Electrum is one of the oldest wallet software that is still in use today. As such, many people have used it to store their Bitcoins over a long period of time only to discover – to their horror – that they do not remember the password they chose to protect their wallet. If that’s your case, you probably have tried as many passwords as you could remember, but each time, Electrum claimed that your guesses were invalid.
In this article, we’ll explore two ways you can recover your Electrum wallet, either by using your seed words or by bruteforcing your password.
How to recover your Electrum wallet with your seed words
When you create a wallet in Electrum, you are usually given a set of words that look something like this:
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These words go by various names: seed words, seed phrase, recovery words, recovery phrase, recovery seed, mnemonic words, mnemonic phrase, backup words, backup phrase, secret words, secret phrase… In the end, they all refer to the same thing. What matters is that these words are meant to be used should you be unable to access your wallet – for instance, because you lost your password.
If you have these words, open Electrum. In the Install Wizard, click on Create New Wallet, and then on Next.
Click on Next.
Select Standard wallet. Click on Next.
Select I already have a seed. Click on Next.
Enter your seed words. Click on Next.
If your seed words are correct, Electrum will ask you for a password to protect your wallet. Do so and click on Next.
You will now have access to your wallet.
How to recover your Electrum wallet by bruteforcing your password
If you do not have your seed words, you will need to find the correct password to open your wallet. You should enter as many passwords as you can in Electrum, but at some point, it might be worthwhile to try to bruteforce your wallet instead. That is, rather than typing in each guess, you are going to use a specialized tool called a password cracker that will try thousands of guesses per second.
The first step is to locate your wallet file.
On Windows, it can usually be found in the following folders:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Electrum\walletsC:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Electrum\wallets
On Mac, it can usually be found in the following folder:
/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Electrum/wallets
Once you have your wallet file, you will need to download a password cracker. There are two software that you can use to brute force your wallet: BTCRecover and hashcat. While each one of them has its strengths and weaknesses, they are not so simple that you only have to click on a few buttons and wait for your password to be cracked. In fact, they require you to be somewhat tech savvy. Moreover, you have to be willing to spend hours reading their documentation and searching the web.
I would recommend that you start with BTCRecover as it was designed specifically to crack Bitcoin wallets and has ample documentation. However, it is the slowest of the two software. On the other hand, hashcat is a versatile and powerful tool with a steeper learning curve and sparser documentation. Speaking of which, if you do use hashcat, you will need the electrum2john.py script to convert your wallet file into a format it can understand.
I can help you recover your Electrum wallet
If the steps described in this tutorial are too complex or you are scared of making a mistake, you’re in luck: I offer a service where I help people recover their Electrum wallet. I don’t charge any flat, hourly or upfront fee. I only charge a 15% fee on the recovered Bitcoins, and that’s if I succeed. If you want to get in touch with me to talk about your current situation, click on the button below.