Losing a cellphone or hardware wallet with your crypto assets is a hassle, but it shouldn’t leave you in despair. If you had initially backed up your private key then restoring your coins is a piece of cake. Continue reading and find out how.
Using the Seed Phrase to Access Your Funds
A backup is a wise idea if you consider non-custodial wallets. Regardless of the device, you are using, may it be a desktop, mobile, or hardware wallet, the method of retrieving your funds is the same.
First, look out the seed phrase you’d stashed in a safe place for this very situation and enter it into your replacement wallet. After a few seconds, you’ll notice your balance increase from the previous device you had to re-emerge in your current wallet.
In case you’ve lost your seed phrase, BTCRecover team can come in handy. Once you get in touch with the team, you can indicate the wallet file you would like to open and a listing of passwords to try. To come up with the said list requires you to supply a tokenlist that will generate passwords from their combinations. This feature can also unscramble seed phrases where the passphrase words are available, but the order is unknown.
If your phone or hardware wallet is lost or stolen, a 3rd party can access the personal key. If so, adding the recovered coins into your new wallet won’t prevent them from debilitating it at the earliest chance of exploiting the initial device. To forestall that from happening, you might want to sweep your key. It entails making a transaction that empties the balance of the recent wallet and sends the funds to a newly created private/public access that’s noted solely by you.
Keeping Your Wallet Safe
If you choose to invest in crypto, you need to aspire to store your funds safely for the long term. Simply put, the best way to restore lost bitcoins is never to lose them at all. Unfortunately, people mishandling crypto assets have become all-too-common.
Cold storage, typically via hardware wallets, has long been thought-about to be the best means to store digital assets. However, these devices’ recovery phrases should still be rigorously written down and held on securely.
Always keep in mind that if you lose your bitcoin wallet, you need to sweep your key into a brand new wallet, if possible. Furthermore, it is necessary to check the derivation path if you’re shifting to a unique brand of wallet. The value of exchanging a lost hardware wallet or smartphone is considerable; however, the crucial point is that your funds are safe. Keep your wallet seed phrase in an exceedingly safe place, and this will protect it in cases of the event of acts of God, man, and unfortunate accidents.