Losing a hardware wallet or phone containing your cryptocurrency wallet, especially if you’re new in the crypto sphere, can be devastating. This, however, shouldn’t be fatal. There are a few things if you find yourself facing such a predicament.
What Happens When You Lose your Crypto Wallet?
Most cryptocurrency owners use non-custodial wallets, meaning they control their private keys. If you lose your smartphone, PC or hardware wallet, you’re no longer able to access the wallet App you downloaded, meaning you cannot access your funds. Theoretically, anyone else could open your wallet and, if they knew your private keys and can send your digital assets to a different address.
Take note, however, that your inability to access your crypto wallet doesn’t mean that you’ve lost your funds. It would help if you remembered that cryptocurrency isn’t stored on your wallet – they stay on the blockchain, and you can only access them via your private keys. Your cryptocurrency wallet is only an interface the enables you to send and receive funds.
Backing-up your Seed Phrase
Your responsibility begins when you set up your cryptocurrency wallet – you’ll be asked to take note of and secure your seed phrase. Besides writing the set of words down and keeping them in a safe place, you could memorize it or stencil it on a fire-proof or flood-proof material.
Just remember, digital wallets don’t offer a “reset my seed phrase option.” As long as you can remember your seed phrase, you only need to download a replacement cryptocurrency. Once you import your seed phrase into the backup wallet, voila, your cryptocurrency wallet will be reflected in just a few moments.
How to Import your Recover Phrase
Regardless of the Bitcoin wallet, you’re using; the process for importing the seed phrase and regaining your wallet is typically the same. Once the process is complete, you’ll have access to your transaction history and crypto balance recorded on the blockchain.
The process of importation follows these five simple steps:
1. Download a backup wallet
2. Go to the Settings menu
3. Locate the “Import a Key/Wallet” option
4. Type out the seed phrase
5. Click Import
With those five simple steps, your wallet will have been recovered.
On the other hand, if you saved your private keys as a file or text backup, the process is almost similar but with only a slight difference:
1. Download a backup wallet
2. Go to the Settings menu
3. Locate the “Import a Key/Wallet” option
4. Choose File/Text
5. Click Import
In this case, the system will import the seed phrase directly from the document in question.
What Happens to Your Old Crypto Wallet?
If you’re worried that anyone else could easily interact with your old wallet, take note that it’s theoretically possible, especially if they got access to your private keys. Therefore, the best thing to do is to get a new public address and transfer all your finds from your replacement wallet. Once you do that, you’ll have a brand new public and private key pair that only you have access to.
Conclusion
Losing your Bitcoin wallet shouldn’t be a disaster. Always ensure that you’ve activated your PIN access and keep a strong password. However, if you fail, you may want to contact an emerging wallet recovery service provider. They have in-depth experience with password and wallet recovery and will be able to help you recover your crypto wallet.
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Tom is a freelance writer with over 10-years’ experience in content creation, blog writing, and SEO specializing in the blockchain and cryptocurrency niche. As a philosophical figurehead, he believes that to make our world a better place, we must invest in incorruptible products and procedures, of which Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are leading examples.
