Recovering Bitcoin Private Keys with Mnemonics

in

Are you tired of losing your private keys and forgetting your passwords?

Now, before we dive into the technical details, why this is important. First, it’s essential to understand that losing your private key means losing access to your bitcoins forever. That’s right, there’s no way to recover them unless you have a backup or a mnemonic phrase.

Secondly, passwords. We all know how frustrating it is when we forget our passwords and can’t access our accounts. But with Bitcoin, the stakes are much higher because losing your private key means losing your bitcoins forever! That’s why using a mnemonic phrase to recover your private keys is so important.

So, what exactly is a mnemonic phrase? It’s a series of words that can be used to generate a seed for your Bitcoin wallet. This seed is essentially the master key that unlocks all of your bitcoins. And here’s the best part: you don’t have to remember this seed! You just need to remember the mnemonic phrase, which is much easier to do than remembering a long string of numbers and letters.

Now, how to recover your Bitcoin private keys with mnemonics using Python. First, you’ll need to install the BIP39 library for Python. This library allows us to generate and verify mnemonic phrases. Once you have installed this library, open up a new terminal or command prompt and type:

# Importing the necessary libraries
import bip_utils # Importing the BIP39 library for generating and verifying mnemonic phrases

# Defining a function to generate a mnemonic phrase
def generate_mnemonic():
    mnemonic = bip_utils.Bip39MnemonicGenerator.FromWordsNumber(24) # Generating a 24-word mnemonic phrase
    return mnemonic # Returning the generated mnemonic phrase

# Defining a function to verify a mnemonic phrase
def verify_mnemonic(mnemonic):
    is_valid = bip_utils.Bip39MnemonicValidator.Validate(mnemonic) # Validating the mnemonic phrase
    return is_valid # Returning the validation result

# Calling the generate_mnemonic function and storing the generated mnemonic phrase in a variable
mnemonic_phrase = generate_mnemonic()

# Printing the generated mnemonic phrase
print("Generated mnemonic phrase:", mnemonic_phrase)

# Calling the verify_mnemonic function and passing in the generated mnemonic phrase
is_valid = verify_mnemonic(mnemonic_phrase)

# Checking if the mnemonic phrase is valid and printing the result
if is_valid:
    print("The mnemonic phrase is valid.")
else:
    print("The mnemonic phrase is not valid. Please try again.")

Next, let’s create our own mnemonic phrase using the BIP39 library. Here’s an example script that generates a 12-word mnemonic phrase:

# Import the necessary libraries
import random # Import the random library to generate random numbers
from bitcoin.util import bip39 # Import the bip39 library to generate mnemonic phrases

# Generate a new seed and convert it to a mnemonic phrase
seed = bip39.new_mnemonic(language='english') # Generate a new seed using the bip39 library and specify the language as English
print("Your mnemonic phrase is:")
for word in bip39.Mnemonic(seed).words: # Loop through each word in the mnemonic phrase generated from the seed
    print(word) # Print each word in the mnemonic phrase

This script generates a new seed using the English language and then converts it to a 12-word mnemonic phrase. You can replace ‘english’ with any other supported language in the BIP39 library.

Now, how to recover your Bitcoin private keys from this mnemonic phrase using Python. First, you’ll need to install another library called `btcrecover`. This library allows us to recover our private keys from a mnemonic phrase or raw private key data. Once you have installed this library, open up a new terminal or command prompt and type:

# Importing the necessary library
import btcrecover

# Installing the btcrecover library using pip
pip install btcrecover

# Creating a function to recover private keys from a mnemonic phrase
def recover_private_keys(mnemonic_phrase):
    # Using the btcrecover library to recover private keys
    private_keys = btcrecover.recover(mnemonic_phrase)
    # Returning the recovered private keys
    return private_keys

# Prompting the user to enter their mnemonic phrase
mnemonic_phrase = input("Enter your mnemonic phrase: ")

# Calling the recover_private_keys function and storing the recovered private keys in a variable
recovered_keys = recover_private_keys(mnemonic_phrase)

# Printing the recovered private keys
print("Your recovered private keys are: ", recovered_keys)

# End of script

Next, let’s create another script that recovers your Bitcoin private keys using the `btcrecover` library. Here’s an example script that uses our mnemonic phrase to recover a single private key:

# Import necessary libraries
import os # Importing the os library to access files
from bitcoin.util import bip39 # Importing the bip39 library from the bitcoin package
from btcrecover.bip32utils import BIP32KeyChain, ExtendedPrivateKey # Importing the BIP32KeyChain and ExtendedPrivateKey classes from the btcrecover package

# Load the mnemonic phrase from a file or input it directly
with open('mnemonic_phrase.txt', 'r') as f: # Opening the file containing the mnemonic phrase in read mode
    mnemonic = [word.strip() for word in f.readlines()] # Stripping any extra spaces and creating a list of words from the file

# Create a new BIP32 keychain using our mnemonic phrase and the English language
keychain = BIP32KeyChain(mnemonic=mnemonic, bip39_language='english') # Creating a new BIP32 keychain using the mnemonic phrase and specifying the language as English

# Get the private key for the first address in the keychain (index 0)
private_key = ExtendedPrivateKey.from_xprv(keychain[0].xpriv).d.hex() # Retrieving the private key for the first address in the keychain and converting it to hexadecimal format
print("Your Bitcoin private key is:")
print(f"{private_key}") # Printing the private key in hexadecimal format

This script loads our mnemonic phrase from a file or input it directly, creates a new BIP32 keychain using the English language and then gets the private key for the first address in the keychain (index 0). You can replace ‘mnemonic_phrase.txt’ with your own file containing your mnemonic phrase.

And that’s it! With these simple steps, you can recover your Bitcoin private keys using Python and a mnemonic phrase. No more losing your bitcoins forever because of forgotten passwords or lost private keys!

SICORPS