Very often we witness how the media tell about the unfortunate people who lost the keys to their wallets, which were a fortune. According to statistics, 1.8 million Bitcoins are lost forever on the world Wide Web.
A theoretical way to get back the lost crypto
However, first of all, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by “lost” cryptocurrencies. In fact, by this term, we do not mean BTC that is in any way deducted from your wallet, or lost due to unprofitable trading, or stored on inaccessible wallets owned by third parties. We are talking only about those that are stored in wallets, the private keys of which are lost.
To be precise, proprietary wallets are those wallets whose source or private keys belong to the user.
A seed is a sequence of 12 or more words that you can use to recover the same private keys, regardless of what software you use to do so.
Private keys are long alphanumeric strings required to use BTC stored on a public address.
If you lose access to the private keys of the wallet you own, you will no longer be able to use the BTC stored in the associated public addresses. Usually, wallets store these private keys on the device they are installed on, so you can use them without having to enter the initial number each time. But if you lose access to your wallet, for example, because you can’t remember your password, it is almost impossible to recover them, since they are usually stored in encrypted form and cannot be decrypted without a password.
Recovery or goodbye forever
In theory, if you have the initial (secret phrase) or private keys of the wallet, you can always restore access to the BTC stored in it. In the event that you lose access to your wallet and private keys, the BTC stored in the wallet’s public addresses can no longer be used and is considered lost forever.
For this reason, you need to be very careful and remember to carefully store secret words or private keys so that they can be restored if necessary. However, you should also keep in mind that anyone with access to this data can use your BTC stored in public wallet addresses, wherever they are, and with any compatible software.
In short, if you lose the crypt in this way, you will need to go in search of the initial or private key. The first thing to do is try to remember where this data was stored.
If they have not been saved or you no longer have access to them, you can check whether you have previously backed up your wallet. In fact, some wallets allow you to export a backup file that provides a full recovery. However, it should be noted that anyone who has this backup can restore the wallet, so you should definitely keep it in an ultra-secure place if you want to prevent them from becoming the property of intruders.
Unfortunately, there are no other viable solutions: lost crypto assets can only be recovered by restoring the wallet using the private keys of the public addresses where they are stored, if you have a backup, or by launching a new wallet, using the recovery function from the initial or private key function.
For this reason, if you choose to store your BTC in a proprietary wallet rather than a wallet managed by a third party, it is important to make sure that you have a backup of the wallet itself, or that you have saved the initial or private keys with the ability to restore. On the other hand, this operation is fraught with risk, because if someone else gets this data, they will be able to get free access to the wallet without restrictions.
For these reasons, many people prefer to rely on third-party wallets (i.e. keepers) or wallets that provide a recovery procedure. However, in this case, it means giving access to your BTC wallet managers.
Probably the best solution is to store your wallet recovery data in an ultra-secure location.