If your Trezor hardware wallet or wallet backup goes missing, your assets can still be recovered, as long as you still have access to one of them. Act immediately by creating a new wallet and moving your assets to a secure location to prevent potential unauthorized access.
It happens even to the best of us, you touch your pocket or bag and realize something is missing — your wallet. A short period of carelessness and your documents, money, and cards are gone. If you block your payment cards and report missing documents fast enough, the chances are that you will get away from this incident unscathed with a few hours wasted on getting the new cards and documents.
But what if this happens to your hardware wallet? Or even worse, your ?
Trezor now uses the term wallet backup instead of recovery seed.
No authority can block your funds and prevent access to unwanted visitors, or provide backup access to your funds. You’re the only one with access and responsibility for your funds, and you must be prepared for all possible emergency situations. Every proper hodler knows how to back up and recover a wallet, and so should you.
The following steps will help you only if either your device or wallet backup is missing. If both your Trezor device and wallet backup are gone, there’s no way to recover your accounts.
My Trezor has been lost or stolen
You were going to check your balance, or maybe make a transaction, but suddenly realize that your Trezor isn’t where it’s supposed to be. It’s natural to start panicking, the satoshis you intensively stacked over the years could be gone, but that’s the worst thing you can do. It’s essential to remain calm and follow a few simple steps that will ensure that your coins stay in your possession and safe.
If you’re sure that your Trezor or wallet backup is gone, you need to immediately move out your funds to a new secure wallet. It doesn’t really matter whether they were lost or stolen; you should always treat a missing device or wallet backup as a potential threat that could lead to loss of your coins.
Step-by-step guide for a missing Trezor with available wallet backup:
- Locate the wallet backup of the wallet that was stored on your missing Trezor device “A”.
- Create a new secure wallet using your backup Trezor hardware wallet “B” or use one of the third-party wallet apps if you don’t have a spare device.
- Write down the wallet backup of the new wallet “B” and generate and save a receive address.
- Test the receive address by sending a few satoshis from your other wallet or an swap account to the newly created wallet “B” and verify that you have received the coins.
- Recover your missing wallet and immediately transfer all of your coins to the newly created wallet “B”.
- Destroy the old wallet backup.
- Order a new Trezor and sleep tight.
Having a backup Trezor hardware wallet is a great solution for cases like this as using a third-party wallet app always carries a risk and should be considered only as the option of last resort.
My wallet backup has been lost or stolen
The loss of wallet backup is much more critical than a loss of the device, as your wallet backupallows anyone to recover and access your wallet and funds stored within. If your wallet backup is missing, but you have a Trezor device with access to the affected wallet, then you should be able to recover your funds quickly. However, the missing wallet backup cannot be re-generated in any way, which means that you will need to create a new wallet with a new wallet backup.
Step-by-step guide for a missing wallet backup with wallet available on a Trezor device:
- Access the affected wallet on your main Trezor device “A”.
- Create a new wallet with a new wallet backup using your backup Trezor hardware wallet “B” or a third-party wallet app.
- Test the receive address by sending a few satoshis from your wallet or an swap account to the newly created wallet and verify that you have received the coins.
- Transfer the funds out of the affected wallet “A” into your newly created wallet “B”.
- Wipe the Trezor device “A” with the accounts from the missing wallet backup.
- Recover the new wallet on your original Trezor device “A”.
- Erase the backup device “B” or remove your wallet from the third-party wallet app that you used in step 2.
- Properly back up your new wallet backup.
In the worst-case scenario, when both your Trezor and wallet backup are missing, you unfortunately won’t be able to recover access to your accounts. You can still attempt to remember your wallet backup by looking at the wallet backup word list. However, this method would work only if you used to know your backup by memory.
Passphrase to the rescue
In both scenarios of either a missing Trezor device or a wallet backup, you can minimize the chances of your coins being stolen by having the passphrase feature enabled. With the passphrase enabled, no one will be able to access your accounts without knowing the passphrase even if they had your Trezor or wallet backup in their hands.
It’s important to remember, that just like in the case of a lost wallet backup, the lost passphrase cannot be recovered by anyone, ultimately resulting in loss of access to your coins.
Other emergencies
The Trezor Knowledge Base is an excellent source for the best security practices that can prevent accidents like this from occurring, but once they happen, it’s good to know what to do. We have prepared documentation for emergency situations like the two described above, which provides you with step-by-step guidance on all the possible scenarios.
Although it’s good to be informed, we hope that you’ll never need to use this guide.
By Matt Oksa
