Part of the CustodyStress archive of observed Bitcoin custody incidents
Mobile or software wallet
Cases in this category involve mobile apps and desktop software wallets. Recovery depends entirely on whether a seed phrase backup was made and stored independently of the device.
Mobile and software wallets are the most frequently observed custody system in this archive, reflecting their widespread use. The structural risk is consistent: where a seed phrase backup was created and stored independently of the device, recovery was possible. Where no backup existed, loss of the device meant permanent loss of access.
572 observed cases
Blocked
405 (71%)
Constrained
44 (8%)
Survives
118 (21%)
Indeterminate
5 (1%)
US sanctions on Venezuela tightened further in June 2020.
Mobile or software wallet
US sanctions on Venezuela tightened further in June 2020. Venezuelan Bitcoin holders who had maintained international exchange accounts found their accounts sus
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2020
Mobile or software wallet
A user found in June 2020 that their wallet passphrase had been stored in a notes app that was deleted when they switched phones. Cloud backup had been disabled
They found they could no longer locate the word list.
Mobile or software wallet
A user encoded their seed phrase as a series of numbers that represented each word's position in a custom word list. In June 2020 they found they could no longe
Device lost — software wallet 2020
Mobile or software wallet
A Bitcoin miner found their desktop computer non-functional in July 2020 after a power supply failure. The hard drive was intact but the wallet file was on an e
Web archive captures of the site for that date did not exist in the Wayback Machine.
Mobile or software wallet
A forum case from July 2020 describes a user who used a passphrase derived from a defunct website's front-page text on a specific date in 2013. Web archive capt
Seed unavailable — software wallet (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
A July 2020 case describes a user who had engraved their seed phrase on a stainless steel plate that was inadvertently mixed with scrap metal during a garage cl
Device lost — software wallet 2020
Mobile or software wallet
A user found in August 2020 that their old Android phone — kept as a dedicated cold wallet device — had been reset to factory defaults by Android's automatic de
Blackmail coercion — software wallet (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
A May 2020 documented case describes a Bitcoin holder who received a series of threatening calls claiming the callers had their home address (obtained from the
Owner death — software wallet (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
An estate case from August 2020 involved a Bitcoin holder who had created a hardware wallet during the 2020 halving and died unexpectedly five months later. The
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
An August 2020 forum post describes a user who created a wallet in 2014 with a passphrase that included a character from a keyboard layout they no longer used.
Seed unavailable — software wallet (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
An August 2020 case describes a user who had photographed each word of their seed individually using a film camera to avoid digital traces. The developed photos
The wallet had no PIN and was drained within an hour.
Mobile or software wallet
A Bitcoin user left their phone at a petrol station in September 2020. By the time they returned to retrieve it someone had taken it. The phone contained their
Multisig quorum failure — 2-of-3 multisig (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
A Bitcoin inheritance structure using a 2-of-3 multisig was challenged in court in June 2020. One key holder claimed they had been coerced into the original arr
Hidden wallet discovered — software wallet (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
A programmer's old hard drive from 2012 was found to contain a Bitcoin wallet when they reviewed old backups in July 2020. The drive was functional but the part
Owner death — software wallet (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
A Bitcoin holder died in July 2020 leaving a will that stated 'my Bitcoin is in the blue Ledger device.' The estate found two Ledger devices — one blue-coloured
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
An August 2020 case describes a user whose passphrase incorporated the daily closing price of a stock on a specific date in 2013. They remembered the stock but
Device stolen — 3-of-5 multisig (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
A September 2020 case describes a DAO treasury in a 3-of-5 multisig where one key holder's signing device was stolen and a second key holder was unreachable fol
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
A September 2020 case describes a user who encrypted their wallet with a passphrase that included the exact time — to the second — at which they created the wal
Device lost — software wallet (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
A Bitcoin user's Raspberry Pi cold storage setup was destroyed in October 2020 when the Pi overheated and caused a small fire that destroyed the device and the
The company's MDM software had classified the folder as potentially containing
Mobile or software wallet
A user found in November 2020 that a cloud storage folder containing their wallet file had been deleted by their employer's IT department during a remote device
Hidden wallet discovered — software wallet (2020)
Mobile or software wallet
A November 2020 estate case involved a recently deceased Bitcoin holder who had told family members about their holdings every year but never written anything d
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2020
Mobile or software wallet
A user who had created their passphrase based on a memorable sequence of transactions in a favourite video game found in November 2020 that the game's servers h
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2020
Mobile or software wallet
A Bitcoin investor who had used a memorable phrase in a video game as their passphrase found in November 2020 that the game's servers had been permanently shut
They found the cloud account had been hacked and the document deleted.
Mobile or software wallet
A Bitcoin holder stored their seed in a cloud document with restricted sharing. In November 2020 they found the cloud account had been hacked and the document d
The letters threatened home invasion unless 0.2 BTC was paid to a specific address.
Mobile or software wallet
Following the Ledger data breach publication in December 2020, a wave of physical threatening letters was sent to addresses in the leaked Ledger customer databa
Translate