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Finding and Exporting your private key from Bitpay Copay

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Adam edited this page Sep 19, 2018 · 1 revision

Getting recovery phrase/mnemonic or xprv key

Note: If you already have the recovery phrase/mnemonic you can skip to the next section

Bitpay/Copay utilize Hierarchical Deterministic wallets (HD Wallets). This means that the private key / recovery phrase used by them can be used to generate/recover multiple addresses from the same root private key. To get started you will need either the recovery phrase or the xprv private key. If you do not have either of these take a look at the follow article from bitpay support on how to export the information from your BitPay/Copay wallet

One you have the recovery phrase or xprv you can proceed with the following steps.

Determine the derivation path of your wallet

Since HD wallets can be used to generate unlimited numbers of addresses it is important to know the specific derivation path the wallet was using so you can recreate the same addresses the wallet did.

  1. Open the mobile app
  2. Open the wallet that contains the address you are trying to recover from
  3. Click the 'Preferences' icon in the top right (looks like 3 sliding switches)
  4. Scroll down to the 'Advanced' Section and open 'Wallet Information'
  5. Check to ensure the wallet 'Configuration (m-n)' says 1-1.
    • If it says anything different you require a more advanced recovery option. Contact Omni Support team for additional assistance.
  6. Take note of the 'Derivation Strategy' and 'Account' Number and write them down for later
    • The default is BIP44 with Account(BIP44) #0

Use derivation path and recovery phrase/xprv to extracting the address private key you wish to recover funds from.

Now that you have the derivation path we need to find the specific private key for the address that has the funds you wish to recover. Once we have that we can proceed with recovering the funds either through Omniwallet or another option. Please continue to our next support article on using the recovery phrase or xprv key to find your address.

Note: You will use the previously record 'Derivation Path' and 'account number' information in step 3 of this article.

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