If you’ve lost access to your crypto wallet, one of your first questions is likely: “How long will it take to recover my crypto?” There’s no definitive answer, but crypto recovery process can take anywhere from a few hours to several months, depending on the issue’s complexity. Password resets or wallet access problems are often resolved quickly, while fraud, hacks, or legal claims require extended investigation. Services like Crypto Recovers provide time estimates based on case specifics.
In this article, we’ll explore the key factors that affect the timeline of crypto recovery, the process behind brute-force and dictionary attacks, and the situations where — unfortunately — recovery may not be possible.
How Long Does it Take to Crack a Crypto Wallet Password?
Crypto recovery — especially when it comes to a lost password — can take a long time due to the strong mathematical complexity and advanced security features built into cryptocurrency wallets. Unlike traditional accounts, there’s no “Forgot Password” button, and wallets can’t reset passwords. That’s what makes recovery such a challenge.
Moreover, each additional unknown character increases the number of possibilities exponentially.
For example:
- A 6-character password using letters and numbers: ~56 billion combinations.
- Add just 2 more characters (making it 8): Now it’s ~218 trillion combinations.
The good news is that recovery can be much faster if you remember the length of the password, parts of it, or specific words you might have used.
If you remember nothing, a full brute-force search is often unrealistic or takes weeks/months.
Read more about lost Bitcoin wallet password recovery with Crypto Recovers.
How Long Does Seed Recovery Take?
Recovering a seed phrase (typically 12 or 24 words) takes very different amounts of time depending on how many words are missing, which positions are missing, whether the user has any clues, wallet type and derivation path.
The good news is that seed phrases are chosen from the standard BIP39 list, which makes recovery much easier.
If one word is missing, there are only 2,048 possible options. With the help of expert tools, recovery can take a few minutes to an hour, but with slower systems or manual entry, it could take 1 to 2 hours. The success rate is very high, especially if you know the missing word’s position.
When four or more words are missing, recovery becomes nearly impossible due to the vast number of combinations—35 trillion or more. However, if you have strong guesses or can narrow the possibilities down, it may still be possible, especially if you’re testing for a specific derived address.
| Missing Words | Total Combinations | Recovery Time ( with tools) | Feasibility |
| 1 word | 2,048 (BIP39 wordlist size) | Minutes – 1 hour | Easy |
| 2 words | 2,048² = ~4.2 million | Hours – 1 day | Reasonable |
| 3 words | 2,048³ = ~8.6 billion | Days – weeks | ⚠️ Difficult |
| 4+ words | 35+ trillion | Weeks – impossible | ❌ Rarely feasible |
If your seed phrase is incomplete, we, Crypto Recovers, analyze your case in detail, ask you to share all possible clues and hints, and use powerful recovery tools to speed up the process and improve the chances of success.
How Long Does it Take to Get Back into a Crypto Wallet
When you lose access to your crypto wallet, two main methods can help crack it open: brute force and dictionary attacks.
Brute-force tries every possible combination of characters until the right one is found. It’s slow but works—especially if you remember something like the password length or certain characters. For complex passwords, it could take millions or even billions of guesses.
Each character in the password can be from a set of characters (like lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols). The more characters available in this set and the longer the password, the more combinations a brute-force attack has to try.
Dictionary attacks are faster and smarter. Instead of guessing everything, we start with likely options—your pet’s name, favorite phrase, important dates. If you can give us a list of possibilities, this method often works best.
In most recoveries, we start with a dictionary attack. Brute-force is the backup when all else fails.
Interestigly, wallets like Bitcoin Core, Electrum, and MetaMask use intentionally slow hashing algorithms — such as scrypt, bcrypt, or PBKDF2 with over 2,048 iterations — to slow down potential attacks. Even a supercomputer can only attempt a few thousand passwords per second, which dramatically increases the time required for brute-force recovery attempts.
Hiring Crypto Recovery Services for Faster Solutions
The cryptocurrency recovery time frame can be short or very long. It depends on the case’s complexity and the recovery strategies used.
Crypto recovery services like Crypto Recovers specialize in password and seed phrase cracking. With our experience, we know how to make the recovery process faster. For example, we use custom hardware to speed up brute-force attempts and create smart wordlists based on the clues you provide. Contact us to find out if your case can be recovered.
