Blockchain.com was founded in mid 2011 as Blockchain.info, and released its Bitcoin wallet on Dec 1, 2011. The Blockchain wallet has many accolades:
The Blockchain wallet is what is known as a "hybrid" wallet. This means that the company stores an encrypted version of your wallet's private key on their servers, but it does not store your password. This provides a number of benefits:
However, there is one major drawback: if you lose your password (and you have not written down your 12-word wallet recovery phrase) the company cannot retrieve or reset your password for you.
As Blockchain.info says: "Unfortunately, we're unable to help you re-gain access to your wallet if you've lost or forgotten your password. This is because we don't have access to your wallet or your wallet password."
However, CryptoAssetRecover.com can help you recover your password. This article documents a process you can use that may allow you to recover your password yourself. However, our clients often reach a point where they need professional help.
On a related note -- read this article if you are having trouble receiving authorization emails from Blockchain and, read this article if you have a mnemonic with an unusual number of words in it, like 9 or 14 or 22.
While it is widely believed that Blockchain.info was founded in August 2011, it looks like the service was first announced on Aug 30, 2011. You can see the thread announcing the service on BitcoinTalk.org, here. However, Blockchain.info was initially founded as a block explorer and blockchain analytics website. The Blockchain wallet was launched in Beta on Dec 1, 2011, and you can see that announcement here.
A Blockchain Wallet ID is simply a username for your Blockchain account. (It is not a blockchain public address or private key).
A Wallet ID is made up of 32 alphanumeric characters and 4 dashes. It takes the following format:
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
Blockchain.com has an article that may answer more questions titled: What is a wallet ID?
The simplest way to find your Wallet ID is through your email account. Blockchain lets you link an email address to your account so that they can send notifications when something changes.
Take a moment to write down all the email addresses that you might have linked to your Blockchain wallet.
Once you find your Wallet ID, you're ready to move on to making your password guesses.
Creating a good list of password guesses requires time and research. We'll start by explaining the minimum password requirements, then move into techniques you can use to jog your memory. Your goal at this point is to cast a wide net: what is the entire set of password components (also called "tokens") that you might have used to create your password.
As of January of 2018, Blockchain.info enforces the following requirements on new accounts:
This appears to be largely the same set of criteria that the company required in January of 2012, when they wrote: "We require a password of at least 10 characters in length to ensure that even if our database is compromised your wallet will remain secure."
At the risk of stating the obvious, this means that whatever password you chose for your Blockchain wallet is at least 10 characters long.
Update: However, in February of 2021 we discovered a 2017 Blockchain password that was only 9 characters long. So, if your Blockchain password was created earlier than January of 2018, a shorter password length is possible.
Most people have weaknesses in the way that they create and use passwords:
While this is typically interpreted as a problem, in our case it's a benefit. If you're like most people there's a good chance that your Blockchain.info password is related to some of the other passwords that you have. One strategy for making a good password guess: look at the other passwords that you have created, and look for common patterns.
One common source of inspiration is your web browser's password manager. This is the tool that asks you if you want your browser to remember your password when you create an account on a new website.
Here are instructions for opening your password manager on the most widely used web browsers:
You want to do two things:
Once you have identified possible keywords and your own password creation patterns, it's time to create a plan for how to proceed. Basically, you want to create a long list of passwords and password variations that you can systematically use to try to login to your Blockchain.info account, one after the other.
In many ways, an offline spreadsheet created in Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, OpenOffice, or a similar program is the perfect tool for this job. You can put each password in a new row, copy and paste the password from the spreadsheet to the Blockchain.info login form (rather than risking typos as you manually type each password), and record which passwords you have tried and which you haven't.
The downside of using a spreadsheet is that you have now created a single file which contains the passwords for all of your accounts. If you were to lose your computer (or get hacked) this would create a serious potential security risk. If you use a spreadsheet (rather than pencil and paper) take the following precautions:
Your spreadsheet needs to have two columns:
Start by copying and pasting your passwords from other services into the spreadsheet. To get a feel for how the process works, point your web browser to the Blockchain.info login page: https://blockchain.info/wallet/#/login
Copy and paste your Wallet ID into the "Wallet ID" field
Copy and paste your first password guess in the "Password" field
Click the "LOG IN" button
If that first password doesn't work, enter "Checked" in the "Status" column of your spreadsheet and move on to the second password. Rinse and repeat.
Assuming that you have not already cracked your password, now you want to start creating combinations of the "tokens" that seem reasonable. This is known as "brute force" decrypting a password. The basic strategy is to take a set of known tokens that may be part of the password and create hundreds (or thousands or millions) of permutations of those tokens, and test them until you find the right one that unlocks your cryptocurrency.
When you're doing this manually, you get to decide how many combinations you want to try. If you work with a company that does this at scale, we will typically try tens of millions of combinations if necessary to decrypt your password.
Before you start, consider the following questions:
Do you use the same numbers repeatedly in multiple passwords? If so, perhaps you append those same numbers to whatever passwords don't have them.
Do you use the same special characters repeatedly in multiple passwords? Those are good tokens to add to the passwords that don't have them.
I would recommend that you find a pattern in your set of passwords, and that you create new "batches" of about 25 passwords at a time in your spreadsheet. Once you have created a batch, go test them. Then, find a new pattern to test, create a batch of passwords and test them.
If you find your password using this approach, then congratulations! Your methodical persistence has paid off! You converted a small amount of your time into (hopefully) a substantial payday. You should now:
If you reach a point where you're running out of new ideas to test, or you have simply exhausted your patience, don't despair. This process of brute-forcing a password is our bread and butter. We're happy to take your password guesses and make tens of millions of attempts to recover your wallet.
Here's how our service works:
We often recover wallets within just a few hours of our clients' initial contact.
Curious about what our other clients say? Check out our Testimonials page.
Questions for us? Please reach out via email or our contact us page.
Blockchain accounts can be configured with two passwords a "main" or primary password, and a secondary password that is only required when you send funds out of the account. You can read more about cracking Blockchain second passwords here.
