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What happened: I created a wallet with my backup seed. Then I sent to the generated wallet addresses:

Everything was ok and I had access to my funds in the Coinbase Wallet App.

Then I wanted to send BTC back to Coinbase to trade it. But I got the same error as the guy on twitter: https://twitter.com/scottyboi78/status/1357378323270291457/photo/1 Calculating the fees was actually not the problem.

Then I restored the wallet with my recovery seed multiple times on my iPhone. I also tried Android Emulator with Android Studio and the official Coinbase Wallet App.

The result is always the same:

How can it happen that the SAME seed results in DIFFERENT addresses for BTC!

That should not be possible!

Please help me I lost all my money and it is there in the Blockchain but I can't access it because the seed generation has a bug (I think at least)!

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2 Answers 2

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Once you use a BTC receiving address once, any good wallet will not display the same address again; they'll display the next address in the chain (since your seed derives to a large chain of different addresses). The coins are not lost, your wallet balance should still be there, and the wallet will still track the old address, it just won't display the old addresses by default to discourage reuse of the old address.

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  • But shouldn't the total balance in the blockhain explorer show the same amount on the new and the old address?
    – Appyx
    Commented Feb 16, 2021 at 7:52
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    @Appyx No. Every address is separate, and the balance between addresses are separate too. Your wallet keeps track of all of this and adds it all up to show you your wallet balance, but the addresses are not inherently linked on the blockchain.
    – ieatpizza
    Commented Feb 16, 2021 at 9:04
  • Ok thanks but why can't I see the funds then? Thy are obviously there on the blockchain.
    – Appyx
    Commented Feb 16, 2021 at 10:55
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It is difficult to tell you exactly what happened, but if you have the correct seed, you do not need to worry. Did you already send the btc to Coinbase? If you sent it to Coinbase to trade, then it obviously wont be in your wallet anymore.

If you didn't send to coinbase, then it is still sitting in the same address. You can ascertain this by looking up your address or txid in the blockchain. If you haven't sent the btc, then check your balance in the original Coinbase app. If it displays your balance, you're all good, but when you click "receive" it will generate a NEW address, not the same one every time (see @ieatpizza's answer).

If you don't see your balance in the app, you probably entered the wrong seed. Did you use a password in addition to the seed? Wallets allow users to add an extra (arbitrary) password to their seed phrase for uniqueness and extra security. In that case, loading the wallet from the seed phrase without the password will yield a valid, and empty wallet that is different from yours.

Things you can try:

  1. download a different wallet, such as BlueWallet, and enter the seed there. Enter it with just the seed, and alternatively, with the seed AND your coinbase password appended to the end of the list.

Good luck!

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  • But shouldn't the total balance in the blockhain explorer show the same amount on the new and the old address?
    – Appyx
    Commented Feb 16, 2021 at 7:52
  • I'm still unsure what you're asking. Bitcoin is "in" an address until it's sent to another address. An address is like a bank account. When bitcoin is sent from one address to another, it is no longer in the sending address, so a block explorer will not show it there.
    – Sachin Meier
    Commented Mar 2, 2021 at 18:40

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