People who missed an opportunity to become millionaires or what to do if you forgot your bitcoin wallet password?

Those lucky people who purchased or mined just few bitcoins at the start of the age of cryptocurrency nowadays can boast about their savings. However, some of them must feel disappointed with themselves because a wallet full of bitcoins exists but a bitcoin wallet password is lost or forgotten.

There are different situations. For example, an owner of a wallet can forget where the bitcoin wallet is stored, forget a bitcoin wallet password or forget a passphrase which is created when a wallet is set up.

Great luck

Lately the world of cryptoshere was touched by two stories. One of them has a happy ending but another one is not so fortunate.

An editor of the Wired magazine and a famous blogger Mark Frauenfelder is the lucky one. His story started in the beginning of 2016 when Mark purchased 7,4 bitcoins for 3,000 dollars. At the beginning he stored passkeys for his wallet on the online platform, then seeing the growth of the bitcoin’s value, he decided to take precautions and transferred passkeys to a portable hardware, a password and a passphrase he wrote on a usual piece of paper.

The problem happened in the spring of 2017 when Mark and his wife went travelling and left the piece of paper with the bitcoin wallet password and the passphrase at home so that daughters could use funds if needed. It did not become necessary but this piece of paper with crucial information was thrown into the trash from carelessness during house cleaning.

It is easy to imagine what Mark felt upon return from travel when he decided to check his savings. It is worth to point out that at that time the bitcoin’s value was growing steadily. Neither thorough inspection of a garbage can nor attempts to enter what looked like a correct password or to make up a new phrase brought expected results. Having tried all ways available to retrieve a password Mark even sought the assistance of a hypnotherapist to remember all forgotten figures but to no avail.

In august savings on Mark’s wallet reached 30,000 dollars but, unfortunately, he could not get access to them. His lucky chance was a letter from the online platform security department where the wallet was stored. This letter informed about an update which must be installed as soon as possible as an old version of a wallet had become vulnerable for hackers’ activity. Mark decided to use this opportunity and asked for help of a haсker. A miracle happened and a video with instructions how to bypass the bitcoin wallet protection system, made by the hacker, helped a man to get access to his savings. Happy end.

Bad luck

In reality, not all wallets are as vulnerable, not every bitcoin wallet owner who forgot a bitcoin wallet password would get such an idea but recommended tools to provide access to your own bitcoins do not always work. A good example can be a sad story which happened to James Howels. This story sounds even sadder if we remember that James had 7,500 cryptocoins in his lost bitcoin wallet.

An IT specialist from the UK took an interest in mining in 2009 but the process of mining and hot air from the working crypto farm annoyed his girlfriend so he had to give it up. At that time bitcoin was relatively cheap and the mined cryptocoins had no value. Shortly after that his PC with a hard drive where his cryptowallet was stored broke down and was dismantled for spares which James kept at home for some time.

In the summer of 2013 a guy decided to do a spring cleaning and simply threw the hard drive away in the garbage. November brought disappointment, when James decided to check the bitcoin value and found out that he could be an owner of 6,5 million dollars. He rushed to a garbage dump but sadly saw that his hard drive was covered by many layers of garbage. We don’t know exactly whether this British guy took attempts to search for his multi-million fortune or quickly accepted this situation as a hopeless one. In any case his hard drive was never found.

Nobody expects that they will find themselves in a similar situation. Bitcoin wallets seem to be absolutely safe, an easy to remember password written and safely hidden. Nevertheless, situations like these take place now and again.

What to do if your bitcoin wallet is lost?

This situation seems to be hypothetical because if an owner of a cryptowallet keeps password details and passphrases for its recovery, there must be details of the resource through which a wallet was created stored. Nevertheless, questions such as “how to find a lost bitcoin wallet?” or “how to change a bitcoin password?” are not quite rare. Just in case it is worth also to keep safe an e-mail address and its password used during a registration of an online wallet (for this purpose some users create a separate e-mail address). Information about the resource through which an online wallet and its identifier were created is stored in e-mail, although it doesn’t contain passwords and passphrases. Having at least all relevant information about the resource gives a chance to recover a password in case your bitcoin wallet password is lost or forgotten.

For advanced users

There are three types of bitcoin wallets: “heavy” is a full client application which requires about 100 GB of memory and contains a database of all mined blocks; “light” is a simplified version of wallets without need of storing a bulky database; online wallets.

To reсover “heavy” and “light” bitcoin wallets a user will require a file wallet.dat which is set up as soon as a wallet is created on a PC. It is recommended to create backup copies of this file regularly and in case of deleting accidentally all data to use utilities for reсovery. Both in “heavy” and “light” wallets there is a console – a command line which allows to get a private key to access a wallet eventually.

As for online wallets everything depends on a service they are placed on. If a bitcoin wallet password is lost or forgotten, the system offers several ways to recover it – through e-mail, sms or a secret phrase.

For “Dummies”

Not all owners of bitcoin wallets are advanced users. Many of them do not have a sufficient level of computer literacy and have got bitcoin wallets and bitcoins due to growing cryptocurrency publicity and much hype surrounding it.

For those people there are various services available which are designed to help to store passwords and other information necessary for recovery of lost bitcoin wallets. Their working principles are different. Some services offer users a digital storage which is encrypted and is recorded in blockchain. A wallet owner has an opportunity to set so called “period of inactivity” at the end of which a storage is opened and a letter with instructions to access a wallet is automatically sent to the indicated address.

Some services are based on a creation by users of smart contracts which allow to transfer savings to other wallets of a user or wallets of relatives in case of unforeseen circumstances. The conditions and terms of contracts are established for each user individually, a wallet owner can choose the “period of inactivity” at the end of which funds will be transferred to a backup wallet. The main thing in this case is not to lose data of a backup wallet and not to have a backup bitcoin wallet password lost.