Losing your hardware wallet or your smartphone can feel like the end of the world, but, though it is inconvenient, you can always recover your wallet, provided you’ve backed it up.
Recovering your wallet straight away
If you’ve done your research before jumping into cryptocurrencies, then you’ll know how important creating a backup is right at the start, and you’ll have not only created a backup, but you’ll also have it cold-stored. In order to recover your cryptocurrency, you’ll need your recovery or seed phrase that you set up for just such an emergency, allowing you to transfer your funds into a replacement wallet. As long as everything goes to plan, it will only take a couple of seconds for your balance to be transferred into your replacement wallet.
Creating a recovery phrase you won’t forget
There are a few wallets that don’t use a recovery phrase in order to restore access if you lose your wallet. But for those that do, you’ll need to be able to remember the recovery phrase or have it written down extremely clearly and kept in a safe, and secure place.
Stolen wallet
If your smartphone or hardware wallet have been stolen, then it could mean that the thief has access to your private keys, and your bitcoin funds. If a thief has access to your private keys, transferring your funds to a new wallet won’t protect them or stop the thief from draining the cryptocurrency from your account. In order to stop this from happening, you’ll need to sweep your private key. You should also sweep your private key even if you have just lost your phone or access to your hardware wallet, just in case someone else gains access to them.
Sweeping is where you create new wallets with new private and public keys that only you know. You then create a transaction that transfers all of your funds from the old wallets to the new wallet.
Importing a Private Key to a New Wallet
If you are 100% sure that your old wallets aren’t recoverable and that there is absolutely no chance that anyone else can access the old wallets – the software for the wallets have been deleted, the phone has been crushed by a steamroller – you can import your private key to your new wallets.
So if I didn’t back up, I’ve lost my cryptocurrency?
If you haven’t created a backup, then it could mean you’ve lost access to your cryptocurrency, however you should always check with your wallet provider to see what their policies and processes are to recover lost wallets. If you do regain access to your wallet, we recommend transferring and sweeping to ensure that your cryptocurrency remains secure.
We also recommend that you make a cold store backup of your wallets and keep it in a safe location so that should you drop your phone down the toilet, you don’t lose your cryptocurrency along with your phone.
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