MultiBit was one of the better Bitcoin wallets between 2011 and 2016. In 2017 both MultiBit Classic and MultiBit HD were discontinued by their then-owner KeepKey, and the multibit.org domain has since passed to an unrelated site, so there is no official download and no support. If you still have Bitcoin in a Multibit wallet and need to get it out, this guide moves it into Electrum, a modern wallet that is still maintained. If you've lost the password or the files won't open at all, start with the Multibit wallet recovery page instead; if you need the exact file paths and formats, see Multibit wallet files: locations, formats, and derivation paths.
Why not just send from Multibit?
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You can try to make a transaction directly inside Multibit, but there are good reasons not to:
- Multibit does not support dynamic fees, so a transaction may fail, cost far too much, or worse, be accepted and then sit stuck for weeks before being rejected because the fee was too low.
- Multibit does not support SegWit addresses, so you may not be able to send to a current wallet at all.
- If you have a wallet with many transactions, it may fail to sync, or sending everything in one transaction can fail because the transaction is too large.
- Spending your whole wallet in one sweep is a privacy risk and costs you fees. Usually you just want your existing addresses loaded into a modern wallet.
- Multibit has assorted bugs that can stop it syncing or sending in the first place.
For any of those reasons, migrating your keys into Electrum is the safer path. Do this offline, on a clean machine, and copy your wallet files somewhere safe before you touch anything.
Import or sweep: which one do you want?
Electrum gives you two ways to bring old keys in, and the difference matters:
- Import adds your old Multibit addresses to an Electrum wallet and keeps the coins sitting on those same addresses. Use this if you want to preserve your existing addresses and history.
- Sweep sends the entire balance from your old keys into a new address that Electrum controls. Use this if the old keys may have been exposed, backed up insecurely, or shared, because after a sweep the old keys no longer hold the funds. Sweeping is the more secure choice for a wallet you're retiring.
If you're not sure, sweep. It's the clean break.
Step 1: Find your Multibit wallet files
Your Multibit data lives here:
| Platform | Multibit Classic | Multibit HD |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/MultiBit/*.wallet |
~/Library/Application Support/MultiBitHD/<wallet-id>/mbhd.wallet.aes |
| Windows | C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\MultiBit\<wallet-name>.wallet |
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\MultiBitHD\<wallet-id>\mbhd.wallet.aes |
Multibit Classic keeps individual private keys; Multibit HD is seed-based and stores an encrypted mbhd.wallet.aes. The two take different routes below.
If you have turned up several candidate files and are not sure which is which, or one of them will not open, drop each into the free MultiBit wallet file diagnostic first. It names the format, says whether the file is encrypted, and checks whether it is complete, all inside your own browser with nothing uploaded. Worth two minutes before you start: the rest of this guide assumes a healthy file, and a truncated one will fail every step below for a reason that has nothing to do with your password.
Step 2 (Multibit Classic): Export your private keys and open the .key file
Search your Multibit wallet folder for a .key file. There's also a node.js script to export Multibit keys, but the manual method is just as easy.
If you don't already have a .key file, open Multibit and go to Tools → Export Private Keys:
Open the resulting .key file in a text editor (Notepad, TextEdit, anything plain). An unencrypted export begins with the line KEEP YOUR PRIVATE KEYS SAFE !. The keys start after the last # line and look like this:
Kwm7awpt2QiuWE2n8d4WpJFB8HkEL5TgtiECg7spzJ4zbX6uiScY 2013-05-14T00:58:46Z
The long string at the front is the private key in WIF format; the timestamp after it is just the key's creation date.
If the file is one solid block of base64 text with no readable lines, it was exported with a password and is encrypted with it. You need that password before Electrum can use anything in it; see the forgotten-password section below.
Step 3 (Multibit Classic): Import the keys into Electrum, or sweep them
Download Electrum only from electrum.org/#download and verify it before running it.
- Start Electrum, or choose File → New/Restore.
- To start fresh, choose Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys and paste your keys. This creates an imported-keys wallet holding the coins on their original addresses.
- To move funds into an existing Electrum wallet instead, open that wallet and use Wallet → Private keys → Sweep. Sweeping consolidates the balance into an address Electrum already controls, and leaves the old keys empty.
Step 4 (Multibit HD): Restore the seed into Electrum on the m/0' path
Multibit HD is seed-based, so you don't export individual keys, you restore the recovery phrase:
- In Electrum choose File → New/Restore, then I already have a seed.
- Enter your Multibit HD recovery phrase.
- Click Options and check BIP39 seed.
- Set the derivation path to
m/0'(that's a zero followed by a single quote).
That derivation path is the detail almost everyone misses: a Multibit HD seed entered without it will restore an empty or wrong wallet, because Electrum looks at the wrong addresses. There's a good walkthrough of restoring a MultiBitHD wallet in Electrum if you want a second reference.
MultiBit seed not working in Electrum: the three usual causes
A MultiBit HD seed that Electrum accepts but that shows nothing is almost always one of these, in order of likelihood:
- Wrong derivation path. The default BIP44 path (
m/44'/0'/0') finds nothing, because MultiBit HD never used it. Go back through the restore wizard and setm/0'as above. This fixes most cases on its own. - Gap limit too small. Electrum stops scanning after 20 consecutive unused addresses. Old MultiBit HD wallets that generated a fresh receive address for every payment request can leave gaps longer than that, so coins sit beyond the point where Electrum gave up. In Electrum's console (View → Show Console) run
wallet.change_gap_limit(200), then restart Electrum and let it rescan. Raise it further if the wallet was heavily used. - Missing change addresses. MultiBit HD kept change on the internal chain,
m/0'/1/…. Restoring the seed with them/0'account path picks that chain up automatically. Importing individual receive keys instead of restoring the seed does not, which is one reason to prefer the seed route for HD wallets.
A fourth possibility is simply the wrong phrase, which happens to people with several old wallets. Before you conclude that, check the phrase itself: the free seed phrase checker validates the words and checksum in your browser without sending them anywhere. A phrase that fails its checksum has a transcription error in it, and no derivation path or gap limit will rescue that.
For the full account of MultiBit HD's key structure, see the derivation path section of the file-format reference.
If you've forgotten the password
If all you have is an encrypted Multibit wallet and you don't know the password, you can't export or restore until it's cracked. That's a brute-force recovery job. The good news for Multibit Classic: the encrypted .key file uses only 3 MD5 iterations, which makes it fast to test millions or billions of password variations until the right one hits. Multibit HD's mbhd.wallet.aes is stronger but still workable.
That's the service if you'd rather not do it yourself: Multibit wallet recovery by David Veksler, with a free assessment and no fee until your crypto is back. In your first message, describe what you have, not your password or seed. Get your free assessment →
If this guide helped you recover your Bitcoin, consider sending a tip to 3PoVZA7CZCo8df7WKXZXGskGqTfDacsDah.