A broken Trezor does not mean lost Bitcoin, and neither does a forgotten passphrase, a seed backup with mistakes in it, or a Shamir share you cannot find. I evaluate Trezor cases across both halves of the problem: the physical device and the backup that is supposed to make the device replaceable.
Locked out and want to try the safe steps yourself first? Start with my guide to restoring a Trezor after a lost PIN, wiped device, or broken hardware. It covers which situations are genuinely do-it-yourself and which need a bench.
Before anything else: do you have the seed?
This one question decides almost every Trezor case, so answer it before reading further.
If you have the recovery seed, most Trezor problems are not recovery cases. A dead screen, a forgotten PIN, a device that wiped itself, a unit that will not boot. None of these matter. Restore the seed into a new device and the broken one becomes a paperweight you can throw away. Do that first, before spending money on repair.
If you do not have the seed, the device is the only surviving copy of your keys, and everything about how you handle it from here matters. Stop entering PIN guesses. Stop plugging it into things. This is the case where the bench work is worth doing.
Situations I handle
Dead or damaged device, seed lost. If your Trezor powers on but displays nothing, the wallet data is usually intact and the display is the failure. I have repaired a Trezor by transplanting a working screen; the real case is written up at repairing a Trezor Model T with a touchscreen swap.
Forgotten passphrase (hidden wallet). The passphrase, sometimes called the 25th word, is the most common way Trezor users lose coins. See how hardware wallet users actually lose their Bitcoin. If you have the seed and remember fragments, the rest can be searched on GPU hardware.
Shamir (SLIP-39) shares that are lost, incomplete, or confusing. The whole question is your threshold: how many of how many. Most people never noted it. Count what you still have, and check whether the device itself still works before assuming anything. My guide to a lost Trezor Shamir share walks the four situations you can be in, including the one where nobody can help and you should not pay anyone who says otherwise.
Trezor recovery failed on a seed you believe is correct. Usually a misread word, a transposition, or a Shamir share entered where BIP-39 was expected. Stop retrying and get the phrase read before the device wipes.
Seed backup with missing or wrong words. Miscopied words, water damage, words in the wrong order. Incomplete BIP-39 backups may be repairable when enough structure remains; how much is enough depends on the specific damage, and I will tell you honestly after looking. See seed phrase recovery for that service path.
Forgotten PIN. What is possible depends on your model and firmware version. Ask before you guess again; the consequences of wrong attempts vary by model and some of them are irreversible.
A restored seed showing a zero balance. A derivation, address-type, or passphrase problem far more often than a wrong seed.
What to do right now
- Stop entering PIN guesses. On several models this walks you toward an automatic wipe.
- Find your recovery seed before anything else. If it exists, most of this page does not apply to you.
- Do not enter your seed into a computer to "check" it. That converts a hardware wallet problem into a software one, and it is how a lot of coins actually get stolen.
- Photograph the device and the damage rather than opening it. Opening a Trezor is not reversible and can destroy a viable repair.
- Count your Shamir shares and write down what you have, including partial ones.
- Write down the passphrase fragments you remember while the memory is fresh.
Why send your Trezor here?
Shipping a hardware wallet to a stranger requires trust, and you should demand a reason. Here is mine: you are sending it to a named founder (David Veksler) at a Colorado LLC with a physical address, under a written contract, with published pricing of 15% of the recovered amount for wallets under 100 BTC, and nothing at all if I do not recover your crypto. You can visit in person in Denver, or watch the work over a video call. Devices and data are returned or destroyed, your choice, per the terms of service. The full account of what happens to your wallet file once you send it is on the FAQ, and it applies to a shipped device as much as to a file.
Apply those same tests to everyone else you are considering. How to tell a legitimate crypto recovery service from a scam is the checklist, and it is written to be used against me as much as against anyone else.
Follow the shipment instructions when you are ready, or start with a photo and a description of what happened.