Normally recovering funds from an accident like this is impossible. There’s a few things that need to be in order first, before you can rest assured.
- The wallet that you sent the LTC from 100% needs to use mnemonic seed words (like Ledger/trezor devices, many phone wallet apps, …).
- You must have your mnemonic seed written down, or remembered.
- The BTC address you sent funds to must be a Segwit address(all BTC segwit addresses begin with a “3”).
Decoding The Mnemonic Seed
Your first step toward redemption is to recover/translate your seed.
Hopefully you’ve written it down, or have a copy of it somewhere. Otherwise, you’re out of luck.
Use a BIP39 tool, to pull extract the seed from the mnemonic phrase. I’d recommend using, thissite.
The seed shown here is empty. It’s not that easy.
Pulling The Derived Address
Now, go ahead scroll down to the Derived Addresses section, and find the address where your LTC was sent to. Copy the path.
Getting Closer
Change the coin to LTC, and go to the “BIP32” tab. Select “Custom derivation path”, and paste your path that you copied in the last step.
Now scroll down to the “Derived addresses” section again, and look for the exact derivation path. Being correct as to which you use is crucial.
The private key displayed is your key needed to recover your LTC.
Save it, along with your address.
Crisis Averted
Not yet! Now, open up Litecoin Core. If you’re installing it for the first time, it may take a while to sync up with the blockchain.
Once it’s done, go to the “Help – Debug Window”, and open up the “Console” tab.
Enter the command:
importprivkey YOURKEYHERE “” false
(the end of this command disables rescanning of the blockchain. This needs to be done in order to keep the blockchain from doing a scan in the middle of this 5-30 minute process)
Followed by:
addwittnessaddress PUBLIC-NONSEGWIT-ADDRESSOFPRIVATEKEY
Last But Not Least
In order to get your wallet to continue syncing with the blockchain, you’ll need to generate and import a new private key. You can generate one here.
To import it, enter the following:
importprivkey YOURNEWWORTHLESSPRIVATEKEY “” true
Or…
Close and restart your Litecoin Core client, with the command line option “-rescan”.
You’ve Done It
You’re done! Now, go ahead and copy your “Available Balance”, and send it over to a valid LTC address.
Hopefully this guide saved you from a heart attack, otherwise… I’m sorry for your loss.