
"So one should always ensure they are choosing a wallet that has a high reputation amongst the crypto community before moving their funds into it." Methods of seed phrase and wallet recoveryĪssuming that you have somehow been locked out of your own wallet, there are a number of ways you can regain access. "When it comes to lesser-known wallets, malicious code is a much bigger problem than inadvertent bugs," he explains to. "Dave Bitcoin," of Wallet Recovery Services, agrees that problems with wallets are generally quite rare, and that what holders should really be wary of are malicious wallets. This picture is reinforced by testimony from another specialist in bitcoin recovery. "It's fairly rare now to see someone losing access to their legitimate account on their own," he adds. "It's really hard to make something stupid, once you get your seed phrase and backup you can always restore or reinstall it."īukh tells that the "majority" of his firms' clients lose their funds due to malicious software or outright scams. "Yes, they are reliable," says Arkady Bukh, a partner at Bukh Law Firm and a co-founder of the Bitcoin Recovery Co. However, while Peter Schiff initially claimed he lost his Bitcoin as a result of a faulty wallet (and later he admitted that he was wrong), most experts working in the area of crypto recovery believe that the vast majority of popular wallets are secure. This is a staggering figure, and it shows just how difficult it is for even early and relatively experienced traders to protect their funds. It's surprisingly common to lose crypto as a result of misplaced passwords or seed phrases.Īccording to a 2018 report from Chainalysis, bitcoin holders had lost as much as 22% of all BTC in circulation at that point. New technologies for ensuring that you don't lose your crypto are emerging, from smart contract wallets to methods for guessing missing seed phrase words.īut for the most part, seed phrase and wallet recovery will be a laborious task for the foreseeable future. And if crypto is to become mainstream, then holding onto your private keys, seed phrases and funds really should be idiot-proof.įortunately, it's becoming easier to do this. Yes, your holdings will most likely remain safe so long as you follow best practices, but the frequency with which people report lost crypto has revealed that things aren't as simple as they can be. Okay, he isn't, but the apparent loss of his bitcoin (BTC) holdings has helpfully raised the topic of crypto-wallet security. Prominent gold bug and Bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff is a genius. "It can be challenging to restore or fix a wallet even when one has a backup file or the seed words saved." Source: iStock/Christian Horz

"It's really hard to make something stupid, once you get your seed phrase and backup you can always restore or reinstall it."
