Part of the CustodyStress archive of observed Bitcoin custody incidents
Passphrase unavailable
Cases in this category involve wallets protected by a passphrase that could not be recovered. Even where the seed phrase was available, passphrase unavailability blocked access.
Passphrase unavailability differs from seed unavailability in that it often arises years after setup, when memory of an infrequently used passphrase has faded. Cases in this category frequently involve users who understood the concept of a passphrase but underestimated the precision required to reproduce it exactly. Even small variations in capitalization, spacing, or punctuation produce a different wallet.
217 observed cases
Blocked
152 (70%)
Constrained
2 (1%)
Survives
51 (24%)
Indeterminate
12 (6%)
The company had been dissolved and its registration records archived with Companies
Mobile or software wallet
An April 2019 forum case describes a user who had used their previous employer's company registration number as their passphrase. The company had been dissolved
Hidden wallet discovered — software wallet (2019)
Mobile or software wallet
A programmer found in May 2019 that their Bitcoin wallet passphrase, which had been stored as an environment variable in a shell configuration file, had been lo
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2019
Mobile or software wallet
A user found in May 2019 that their wallet passphrase had been generated by a web app that was no longer functional. They had saved only a screenshot of the set
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet (2019)
Mobile or software wallet
A June 2019 case describes a user who created a wallet in 2013 using a passphrase based on lyrics from a song they had written themselves. The user could no lon
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2019
Mobile or software wallet
A user found in June 2019 that their old email, where they had stored their passphrase hint, had been acquired by a different service after the original provide
Device discarded — software wallet (2019)
Mobile or software wallet
An estate case from July 2019 describes a living person who had suffered a stroke and lost recall of a passphrase used once in 2014. The passphrase was written
They retained only fragments of the passphrase.
Mobile or software wallet
A user who had relied on their exceptional memory for their passphrase since 2012 developed early-onset cognitive decline in 2018. By August 2019 they retained
Device discarded — software wallet (2019)
Mobile or software wallet
A user who had encrypted their wallet with a passphrase derived from a specific Sudoku puzzle's solution found in August 2019 that they could not locate the puz
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet (2019)
Mobile or software wallet
A September 2019 forum post describes a user whose password manager was compromised and reset by an attacker who also changed the master password. The user lost
The developer's GitHub archives from that period did not contain the script.
Mobile or software wallet
A forum case from September 2019 describes a developer who had used a random string generated by a script they wrote in 2012. The script no longer existed and t
The fish had long since died and no photos remained to confirm the exact spelling they
Mobile or software wallet
An October 2019 forum post describes a user who had used the name of a fish they owned as part of their passphrase in 2013. They could remember the fish's name
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2019
Mobile or software wallet
A Bitcoin holder who had used the coordinates of their favourite hiking spot as their passphrase found in October 2019 that they could no longer identify which
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2019
Mobile or software wallet
A user found in November 2019 that they had set their wallet passphrase to a specific version of an online alias they had used in 2013. The alias had multiple c
They had been studying Mandarin when they created the wallet in 2013 and used
Mobile or software wallet
A user in November 2019 sought professional help after realising their wallet passphrase had been in a language they had since forgotten. They had been studying
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet (2019)
Mobile or software wallet
A July 2019 forum post describes a user whose wallet passphrase was the model number of a piece of equipment they had owned in 2013. The equipment was sold and
Hidden wallet discovered — software wallet (2018)
Mobile or software wallet
A long-time Bitcoin holder who had last accessed their wallet in December 2017 — at the peak of the bull market — found in January 2018 that they could not reca
Neither could be certain which convention they had used when setting the passphrase in
Mobile or software wallet
A Bitcoin investor who had used their wedding anniversary date in an unusual order as their passphrase found in February 2018 that they and their spouse remembe
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2018
Mobile or software wallet
A user who had set their wallet passphrase to their student ID number from a university they attended in 2011 found in February 2018 that the university's recor
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2018
Mobile or software wallet
A forum case from March 2018 describes a user who had used a combination of a deceased parent's maiden name and a childhood phone number as their passphrase. Th
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2018
Mobile or software wallet
A user whose wallet passphrase was the name of their childhood home combined with a year found in March 2018 that the street had been renamed in a local governm
Their ISP could not provide historical IP address records going back six years.
Mobile or software wallet
A forum case from April 2018 describes a user who had set their passphrase to the IP address of their home router in 2012. The router had since been replaced mu
In 2018 they found the notes file had been corrupted in a storage incident.
Mobile or software wallet
A user created their wallet passphrase using a random word generator website in 2013 and saved the passphrase in a notes file. In 2018 they found the notes file
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2018
Mobile or software wallet
A user found in May 2018 that their password manager had auto-generated a passphrase that they had never memorised. The password manager's master password was t
Passphrase unavailable — software wallet 2018
Mobile or software wallet
A user who had used their childhood telephone number — a rotary-dial format no longer in use — as part of their passphrase found in May 2018 that they could not
By 2018 they had forgotten the calendar system's conversion rules.
Mobile or software wallet
A June 2018 forum case describes a user who had encoded their passphrase as a series of dates in an unusual calendar system they had been studying at the time.
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