Losing a hardware wallet can be frustrating and worrisome, however, there is still something you can do in order to recover your coins, as long as you have the 24-word phrase stored safely.
As you may already know, setting up a Ledger wallet involves a series of steps that have to be followed. In two of the steps, it will tell you to back up a 24-word phrase and to create a pin. The pin is important to unlock the hardware wallet, but it does not matter if you have it or not, however, the 24-word phrase is crucial for recovering the coins. If you don’t have it, your coins will be lost forever, because that phrase is the key to the wallet and your coins. If you have 24-word phrase, you can use it to import the wallet in another hardware wallet.
In case you don’t have a hardware wallet at your disposal, the coins can be recovered via a digital wallet, but it will be a bit more difficult.
In that case, you will have to use a mnemonic converter tool by following these simple steps:
- Near the “generate a random mnemonic” button select 24 words.
- Paste/write the 24-word phrase of your hardware wallet in the BIP39 Mnemonic row.
- Select the coin you want to recover.
Voila! While scrolling towards the bottom of the page, look for “Delivered Addresses” and pick the first private key (path m/44’/60’/0’/0/0 in this example). You can import a private key in a virtual wallet that supports your coins, such as Enjin Wallet, Trust Wallet, etc.
I suggest downloading the mnemonic converter by right-clicking, followed by saving the page and turning off the internet connection, just to be safe. I’d also recommend sending the coins to a new wallet, just in case someone finds the Ledger wallet and manages to “guess” the pin.
For those of you that may want to store a recovery phrase in a more secure manner rather than on a piece of paper that can easily get deteriorated in time, or destroyed by a fire, I would like to suggest CRYPTOTAG.
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