Lost your ledger? What to do

Imagine someone losing their access to their ledger, like it got left behind after a car accident or something. How can that person get back what they had on it?

Exactly how you would with any other software wallet: Using the seedphrase. You can do that by buying another ledger device (if you want to continue to use one) or pretty much any software wallet would do, although I'm not sure I would recommend doing the latter. You're probably using hardware wallet for a reason, you don't want to lose your life savings due to a virus in your phone or PC.

You can recover your coins if you have the seed phrase that you backup. All you need to do is to get another BIP39 wallet for the recovery. It can be an online wallet like Electrum, Sparrow, Bluewallet, Unstoppable wallet et cetera, or you can get another hardware wallet. Or you can use airgapped device to setup a cold storage like https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html Online wallet is not secure. Cold wallets are better. I just used them in the explanation for you to understand better. If you want to get another hardware wallet, go for a better hardware wallet instead of Ledger Nano that does not care about their user's privacy.

Just to clear up confusion: Electrum and Sparrow are pieces of software. Online or offline is the machine that runs their binaries. It is entirely possible (and recommended) to install Electrum on an airgapped (offline) computer, and use that to sign your transactions. (You can also connect your hardware wallet to Electrum, inherit the security of the hardware wallet and the convenience of Electrum; also very recommended for a newbie.)

The first thing I would do is move all my funds in case the wallet is found by someone, and they attempt to crack it. 1. Use an off-line computer with Sparrow to create a new Bip39 seed phrase. 2. Create a watch-only wallet on an online computer. 3. Use Electrum or Sparrow on an online computer to restore your old seed that was used on the Ledger. 4. Send all the funds to the watch-only wallet. This would take care of your bitcoin, you'll have to repeat the process for any alt-coins you have.  Although, you can use the same new seed phrase on the off-line computer to create alt-coin wallets.  When you get a new hardware wallet, you can use the new seed phrase to restore it, and all your coins will be present.

I actually like the steps you will be taking and will actually advice newbies to take thls steps too but, the number four option needs clarification. For clarity sake you are not sending to a watch only wallet but to the offline wallet actually, the watch only wallet actually reveals only the address but you can’t do any transfer from it so categorically you’re sending to the offline wallet. Also I don’t like the idea of using one seed phrase on two devices even if it is on offline wallet so I will advice a new seed phrase again when a new hardware wallet is actually bought, but it’s still not a bad idea to just import the new offline wallet seed phrase to the hardware wallet

I think I was clear enough without being pedantic.  Besides, when you see me posting with my alt, assume I'm typing on the phone.  And I hate typing on the phone. There's no reason to keep the seed phrase on two devices.  The assumption is he's using the off-line machine as a temporary way to create a cold wallet, which he will later turn into a HW wallet without having to incur additional transaction fees. There's nothing wrong with turning a more secure wallet into a slightly less secure wallet; i.e. using an old cold storage seed to restore or set up a hardware wallet, or using an old hardware wallet seed as a hot wallet.  You never want to go the other way, however.

This is one of the best advice that OP should follow in case that happened and it must be done ASAP. The hardware wallet's PIN can only delay an expert who got physical access to the hardware wallet. But, step3 should be expanded with the "cold-storage" option previously suggested by other members. Even if the seed will be abandoned later, it's still not a good idea to restore the bare seed phrase to an online wallet even if it'll be encrypted later by the wallet password.

Even better to prevent this scenario: don't bring your hardware wallet with you, so you can't lose it on the way. At home, keep it in a safe location. And even if you're still afraid of losing it, an additional passphrase on top of the seed words makes the chances of someone accessing your funds by brute-forcing the hardware wallet even smaller.

I understood what you want to do, but your idea expression is misleading. You have only one wallet, from one seed phrase. The wallet on an off-line computer has private keys. The wallet on on online computer only has public address(es), it's watch-only wallet. But I disagree that you have two different wallets here and by expressing like "Sending all the funds to the Watch-only wallet", it is very misleading. You are doing it because you have access to the wallet's seed and private keys. If other people send all fund to a Watch only wallet, without access to private keys stored somewhere, fund will be lost. You are funding a same wallet, but only check the wallet balance online with a Watch-only wallet.

Semantics debates are so much fun.  We really should have them more often.

There are no crypto coins "on that ledger", only private keys to be able to move UTXOs which live "in the blockchain". As others have already said, you can recover all keys stored in a lost ledger crap hardware wallet with the mnemonic recovery words that represent a HD wallet. I wouldn't want to carry my hardware wallet with me unless I want to permanently move it from place A to place B.

What he had on ledger should be already on a piece of paper in safe location and it's called seed words backup, with that you can recover to any other wallet of your choice. In case of lost ledger device I would move all coins to newly generated addresses from totally new seed words. I don't trust closed source ledger devices, but it's not easy for someone to crack it easily and go pass pin code protection.

First and foremost you don't store your seed phrase in one place or one device rather like in this case. Yes of course hardware wallets are safer than your regular hot wallets because of the fact that they are being connected to the internet. However that doesn't mean that you should not consider having another backup storage preferably a paper wallet. The only way to access your coins on your wallet is via your seed phrase or master private key. That pretty much means losing your seed phrase is also same as losing your coins or we can even say you've actually ended up burning some coins on the network. If you have a paper wallet you can easily sweep the funds to a new address for your own safety since the device was lost which puts you seed in danger.

Either seed phrase or passwords generated as your private key to always have access to your ledger has never been a time encouraging to be stored in just one place because conciously, anything could happen at one port which it's stored. Because of this scenario, holders are adviced to store their private keys in about 3 different spots where it can particularly be reachable to them in case of change of location, disasters or at a time of wallets recovery. In this case, such ledger lost incidents can always alternate us to access recoveries of our wallets.

He did not write whether the only copy of the seed phrase was with the Ledger and whether it was also destroyed in that car accident. These are all good tips, but without knowing what you're doing, they can be useless. For example, what if only after the mentioned accident, he find out that all the three seedphrases he saved were wrong?

Use the recovery phrase you received when setting up the device. Do you still have access to your recovery phrase, or is that misplaced as well?

Don't take your hardware wallet with you to places that you don't reasonably expect to spend your crypto at.

Hardware wallets need to be stored at home, or safe places because these wallets basically are for storage of main part of your cryptocurrency capital. For smaller capital, for possible daily usages, you can use a hot wallet. Like people can use it with a mobile wallet, go around, purchase small things, and afford to lose fund in these hot wallets like a physical phone loss or whatsoever reasons. Basic advice for beginners to use hot wallets, with some warning on risks for consideration. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hot-wallet.asp