Can't get into my MultibitHD wallet. I have the 18 recovery words but can't recover the wallet

Question

I'm trying to login to my MultibitHD wallet and its saying the password won't unlock the wallet. I might have forgot the password, but I have a feeling I'm using the right password.

I have the 18 words to recover the wallet (I regret making it 18 words, I should have stuck with 12 words so I could import it using another wallet) but heres what happens when I try to recover the password:

It just gets stuck on that last page, nothing happens. Over the years I'm always running into problems like this with MultibitHD, usually I can recover it with the words though. This time I can't. I have about €100 of bitcoins in there so this is a problem. I tried to restore the wallet from a backup point but that didn't work either. Is there anything else I can do?

Answer 1

Since MultiBit HD uses BIP 39 for its "wallet words" (everywhere else these are known as the mnemonic or the seed phrase), you can import them into any wallet that supports BIP 39 mnemonics.

I suggest that you import your mnemonic into Electrum. Note that by default Electrum does not use BIP 39 nor does it use the same BIP 32 derivation paths as MultiBit HD.

To import, download Electrum and create a new standard Electrum wallet. Choose the option for "I already have a seed". Then enter your seed phrase. Before clicking "Next", click the "Options" button and in the pop up dialog, choose "BIP 39 Seed". On the next page where it asks about derivation, delete everything in the text box and enter exactly m/0'. Continue the rest of the wallet setup as normal. In the end, you should have an Electrum wallet with your MultiBit HD seed phrase for the private keys. You should see your Bitcoin in your wallet now.

Here is a video produced by MultiBit that shows this entire process.