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First aid · Start here
I just lost access: the first 5 steps (and 3 to avoid)
What you do in the next few hours matters more than what you do in the next few months. Not because there is any rush — your money isn’t going anywhere — but because the mistakes made in this phase are the only irreversible ones.
The five steps
- Stop and touch nothing. Don’t uninstall, don’t reinstall, don’t format and don’t «clean» anything. Your wallet isn’t going anywhere.
- Make copies. Of the wallet file, the browser folder, whatever exists. To two separate places. Details in back up before touching anything.
- Work out what you had. An account with a company or a wallet of your own? Two different worlds: exchange versus your own wallet.
- Check there is something to recover. Look up one of your addresses on a block explorer. It is free, takes a minute and changes the whole conversation: how to check if your funds are still there.
- Write down everything you remember, on paper and unfiltered. This is what decides whether your case works out: the information you should gather.
Step four prevents the most heartbreak and hardly anyone does it first. Many people spend weeks trying to recover a wallet that was emptied years ago or never held anything. Thirty seconds on an explorer tells you.
The three things NOT to do
1. Don’t post your problem with your DMs open. Within minutes scammers will message you. Post if you want, but reply only in public and don’t accept private help. 2. Don’t give your phrase or passwords to anyone, with any excuse, not even partially. 3. Don’t pay anything up front — no analysis fees, no licences, no deposits.
And one more thing: don’t rush
Unless you suspect your phrase is compromised — and in that case the article you need is this other one — there is no urgency at all. Your wallet doesn’t expire, your money doesn’t evaporate and your case doesn’t get worse with time. The only thing that makes your case worse is touching things in a hurry.
That sense of urgency is exactly what scammers exploit. If someone tells you that you have to act today, you know what that is.