In short
Recovery is possible when something is left to work with: most of a seed phrase, a password you half remember, a wallet file. It’s impossible when nothing is: a seed that was never written down, a device with no backup, coins sent to the wrong address. Legitimate services charge only on success and never need the full seed. Everyone else is a scammer.
The recovery scams page says that nobody can recover crypto without the keys. That’s true, and it needs one qualification: partial keys are a different story. This page is about that story, and about what to do when there’s really nothing left.
What can be recovered
Wallet keys are mathematics, and mathematics can be searched if the search is small enough.
- A seed phrase with a few words missing, wrong or in the wrong order. Twenty-two of twenty-four words, or twenty-four words whose order was lost, can be brute-forced. Twelve words out of twenty-four cannot.
- A forgotten password on a wallet file. Old Bitcoin Core
wallet.datfiles, Electrum wallets, phone wallet backups: if the person who set the password can describe how they chose passwords, the search is often feasible. - A forgotten passphrase (the “25th word”), again only with hints: “it was our first address with some numbers”.
- A hardware wallet whose PIN is lost but whose seed exists. Not a recovery problem at all: wipe the device and restore from the words.
The standard tool is btcrecover, free and open source, which searches for “lost/forgotten parts of your mnemonic” and for wallet passwords, and can be run in a mode that never sees the actual keys (btcrecover). It takes a technical person a weekend to learn. If that isn’t you, there are companies that do it for a share of what they find.
Legitimate recovery services
A handful of firms have done this for years and follow the same model: no upfront fee, a percentage of the recovered amount, and a way of working that doesn’t require trusting them with everything.
- Wallet Recovery Services, run since 2013: “Our standard fee is 20% of the value of the wallet, only if we are successful. Zero otherwise” (pricing). For Bitcoin Core-type wallet files the search can be run without handing over the full wallet.
- Crypto Asset Recovery: “If we recover nothing, you pay nothing”; works from password fragments and partial seeds.
- KeychainX: 20% on success; its own site warns that funds sent to a wrong address or taken by a scam can’t be recovered, and that “if you only have access to your public key there is nothing we can do”.
- Brute Brothers: 15% on success; starts with an anonymised description, “no seed phrases, private keys, passwords, or wallet files”.
This site has no relationship with any of them and earns nothing from these links. Check each one’s current terms yourself, and compare with the pattern below before sending anything.
How to tell a real service from a scam
A real service asks what you have and tells you whether it’s enough, charges only on success, works from partial information, is reachable through its own website, and will say no. A scammer contacts you first, promises to “trace” or “hack” coins back from the blockchain, wants an upfront fee, “gas” or “unlock” payment, asks for the full seed phrase, or needs remote access to your computer. There is no overlap between the two lists.
What can’t be recovered
- A seed phrase that was never written down, or written down and destroyed, with no copy.
- A hardware wallet that was lost or wiped, with no seed backup. The device was never the wallet; the words were.
- Coins sent to a wrong address, or to a scammer. Transactions don’t reverse.
- A passphrase nobody has any memory of.
If that’s the situation, the coins still exist on the blockchain and always will. Nobody can spend them, including you. Estimates of permanently lost bitcoin run to several million coins (BitGo); the person you inherited from isn’t the first.
Before you guess a PIN
Guessing is how heirs turn a recoverable situation into an unrecoverable one. Every hardware wallet limits wrong PINs, and the limit is low:
| Device | Wrong PINs allowed | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger | 3 | Factory reset (Ledger) |
| Trezor Safe 3, Safe 5, Model T, Model One | 16 | Device reset (Trezor) |
| Trezor Safe 7 | 10 | Device reset |
| BitBox02 | 10 | Factory reset (BitBox) |
| Coldcard | 13 | Device permanently disabled (Coldcard) |
| Keystone 3 Pro | 5, for the text-password unlock | Wipe (Keystone) |
A reset device is harmless if you have the seed words: restore and carry on. If you don’t, the device was your only route in, and the Coldcard doesn’t even give you that. Look for the words first, and for a PIN written somewhere, before you touch the device.
Multisig wallets with a missing piece
A 2-of-3 multisig is built to survive a lost key: two seeds plus the wallet configuration file are enough. What it can’t survive is losing the configuration file and a key at the same time. If you’ve found two seeds but no file, don’t give up yet; the sister site explains what can still be rebuilt from an old wallet backup or a signing device: Lost your multisig wallet descriptor?
Dormant exchange accounts
An exchange account that nobody has touched for years may already have been handed to the state. In the US, exchanges must transfer “unclaimed property” after a period that is “typically 1–5 years depending on the state” (Coinbase); Binance.US gives two to five years and warns the balance may have been converted to dollars (Binance.US). The state keeps it for the owner or the heirs. Search the free state databases through MissingMoney.com and claim with the estate documents. The UK has no such scheme for crypto; a dormant account there is still with the exchange.
Tax when the crypto is really gone
Each country handles inaccessible crypto differently, and all of them want evidence rather than a shrug.
- United Kingdom. Losing a key “does not count as a disposal”. If it “can be shown there is no prospect of recovering the private key or accessing the tokens”, a negligible value claim can be made, which crystallises the loss; the manual is written for individuals, and the estate’s adviser can say how it applies after a death (HMRC, CRYPTO22400). For inheritance tax, HMRC asks that crypto known to exist but believed inaccessible be reported on the IHT400 with “an explanation as to why they are inaccessible and what the value is believed to be” (CRYPTO25000).
- Australia. “If you lose your private key, you lose access to your crypto assets. To claim a capital loss, you’ll need to have evidence to show your ownership”, such as the wallet address, the dates, the cost and proof the wallet was the person’s (ATO).
- United States. The estate tax return covers property at its fair market value at death (26 CFR 20.2031-1); the IRS has published no guidance specifically on crypto whose keys are lost, so whether and how it’s valued is a question for the estate’s attorney, with the evidence of loss ready. Personal casualty losses are limited to federally or, from 2026, state-declared disasters, so a lost key gives no deduction (IRS).
- Canada. The CRA has published no guidance on lost keys; a capital loss normally needs a disposition. Ask the estate’s accountant.
Whatever the country, document what you tried: the devices, the searches, any recovery firm’s report. That paperwork is what turns “we think it’s lost” into a position a tax authority can accept.