I forgot the password for my phone, but fortunately, I have my 12-word private seed saved for my imtoken wallet. I entered this seed on my new phone, but it created a brand new wallet with no history and a zero balance. Can someone help me out? How can I recover my funds?
Help needed for importing imtoken private seed
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What wallet are you using on your new phone? Are you sure the seed is correct? Imtoken claims they use the default derivation path when generating the wallet[1], but you can try using Electrum to see if your address is on a different path. Imtoken also claims that they support changing the wallet path, so you can also try that if you want to[2].
[1] https://support.token.im/hc/en-us/articles/7517484502681-BTC-balance-is-zero-after-importing-other-wallets-mnemonic-into-imToken
[2] https://support.token.im/hc/en-us/articles/115003766154-What-is-a-path-
I imported it on the imtoken wallet. Do you mean I should try importing the private seeds on electrum app?
You imported the wrong seed phrase. If you import the correct seed phrase, you will be able to see your balance. Your wallet on the phone you lost your password is ImToken wallet, and you import the seed phrase on ImTokne wallet. You suppose to see your coins after you import the wallet.
What character did your bitcoin address starts from? If it is 3, then you imported the wrong seed phrase.
Wow! The new wallet it gave me starts with 3. But if the seed phrase is wrong I should have gotten an error message instead of giving me someone else seed phrase
I mean if your old wallet address starts with 3, that means it has the correct derivation path, because as I downloaded the wallet just now, the address starts from 3.
But I am surprised that there is still a wallet that do not support native segwit.
Please what is correct derivation path??
You do not need to refer to derivation path while importing on a wallet that you are using before. But if you want to know about derivation path which is not what you are asking on this thread, these are the standard derivation paths:
BIP 32: m/0'/0 is the path to HD wallet.
BIP 44: m/44'/0'/0' for legacy addresses (addresses that start from 1)
BIP 49: m/49'/0'/0' for nested segwit addresses (addresses that start from 3)
BIP 84: m/84'/0'/0' for native segwit addresses (addresses that start from bc1q)
BIP 86: m/86'/0'/0' for taproot (addresses that start from bc1p)
But what I most likely guess is that people that are using ImToken wallet are most likely using it for altcoins. For bitcoin, I will recommend you to use wallet like Electrum, Sparrow or Bluewallet.
Assuming you are importing on a different wallet, then you can think of knowing about the derivation path of the addresses that you are using on your old wallet.
Thank you very much for the explanation but I'm still surprised cause I'm pretty sure I wrote down the correct seeds.
If you didnt temper with the derivation path when importing the seed phrase at first then there is no need to modify it. You can actual have change paths from the advance option in the wallet. But since you didnt Temper with it, then my guess is you actually created the wallet on a different blockchain like it wasnt a multi coin chain.
What I will say is import your seed into either trustwallet this time around when choosing the network go for multicoin and then import the seed if it doesnt works then go for bitcoin only on trustwallet. You can use metamask also
Yes surprisingly they only support two address format the Legacy address format and the nested segwit format
Thank you very much, What about electrum? Hv read several complains about trust wallet whereby people coins goes missing..
Yes electrum is one of the best software wallets around and I would recommend it to you. The reason why I recommended trustwallet to import your seed from imtoken was because it is also a multi coin wallet like it so after you are able to recover your wallet and gotten your coins I will advice you create another wallet on electrum and then transfer (not importing your current seed phrase) all your bitcoin to that wallet. It is worth mentioning that electrum is bitcoin only wallet, so for Altcoins I will recommend unstoppable wallet.
Follow this guide on how to safely download and verify electrum wallet
Do you remember the starting character of the bitcoin address you had on your old phone?
Maybe, you sent fund to the legacy address (the address starting with1).
If that's the case, follow this guide to change the address type on your newly created wallet.
How to switch the Bitcoin address format?
Wow!!! Your such a life saver I just did this and found my coin intact. God bless you bro! Gracia. Thanks to everyone that contributed!!