accessing my wallet with just a phrase

Hey everyone So, I’ve got this old paper phrase from like 10 years ago. What do I need to do to get logged in? I downloaded Bitcoin Core, but I’m stuck since I need to import stuff that I don’t have. Do I also need my old public address? I don’t have that right now (though I might be able to track it down if it’s really necessary) since all I've got is this paper phrase. Any help would be super appreciated. I feel totally lost trying to figure this out. Not looking for DMs or links I'm really cautious about scams and phishing. Thanks a lot!

What do you mean by an old paper phrase? Are you talking about passphrase? Because Bitcoin core does not have a function to import seed phrases and maybe the old paper phrase you have is from other wallets? Would you mind to check the old paper phrase if it contains a 12-word phrase? You can import it to Electrum or any wallet that supports the seed phrase and recover your old wallet.

Please provide a sample. Of course, replace every character or word but keep the formatting correct like the number of characters and symbols. Bitcoin Core doesn't and haven't supported "paper phrase" if you meant "mnemonic words". My best guess is it may be a "Brainwallet" passphrase but do not do anything with it while online, unless you have access to an air-gap machine (wiki: Air gap). In that case, you can try if it'll produce an address with balance using a working brainwallet tool (example) while completely offline.

Start by checking this topic: [overview] Recover Bitcoin from any old storage format so that you can tell us what kind of data you actually have because what you call "paper phrase" is unclear and isn't something we can help you with.

Since OP can't import that "phrase" he has into Bitcoin Core, it's probably not a private key or a key in a format that Bitcoin Core recognizes. HD wallets were introduced somewhere in 2013. OP says the paper is 10 years old. It might be an early-stage recovery phrase. The obvious question is, does the paper contain clearly visible English words or is it one big string of uppercase/lowercase letters and numbers? Another thing. Did you invest or own bitcoin in the past and just now came across the paper?

Does that paper include any specific word/term? That word/term might refer to specific software or method used to generate that paper. Alternatively, you could find similar image from Google image search result and show it to us.

If it's a set of words, he can tell us it's words and how many there are without writing down the correct words, of course. If it's a private key, he can tell us which character it begins with and how many characters it has in total. Based on that information, we should be able to determine what is on his paper backup.

As you said, BIP-39 was invented in 2013 (according to this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0039) I wasn't there at the time, but could it be some software that generated some custom solution? Anyway, as you say, there is no way to find out until OP provides more details. This is my guess too. They must have been very broadly used back then.

I have never used it nor do I know how it works without looking it up on the Internet, but Armory used to have its own unique backup solution I believe. They called it root keys. Not only that, but there were different versions of these keys, adding more complexity to the backup process. nc50lc talks about root keys, a chaincode, and a SecurePrint for Armory in this post: OP seems to have disappeared after creating this thread. He either figured out what to do himself or gave up.

Thanks very much for your responses!! I downloaded Electrum. And followed the steps to access via a seed phrase. However, something strange happened, which perhaps you can shed light on. i opened standard wallet> i already have a seed>entered seed I wrote my phrase, however.... i only got to 4 words plus the first letter of my 5th word.. for example: the quick brown fox j then the next button appeared ready to gain access to the wallet. is came up "standard" wallet. so i hit next etc and i opened a wallet. What is strange is that i only entered 5ish words. there is no funds in the account, and i dont know of this is my account. i tried the 2 factor authentication way as it was suggested this may find funds and it said the seed phrase is real, however you cant access via the 2 factor way. so my thoughts are: did i create a new wallet? or is this someones wallet is this my wallet. when i search the wallet on an explorer there is no funds in it, but i would like to know if i have accessed a old wallet or if i have accidently created a new one. werid it was only a few words too. thanks so much

You just imported a different wallet. Can you make this clear how many phrases/words are inside the old paper phrase? Usually, seedphrases are 12 to 24 words long, so if you have only 4 words and a single character you have 8 or more missing words. I don't think you can recover this wallet if you only have 4 words it's impossible to brute-force. Do you have any other backups? Or anything that could help recover your wallet? I suggest read the post provided by pooya87 above to know any kinds of wallet backup and format and use them to find your wallet backup on the same machine.

This is entirely possible because unlike BIP39, Electrum doesn't rely on its word list when it comes with derivation of "seed phrase" to "seed". It only relies on its word list when generating seed phrase by default. Then that behavior happened because those 4 words and 1 letter somehow managed to produce a valid "version number" for standard Electrum seed which isn't a very slim chance. You created a new wallet since it's empty.

An interesting experiment. Valid seed version numbers for Electrum are 0x01, 0x100, and 0x101. This means that of the 212 possibilities for the first 12 bits of the hash of the seed phrase, 18 of these possibilities are valid (24 + 1 + 1). This is a chance of 0.44%, or around 1 in 228. You can literally type any word and then just hold down the last key in the seed phrase box. Watch closely and you'll see the "Seed Type:" dialog pop up every so often when the hash happens to match what I've described above. (Obviously no one should ever use this method to actually generate a wallet!) Out of curiosity I worked out the average BIP39 word has 5.4 characters and so the average 12 word seed phrase has 65 characters, meaning that a little less than 1 in every 4 Electrum seed phrases on average will create another valid seed phrase while being entered.

Can you tell us how many words are in your phrase? If it's 12, 18 or 24 words, it's probably a seed phrase that can be imported into Electrum. But if there are 17, 19 or 20 words, then it is definitely not a seed phrase, but most likely a blockchain.info wallet access phrase. And 0x102 for 2FA segwit wallet.

Good call. So the numbers become 19 valid possibilities, for a chance of 0.46% or 1 in ~216.