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Situations · Someone else set it up

A friend «who knew about this» set up my wallet: how to take back control

This isn’t about distrusting your friend. It is that a wallet whose phrase someone else knows depends on that person’s memory, carefulness and computer security as well as your own. Taking back control is simple and worth doing even when everything is fine.

October 11, 2026 · 4-minute read

The three questions to ask

  1. Where is the recovery phrase? If he has it, or it is in a file of his, or in a chat, your wallet isn’t entirely yours.
  2. Was it generated on your device or his? If it was generated on his, the phrase passed through his computer.
  3. Was it written down anywhere digital? A chat, a photo, an email or a shared note are places where a phrase stops being secret.

The solution, which is the same in every case

Don’t try to «change the phrase»: you can’t. A phrase isn’t changed, just as an account number isn’t. What you do is create a new wallet, generated by you on your own device, and move the money there. From that moment the old wallet stops mattering, whoever knows it.

  1. Install the app yourself, from the official site typed by hand in your browser.
  2. Create a new wallet. Let the phrase appear on your screen with nobody else seeing it.
  3. Write it on paper, yourself, by hand.
  4. Send all your funds from the old wallet to the new one.
  5. Never use the old wallet to receive anything again.
You don’t need to tell anyone or make it sound like an accusation. It is ordinary hygiene, like changing the locks when you buy a house: it doesn’t mean you suspect the previous owner, it means the key is now yours.

If you have also lost access

Then you have two things to do and order matters: first find out whether your friend still has the phrase, because that solves the case in five minutes for free. If he doesn’t, the case is an ordinary recovery, and what decides the outlook is the usual: what you kept and what you remember.

And a practical warning: if your friend offers to «go in and recover it himself», have him do it with you present and on your device. Not because you distrust him, but because the phrase shouldn’t pass through a machine that isn’t yours again.

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