Recover a Lost Blockchain Wallet

Published on April 20, 2021 • By Or Weinberger

TL;DR: Your recovery path depends on which Blockchain.com wallet you have. A modern non-custodial DeFi Wallet is restored with your 12-word Secret Recovery Phrase. A custodial Trading Account is reset with a password reset, which may require identity verification. A legacy web wallet (the older v1 to v3 formats) has an encrypted backup, a wallet.aes.json file tied to a Wallet ID, and if you have lost that password it can be cracked from the backup with GPU hardware. This guide covers all three, plus the common wrong-password, decrypt-failed, and missing-2FA-email errors.

Blockchain.com says it has created well over 80 million wallets, which makes it one of the most common and one of the first ever Bitcoin wallets. In the past, creating a wallet was a cumbersome task, and most wallets required you to download the entire blockchain database, a process that took a couple of days. Users who wanted fast access to a web wallet could simply use Blockchain.com and get their own private wallet in a matter of minutes. That, and the intuitive UI, made it a good choice for the average user.

Because the product has changed a lot over the years, the single most important step in recovering a lost wallet is working out which kind of wallet you actually have. The recovery method is completely different for each.

Which Blockchain.com wallet do you have?

Your recovery path depends on which credential you have. Note that a single Blockchain.com login can include both a Wallet and a Trading Account, so it is worth checking which one holds your funds:

  1. A modern non-custodial DeFi Wallet (you hold the keys). You recover it with your 12-word Secret Recovery Phrase. If you still have the phrase, you can restore the wallet yourself, and you will also need access to the linked email to receive the login authorization. If you have lost both the password and the recovery phrase, Blockchain.com cannot restore it, and creating a new wallet does not bring back the old funds.
  2. A custodial Trading Account (Blockchain.com holds the keys). You reset the password on their site, and you may need to verify your identity. Be careful here: resetting the Account password recovers the custodial account only. It does not restore your original non-custodial Wallet. If you do not have that Wallet's recovery phrase, a password reset creates a brand new Wallet (with a new Wallet ID) and the old funds are not restored.
  3. A wallet with an encrypted backup (the older v1 to v3 web wallet formats). This is the classic Blockchain.com case: a Wallet ID (a GUID), a main password, and an encrypted wallet.aes.json backup. If you have forgotten the password, it can be brute-forced from the backup using GPU hardware. This is the case where a recovery service like Brute Brothers actually helps.

If you still have your recovery phrase, you can self-recover and do not need a paid service. If you have a legacy encrypted backup and a forgotten password, read on.

Need help recovering your password?

We at Brute Brothers have special software and hardware to help recover your lost Blockchain.com password. We have helped many people recover both their first (main) and second Blockchain passwords, and we can help you too. If you are considering hiring a recovery service, learn how to tell a legitimate crypto recovery service from a scam.

Blockchain.com's security model

Normally, a locally installed wallet lets you back up your encrypted wallet file, and as long as you keep a record of your password and have access to the encrypted file, you can decrypt it and access your coins.

With a legacy Blockchain.com web wallet, instead of holding the encrypted file yourself, you were given a Wallet ID in the form of a GUID (for example 00f4fcc0-b3ed-441d-b05f-e4fa2b98f896). All of your private information, including the private key, is encrypted with the password you chose and uploaded to Blockchain.com's servers for storage. As long as you have your Wallet ID and your password, you can access your funds. If you have the Wallet ID but not the password, the encrypted payload can be downloaded and attacked offline.

Recovering your lost Wallet ID

If you have lost record of your Wallet ID, you can find it in the following ways:

Searching your email inbox for any emails from Blockchain.com

Older wallet and login emails from Blockchain.com often include your Wallet ID at the bottom. Search your inbox for blockchain.com or blockchain.info.

Online Wallet ID reminder utility

Blockchain.com has an online utility that will send you a reminder email for all Wallet IDs linked to a given email address.

First password vs second password

Legacy Blockchain.com wallets often use two passwords, and it is worth knowing which one is failing:

  • The first (main) password unlocks the wallet and decrypts the backup. If this is wrong, you cannot log in at all.
  • The second password protects your private keys before you can spend. With this one, you can log in and see your balance but cannot send funds.

Both are recoverable from the encrypted backup with the same brute-force approach. If you can log in but get an error when you try to send, it is the second password you are missing.

Recovering your 2FA device

If you set up 2FA on your Blockchain.com wallet and lost the device, disabling it is now a fully automated process (this used to require manual staff approval, but no longer does). Start it from Blockchain.com's 2FA reset page. Blockchain.com emails an approval link to the address linked to your wallet, and clicking Approve Request clears the 2FA immediately. The request expires after three days if you do not act on it, any IP restrictions are reset, and your verified email security stays intact.

If the 2FA reset email never arrives on a legacy wallet, whitelist Blockchain.com's notification addresses in your email provider, wait a few minutes for delayed delivery, and check spam. If it still does not arrive, you may be using an email address that is not linked to that wallet. The reminder tool works the other way around, so give it each email address you might have used and it will return the Wallet IDs on that address, which tells you which email is the right one.

Recovering your Blockchain.com password

If you have forgotten the password on a legacy wallet, you can try to recover it. Blockchain.com cannot access or reset it for you, because they do not store it; they only store your data encrypted with the password you chose when you created the wallet. For a broader overview of how recovery works across wallet types, see our guide on what crypto wallet recovery actually involves.

Manual recovery

The basic approach is to create a spreadsheet with every relevant password you might have used, then expand each option into more variations. For example, if you usually use Password123, you might also try Password1234 and Password111. You can then paste each option into Blockchain.com's login and try to decrypt your wallet. Do not worry about lockouts: the decryption happens in-browser and nothing is sent back to their servers until you hit the correct password, so you can try as many times as you want.

"Wrong password" or "decrypt failed" on a JSON backup

If you are working from an exported wallet.aes.json backup and every guess returns wrong password or decrypt failed, this usually means the password you tried did not match, though it does not by itself prove the backup is intact. The fix is to try more candidates systematically rather than by hand, which is what BTCRecover (below) automates. A genuinely corrupted backup more often fails to parse entirely, rather than reporting a wrong password.

Recovering with BTCRecover

A more advanced approach is a brute-force or dictionary attack on your wallet, which automates the guessing when you cannot find the password by hand. BTCRecover is an open source tool originally developed by gurnec and currently maintained by 3rditeration, and it can scale your cracking attempts.

BTCRecover requires some technical knowledge and has two main modes:

  1. A dictionary attack, where you create a long list of possible passwords in a text file and feed it to BTCRecover.
  2. A token file, where you describe the structure of passwords you might have used and BTCRecover tries every password that matches the pattern.

First, install BTCRecover by following these instructions, then use the download-blockchain-wallet.py script to download your encrypted wallet (a wallet.aes.json file) to your local machine.

Using a dictionary attack

Create a text file with every password you can think of that you might have used, one per line. Then run BTCRecover, pointing it at your downloaded wallet.aes.json and your password list:

python3 btcrecover.py --wallet wallet.aes.json --passwordlist my-passwords.txt

Using a token list

Token lists can be simple or complex depending on how you use them; the full syntax is on this instruction page. Back to our Password123 example: say you are not sure whether you capitalized the P, or whether you used 123, 1234, 111, 123456 or another run of digits. A good token to represent all of those options is:

%[Pp]assword%1,6d

This generates passwords with an upper and lower case P and appends 1 to 6 digits. Some of the candidates it produces:

Password123
Password111
password91874
password000000

To run the token list attack:

python3 btcrecover.py --wallet wallet.aes.json --tokenlist my-tokens.txt

Common Blockchain.com recovery questions

My JSON backup password is lost. Can it be recovered? If you have the wallet.aes.json file (or a Wallet ID whose encrypted payload can be downloaded) and some idea of the password, yes. The backup is attacked offline with a dictionary or token-list brute force. Without the backup and without any idea of the password, there is nothing to attack.

I get "wrong password" or "decrypt failed" every time. Is my wallet corrupted? Usually it just means the password you tried did not match, though that does not by itself prove the backup is intact. A corrupted file more often fails to load at all. Try a systematic brute force with BTCRecover instead of guessing by hand.

Can you recover my second (secondary) password? Yes. If you can log in but cannot spend, you are missing the second password, and it is crackable from the encrypted wallet the same way the main password is.

I have a v1 wallet and get "invalid password" or a wrong-password error. Can it be brute-forced? Yes. Version 1 to version 3 web wallets store an encrypted wallet.aes.json payload that BTCRecover (or our GPU service) can attack directly. If you would rather we handle it, describe what you have first; we send a secure upload link for the Wallet ID, backup, and password notes after a free evaluation, so nothing sensitive goes into a web form.

The 2FA email is missing on my legacy wallet. What now? Whitelist Blockchain.com's notification addresses, wait a few minutes, and check spam. If it still does not arrive, you may be using an email that is not linked to that wallet. The reminder tool works in reverse: give it each email you might have used and it returns the Wallet IDs on that address, which tells you which email is the right one.

What is the difference between primary and secondary password recovery? Primary (first/main) password recovery unlocks the wallet itself; secondary password recovery unlocks the ability to spend. Both are recovered from the same encrypted backup.

Still stuck? Get a free evaluation

If you have a legacy Blockchain.com wallet with an encrypted backup and cannot recover the password yourself, we can help. Start with a free evaluation: describe what you still have (for example, an encrypted backup and some password ideas). Do not paste your Wallet ID, wallet.aes.json backup, password guesses, or recovery phrase into the form; we send a secure upload link for the sensitive files after evaluation. We crack the password on GPU hardware, typical recovery takes 2-14 days, and our fee is 15% of the recovered funds, only if recovery succeeds. There is no upfront fee.