MultiBit wallet recovery

Is my MultiBit bitcoin still recoverable?

Yes — if you still hold the recovery data. This is the most common question, and the answer is the same for both versions: a discontinued wallet does not delete your bitcoin. The coins sit on the blockchain, controlled by your private keys or seed phrase — and those remain valid as long as the correct keys still exist and the funds have not moved. What was discontinued in 2017 was the software, not the keys it created.

What you need depends on which wallet you used, so the first step of any recovery is identifying the version. A .wallet or .key file means MultiBit Classic; a 12-, 18- or 24-word seed phrase (or a mbhd.wallet.aes file) means MultiBit HD. The Classic vs HD comparison identifies your wallet in two minutes.

What you need to recover a MultiBit wallet

Recovery always comes down to one of three things you may still have:

• The HD seed phrase (12, 18 or 24 words; 12 and 18 appear more commonly) — later compatible HD wallets rebuild in a BIP39 wallet such as Electrum. This is the fastest and safest recovery path when the words are correct; an early HD wallet had a documented BIP32 compatibility issue (issue #445).
• An unencrypted .key export (Classic) — plain-text private keys that import into Electrum directly, no password required.
• The .wallet or mbhd.wallet.aes file itself — the keys are inside; encrypted files need the password or an offline recovery search.

If you have the seed phrase, follow the restore an HD seed guide. If you have Classic files, start with how to export private keys. If the password is the blocker, see the forgot password guide.

Recover bitcoin without the password

The most common recovery scenario is a forgotten password. The good news: for MultiBit HD the password is not required at all — it only encrypts the local wallet file, never the seed. For MultiBit Classic, an unencrypted .key export also imports without a password. Only an encrypted Classic .wallet file with no export requires recovering the password itself, using open-source tools such as btcrecover or mbtcrecover.

Wallet files and backups: find what you have

Before anything else, collect what exists on your machines and backups. MultiBit Classic stored data in %APPDATA%\MultiBit (Windows), ~/Library/Application Support/MultiBit (macOS) or ~/MultiBit (Linux), with automatic wallet-backup and key-backup snapshots in a walletname-data folder. MultiBit HD used separate locations — %APPDATA%\MultiBitHD (Windows), ~/Library/Application Support/MultiBitHD (macOS) and ~/.multibit-hd (Linux) — with a mbhd.wallet.aes wallet file and rolling zip backups. Also check old hard drives, USB sticks and email attachments from the era.

Found the files but not sure what they are? MultiBit Classic files are .wallet/.key; MultiBit HD files are mbhd.wallet.aes plus your seed.

Recovering from old computers and deleted files

If the wallet was on an old laptop, a formatted drive, or a machine that no longer turns on, the data may still be recoverable:

• Old hard drives — connect the drive to a working computer (or via a USB adapter) and search for .wallet, .key and mbhd.wallet.aes files before anything else.
• Deleted files — stop using the drive immediately and try file-recovery software; the wallet file may still be intact in free space.
• Automatic backups — MultiBit created its own wallet-backup and key-backup copies, so check the wallet's data folder even if you never made a manual backup.