same as polkadot.js)
- ripple
- secret network
- Solana
- Stacks
- Star
- Tezos
- Throne
- Vertcoin
- Zillika
- And many other cryptocurrencies similar to bitcoins.
- SLIP39 passphrase recovery for most coins supported by Trezor T
- bitcoin
- Bitcoin Cash
- Rush up
- Digibyte
- Dogecoin
- Ethereum
- litecoin
- ripple
- Vertcoin
- Descrambling 12 word seeds (using the Tokenlist function for BIP39 seeds via seedrecover.py)
- Password recovery to the wallet file for a number of wallets
Seed Phrase (Mnemonic) Recovery for the following wallets
- Electrum (1.x, 2.x, 3.x and 4.x) (for old and Segwit wallets. Set –bip32-path “m/0’/0” for Segwit wallet, leave bip32 path empty for Legacy … No support for 2fa wallets…)
- Electron-Cash (2.x, 3.x and 4.x)
- BIP-32/39 (bitcoinj) compliant wallets including:
- Multibit HD
- Bitcoin wallet for Android/BlackBerry (with seeds previously extracted with decrypt_bitcoinj_seeds)
- Hive for Android, for iOS and Hive Web
- bread purse
- Wallets compatible with BIP-32/39/44 Bitcoin and Ethereum, including:
- Mycelium for Android
- Trezor
- Ledger
- KeepKey
- Jax
- Koinomi
- Exodus
- MyEtherWallet
- Beater
- Blockchain.com
- Encrypted (BIP-38) paper wallet support (e.g. with Bitaddress.org) Also works with altcoin forks like liteaddress.org, paper.dash.org, etc.
- brain wallets
- Sha256 brain wallets (passphrase) (eg: Bitaddress.org, liteaddress.org, paper.dash.org)
- sCrypt-protected brain wallets (e.g. Warpwallet, Memwallet)
Bitcoin wallet password recovery support for:
- bitcoin core
- MultiBit HD and MultiBit Classic
- Electrum (1.x, 2.x, 3.x and 4.x) (for old and Segwit wallets. Set –bip32-path “m/0’/0” for Segwit wallet, leave bip32 path empty for Legacy … No support for 2fa wallets…)
- Most wallets are based on Bitcoin, including Hive for OS X.
- BIP-39 passphrases (All cryptos supported for seed recovery are also supported, as well as “extra words” recovery for Electrum seeds)
- mSIGNA (CoinVault)
- Blockchain.com
- block.io (Recovery wallet “Secret PIN”)
- pywallet –dumpwallet of Bitcoin Unlimited/Classic/XT/Core wallets
- Bitcoin wallet for Android/BlackBerry for spending PINs and encrypted backups
- KnC Wallet for Encrypted Android Backups
- Beater
Altcoin password recovery support for most wallets derived from one of the above, including:
- Coinomi (only supports password protected wallets)
- Metamask (and Metamask clones like Binance Chain Wallet, Ronin Wallet, etc.)
- Litecoin Core
- Electrum-LTC (For Legacy and Segwit wallets. Set –bip32-path “m/0’/0” for Segwit wallet, leave bip32 path empty for Legacy wallets… No support for 2fa wallets…)
- Electronic money (2.x, 3.x and 4.x)
- Litecoin Wallet for Encrypted Android Backups
- Dogecoin Core
- Multidozh
- dogechain.info
- Dogecoin Wallet Encrypted Backups for Android
- Yoroi wallet for Cardano Master_Passwords extracted from wallet data (in browser or on rooted/jailbroken phones)
- Corrupt Raw Eth Private Keys Individual private keys that are missing characters.
- Ethereum UTC keystore files Ethereum keystore files commonly used by wallets like MyEtherWallet, MyCrypto etc. (also often used by Eth clones like Theta etc.)
- Free and open source – anyone can download, test, use and distribute this software.
- Supported on Windows, Linux and OS X
- Support for Unicode passwords and seeds
- Multi-threaded search with user-selectable number of threads
- Ability to distribute search workload across multiple devices
- GPU acceleration for Bitcoin Core passwords, Blockchain.com (master and second password), Electrum + BIP39 passwords and Electrum Seeds
- Password wildcard expansion
- Modeling typos for passwords and seeds
- Progress bar and display of expected arrival time (on the command line)
- Optional autosave – interrupt and continue password recovery without losing progress
- Automatic seed recovery with a simple graphical user interface
- Ability to simultaneously search for a given seed in several derivation paths using the –pathlist command (example of path list files in file )
- “Offline” mode for almost all supported wallets – use one of the extraction scripts (click for more information) to extract just enough information to attempt a password recovery without giving btcrecover or whoever runs it access to any either addresses or private keys in your bitcoin wallet.
If you would like the tool to support a cryptocurrency/wallet not listed above, please test if it works and submit a PR that includes a unit test for that coin, as well as any required code to accept the address format.