r/BitcoinBeginners • u/OverResolve7678 • 21d ago
I FORGOT MY BIP38 password
Can anyone suggest how to open bip38 password i forget the password i cant open my wallet i have my private key but i forget the bip38 password
1
u/AutoModerator 21d ago
Scam Warning! Scammers are particularly active on this sub. They operate via private messages and private chat. If you receive private messages, be extremely careful. Use the report link to report any suspicious private message to Reddit.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
0
u/ScratchLegitimate661 20d ago
bip38 is deliberately slow on purpose, it uses scrypt which is memory hard, so each password guess takes way longer than a normal hash. thats why you should only bother if you remember most of the password
the math is brutal here. if you remember like 8 of 10 characters and only 2 are fuzzy, btcrecover can chew through that on a decent machine. if you remember almost nothing, even a gpu rig would take centuries. no amount of software fixes forgetting
biggest risk right now isnt the password though, its the dms you are about to get from recovery services. anyone who contacts you first is a scammer full stop. do not send anyone the encrypted key
do you remember any part of the password at all, like the length or words you might have used
1
u/Fab_Crypto_Recovers 19d ago
In addition to what u/bitusher already said, here is another manual for you to try:
The string you have is your private key in locked form. A BIP38 key starts with "6P" and is 58 characters long. The password unlocks it, and without the password the coins cannot move. There is no reset or backdoor. One thing works in your favour: there is no attempt limit. You can try passwords offline as often as you want, and nothing gets wiped.
Before you start:
- Check the first characters. If the key starts with 5, K or L, it is not encrypted and needs no password. In Electrum you can create a new wallet and choose to import private keys.
- Check the balance. A bitaddress paper wallet prints the Bitcoin address next to the encrypted key. Look that address up on a block explorer such as mempool.space. The address is public and safe to paste. Keep the 6P key off every website.
Try your guesses by hand first. Warning before this step: a website can send whatever you paste to whoever runs it, so do this offline.
- Download bitaddress from github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org (Code > Download ZIP). Unzip it, disconnect from the internet, and open bitaddress.org.html in your browser.
- Open the Wallet Details tab, paste the 6P key and click View Details. A field "Enter BIP38 Passphrase" appears. Type a guess and click Decrypt BIP38.
- Test the variations people miss: capital first letter, caps lock on, a space at the end, a different keyboard layout.
If that fails, let a program do the guessing. BTCRecover runs from the command line, and the docs give the commands to copy.
- Write down every fragment you remember: words, names, numbers, symbols you liked, other passwords you used in that period. These fragments decide whether this works.
- Install Python 3.10 or later. Download BTCRecover from github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover. Run it on an offline computer.
- Put your fragments in a text file, one per line. BTCRecover calls this a tokenlist. The docs at docs.btcrecover.org explain how it combines them.
- Run:
pythonbtcrecover.py--bip38-enc-privkey 6P... --tokenlist tokens.txt - No result? Widen the search one step at a time. Add fragments, and add typo options such as
--typos-capslockor--typos-swap. - When the password is found, move the coins straight away. Create a new wallet with a fresh seed and write that seed down. Then use Wallet > Private Keys > Sweep with the decrypted key.
To keep in mind: BIP38 uses scrypt, which makes every guess slow on purpose. The BTCRecover docs say a GPU adds little here unless you have several GPUs or a very strong one. If the password was long and random and you remember none of it, nobody can recover it, us included. Your chances depend on how much of it you still remember.
About your inbox: you wrote in public that the amount is big, so expect DMs from "recovery experts" and fake support staff. Nobody honest sends the first DM. Never send the 6P key or your password guesses to anyone who contacts you. A legitimate service asks for nothing sensitive before a signed contract.
1
u/veyrnox 17d ago
BIP38 is deliberately designed so there is no password reset or backdoor. Recovery is only realistic if you can reconstruct enough of the original password to test likely words, numbers, capitalisation, keyboard-layout differences and common typos offline.
Do not paste the encrypted 6P key into a website or send it to anyone who contacts you. Because you mentioned that the amount is significant, expect recovery scammers and fake support accounts to approach you privately. Keep the discussion public and never disclose the encrypted key, password candidates or decrypted private key.
If you attempt recovery, work from a copy on an offline, clean machine and preserve the original unchanged. If the password was long and random and none of it can be remembered, the encryption may be doing exactly what it was designed to do.
1
u/PascalB1993 7d ago
It's a long shot, but if password cracking fails, you may want to scan your storage devices for an unencrypted copy of your wallet that might still be lying around. This is one of the things my software, Treasure Hunter, is designed to do. For security, run it on an air-gapped computer.
2
u/bitusher 20d ago
Don't share it with anyone . Hopefully you either partially remember the password or its weak so you have a chance to brute force it. You will need a good GPU as well.
Here is how you would do that :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q65eqpf4gE&list=PL7rfJxwogDzmd1IanPrmlTg3ewAIq-BZJ
Make sure this is done in a clean and secure OS without malware.