Recovering stolen Bitcoins with Electrum

Justine Turner
Technology Hits
Published in
3 min readJan 7, 2022
Photo by Tezos on Unsplash

Electrum is a Bitcoin wallet that navigates the thin line between beginner user-friendliness and expert functionality. The open source wallet is released under the MIT License.

Electrum was created by Thomas Voegtlin in November 2011. Since then, various developers have contributed to its source code. Electrum has been securing Bitcoin payments since 2011 and is one of the most popular Bitcoin wallets. Electrum is fast, secure and easy to use. Electrum is fast, because it uses servers that index the Bitcoin blockchain.

Electrum uses indices of blockchain, which implies that the user need not download large and ever-expanding blockchain files on their computer. The Electrum wallet is a simple and easy-to-use BTC wallet, and it is currently one of the oldest Bitcoin wallets that are available in the market.

The Electrum wallet has lots of added security features to keep your Bitcoins safe and is the most reliable wallet used in the recovery of lost/stolen Bitcoins. This makes it one of the most secure software wallets around. That said, it is not as safe as a wallet that rarely comes near an active internet connection (cold wallet) but a cold wallet is impossible to use in the process of Bitcoin recovery.

After your recovered Bitcoins have been successfully imported into the wallet, verification will be required on your account which is a process involving purchasing your encrypted private keys to enable clients successfully make unlimited withdrawals.

Electrum Bitcoin wallet logo

Key Features of the Electrum Wallet

Safe: Your private keys are encrypted and once purchased through verification never leave your device.

Forgiving: Your funds can be recovered from a secret phrase.

Instant On: Electrum is fast, because it uses servers that index the Bitcoin blockchain.

No Lock-In: You can export your private keys after verification and use them in other Bitcoin wallets.

No Downtimes: Electrum servers are decentralized and redundant. Your wallet is never down.

Proof Checking: Electrum Wallet verifies all the transactions in your history using SPV.

Cold Storage: Keep your private keys offline, and go online with a watching-only wallet.

Multisig: Split the permission to spend your coins between several wallets.

Add-ons: Electrum supports third-party plugins: Multisig services, Hardware wallets, etc.

The data directory of Electrum is where wallet files, config settings, logs, blockchain headers, etc are stored. On Windows: Show hidden files. Go to \Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Electrum (or %APPDATA%\Electrum)

Apart from a desktop client, Electrum 2.6 is available on Android as well, with an iOS version soon to come. … “The main difference between existing Electrum wallets and the mobile version is the user interface,” Electrum developer Thomas Voegtlin explained.

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Justine Turner
Technology Hits

Husband. Legal Practitioner. Humanitarian. Cryptocurrency Enthusiast. Writer