What to Do If Your Hardware Wallet Is Lost, Stolen, or Damaged

If your hardware wallet is lost, stolen, or damaged, the fix is the same in every case: get the recovery phrase, put it into a new device or a wallet app, and your coins are back. What changes between the three cases is how fast you have to move. A damaged device is an errand. A stolen one, with a backup that may have been taken too, is an emergency.

Damaged or broken

Take your time. A cracked screen, a dead battery, a device that no longer turns on — none of it touches your coins. Order a replacement from the manufacturer's own shop, never a marketplace listing, and restore it with your recovery phrase. A second-hand device can arrive preloaded with someone else's phrase, which is a known way people are robbed. If the old device still works well enough to unlock, there is nothing to rush.

Lost, and the backup is safe

Also calm. Confirm you can read every word of the phrase first, then restore onto a new device. Once the new one is working, treat the missing device as gone rather than waiting for it to turn up. If it does reappear later, wipe it before reusing it.

Stolen, or the phrase may have been seen

This is the one that needs speed. Somebody who has your words does not need your device at all. Do this in order:

• Make a brand-new wallet on a device you trust, with a phrase nobody has ever seen — a fresh hardware wallet, or a clean install of MetaMask as a temporary stop.
• Send everything to the new wallet, largest balance first, across every network you use.
• Unstake and withdraw anything locked in Aave, Lido or similar before it can be pulled out from under you.
• Revoke the old wallet's token approvals, then stop using that phrase for good.

Do not reuse the compromised phrase on a new device — a new device around old words solves nothing. And ignore every message offering to trace or recover the funds for a fee; that industry exists to rob people twice. Before you start, it helps to read what actually happens when you lose a hardware wallet, and to keep the phone restore guide handy if you need a working wallet in the next ten minutes.