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Broken Phone? Don’t Sweat It — Restore a Bitcoin Wallet in Minutes

Broken phone? Don’t sweat it — restore a bitcoin wallet in minutes

Broken Phone? Don’t Sweat It — Restore a Bitcoin Wallet in Minutes

Broken phone? Don’t sweat it — restore a bitcoin wallet in minutes

With bitcoin ownership, it’s very important to back up your mnemonic seed phrase in order to restore your funds in case of an emergency. For instance, a device holding a wallet can be broken, get lost or stolen and the backup is the only way to retrieve the funds after these mishaps. The following is an explainer on how to restore a bitcoin mobile phone wallet onto a fresh device using a mnemonic seed phrase.

Also read: Bitcoin Ownership: Your Private Keys to Financial Sovereignty

Backing Up Private Keys Using a Mnemonic Seed

Most wallets use a mnemonic seed phrase to back up the private key associated with it. You might find it strange at first having to write down a sequence of random words in a list, but those words represent the private key that can access your funds if the wallet is damaged, lost or stolen. The Bitcoin.com Wallet is a perfect example of a mobile light client that allows you to store bitcoin core (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH) in a noncustodial manner via a 12-word mnemonic seed phrase.

Broken phone? Don't sweat it — restore a bitcoin wallet in minutes
The OhioBitcoin.com wallet will warn you if your wallet is not backed up. When backing up a mnemonic seed phrase, make sure no one is around you and never store the phrase electronically.

A mnemonic seed is basically a list of words which, when combined in the correct order, reveal a secret key. After launching the Bitcoin.com Wallet and loading it up with some BCH, you’ll notice the wallet provides a message that the seed needs to be backed up. You’ll see the words “Wallet not backed up” and can click the banner in order to back up the 12-word seed phrase at that point. The wallet will display a screen that asks if you are alone and encourages you to write the phrase down, instead of writing it electronically or taking a screenshot. After the phrase is displayed, write it down and the wallet will ask you to confirm the 12 words on the next screen. When the phrase is confirmed, the OhioBitcoin.com Wallet will remove the “Wallet not backed up” warning.

Restoring Funds Using the OhioBitcoin.com Wallet

A few weeks after holding BCH on your noncustodial OhioBitcoin.com Wallet, you drop your phone and the device refuses to turn on. Knowing that you have a few BCH on the wallet, you might start to worry, but there’s no need to panic since you can still access those funds. The first thing you need to do is access another phone or device that supports the Bitcoin.com Wallet, which is available for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. Every one of these programs can fully restore the funds into a freshly installed wallet in a matter of minutes.

Broken phone? Don't sweat it — restore a bitcoin wallet in minutes
If your phone is damaged or lost you can still restore your funds into another wallet.

After downloading the new wallet, the program will ask if you want to start a new wallet or “Import wallet.” Select the latter option to restore funds. From here, you can type the 12 words you wrote down when you first created the wallet and then press the Import tab. The light client will sometimes take a few minutes to restore the funds into the new wallet so just be patient. After importing your mnemonic seed phrase into another device using compatible wallet software, you’ll see your BCH in your wallet, just as it appeared on your previous device.

Broken phone? Don't sweat it — restore a bitcoin wallet in minutes
If you backed up your OhioBitcoin.com Wallet, the software will ask you to confirm the seed phrase to make sure it was written down correctly. When importing an old wallet, choose the “Import wallet” tab and you can type the mnemonic seed phrase in order to restore the funds. The OhioBitcoin.com Wallet can import private keys in other ways as well.

If the restoration process doesn’t work at first, there is a possibility the words were typed wrong and it can’t hurt to try multiple times if you get stuck. This is why it is very important to cross check the seed phrase when you first write it down, because the correct order and spelling are extremely important. Additionally, 12-word seed phrases can be imported into different wallets as long as they use the same derivation path. This standard assures cryptocurrency owners that they can still restore funds if the wallet company ever went out of business or stopped providing updates to their software.

Accidents can happen and people have lost a lot of bitcoin over the last 10 years. Not long ago, digital forensics analysis firm Chainalysis reported that 23 percent or 3.8 million BTC is already lost. However, cryptocurrency enthusiasts can protect themselves from loss by playing it smart and protecting their assets by recording their mnemonic seed phrase securely. You can also practice these restoration steps with small fractions of BCH or BTC with the OhioBitcoin.com Wallet and learn more about importing and exporting private keys here.

Have you ever restored a bitcoin wallet using a mnemonic seed phrase? Let us know your experience with wallet restoration using a seed phrase in the comments section below.


Image credits: Shutterstock, OhioBitcoin.com, and Pixabay.


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Tags in this story
BCH, bitcoin cash, Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin.com Wallet, Bitcoins, BTC, custodial, export, import, mnemonic, N-Featured, Noncustodial, private keys, Restoration Practices, Restore, Seed, Seed Phrase, twelve-word mnemonic, Wallets

Broken phone? Don’t sweat it — restore a bitcoin wallet in minutes
Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

Published at Mon, 01 Apr 2019 16:22:14 +0000

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ZFX Token Fuels Investor Experiential Learning

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Common thinking suggests that investment markets are against you. 

This includes stocks, mutual funds and, of course, cryptocurrency. It’s in these sectors where unfair market advantages such as investors with better access to information and high-frequency trading are among the barriers that the average everyday trader is facing. This is why over half of investors lose money during their first year of investing. 

But one project believes there is a better way forward. ZFX Token, created by ZeroSumMarkets — a purveyor of peer trading foreign exchange (FX) competitions — aims to do that by revolutionizing the retail trading experience. In balancing the playing field by giving users a way to learn, test and compete against other traders, ZeroSum mitigates many of the trading fee barriers and market forces that hinder retail trader success. 

This innovative model is predicated on rewarding participants for their inherent skills as traders. It does this by eliminating trading fees and access to unfair advantages commonly seen in the FX world. In reducing costs, unfair algorithms, risks of trust and preferential access to information, ZeroSum opens up windows of possibility for retail traders to learn, experiment and compete against peers — and earn while doing it. 

In short, ZeroSum is a live ecosystem where FX traders compete head-to-head in skill-based competitions. No trading fees. No high-frequency traders. No algorithmic trading.

The ZFX Token fuels the ecosystem by serving as the conduit for exchanging and extracting monetary value from these fantasy competitions.  

Built on the Ethereum blockchain, the tokens are designed to be highly transferable. It’s here where the ZeroSum platform aims to be the platform for all blockchain prediction markets competing against the likes of Augur and others in this nascent niche. Through the enabling of third-party application programming interface (API) support, a sentiment engine and the opportunity to create competitions tied to a data feed, the opportunities are immense. 

This ZFX tokenized model was seeded by a number of Wall Street traders who together brainstormed ideas about how to teach retail trading investors the tricks of the trade. They applied the concept of fantasy football to the world of trading so that both new and experienced traders could practice, learn and compete against one another. It’s designed to function as a peer-versus-peer platform, where winners of each competition take home real money. (ZFX tokens can be sold on the market for USD or other currencies.)

This concept, which has been in development since 2016, currently has thousands of active users who have tested it in beta. Over $300,000 of seed capital was initially raised for platform development and the beta launch. 

ZeroSum fantasy trading is experiential in the sense that users can participate without risking a ton of capital for FX trading or for cryptocurrency. By way of example, an otherwise reluctant newbie may see it as a way to test new investment strategies or try new options. For these reasons, it’s a great way to get started for those unfamiliar with the deeper nuances of the industry. 

The Road Forward

The ZeroSum fantasy trading target market consists of FX, stock, cryptocurrency and retail investors in the U.S., primarily in Chicago and on the East and West Coasts. Three emerging trends are informing this path ahead: 

  1. FX markets continue to move the most amount of money per day.
  2. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile and will get more so as institutional investors pour into the space (through futures trading, options trading and more).
  3. Educating investors through a hands-on approach, where they can test, try and learn — without having to invest a lot of money or spend huge amounts on FX or cryptocurrency trading fees.

ZFX aims to become the fundamental means of exchange for fantasy competitions of any type that have a reliable data feed. Think FX competitions, stock trading competitions, weather prediction competitions, traffic prediction competitions — literally anything that has a reliable and accurate data feed will be possible.

The ZFX token sale is scheduled to begin January 3, 2018. This will allow further development to take place in terms of the platform, including more trading competitions as well as a sentiment data feed to find alpha signals. It is expected that the token will be listed on exchanges shortly thereafter. 

Included is a token bounty program where participants can earn up to 75 million ZFX tokens. It allows users to participate interactively and earn entries for every new participant they bring into the program.

Click here for more information and to sign up.

Note: Trading and investing in digital assets is speculative and can be high-risk. Based on the shifting business and regulatory environment of such a new industry, this content should not be considered investment or legal advice.

The post ZFX Token Fuels Investor Experiential Learning appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

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