Confusion with Legacy Segwit Account

Suite issues Wallet issues
1

Please keep it simple I’m new to this.

I have the standard trezor wallet. I opened a new cold wallet on another hardware device ( Tangem) using the wallet seed phrase. Only my ETH showed in the new wallet. I checked the Trezor and noticed that I had two types of accounts, Default and Legacy Segwit Account. Under default I have BTC-Zero balance and ETH - with the correct balance. Under Legacy Segwit I have BTC with the correct balance. Questions:

  1. How and why did they separate my accounts?
  2. Why didn’t the BTC show up in my other wallet ( Tangem)?
  3. How to I get the BTC and ETH in the same account?
  4. Would this have been a problem if I had used another Trezor instead hardware device instead of Tangem?
  5. Are my BTC and ETH holdings in two separate wallets? If not how do you explain one transferring to the new hardware and the other not transferring using the one seed phrase?

Super confused. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

2

Hi @Yendor1924,

There is no need to worry all your funds are in one wallet backed up by your wallet backup (recovery seed). Find answers to your questions below:

  1. From your description, it is clear that you use two BTC accounts in your wallet. One is SegWit BTC account (default, addresses of this account type start with “bc1q”) and one is Legacy SegWit BTC account (an older type of account, addresses of this account type start with “3”). If you have funds in Legacy SegWit account, it means that you enabled this account and then sent your funds into it.
  2. The Tangem wallet uses SegWit BTC account as the default one. This is the reason why you cannot see your BTC stored on a different account type.
  3. You have two options, one is to send all your BTC from Legacy SegWit account to your default SegWit account (you can do it in Trezor Suite). The second one is to contact Tangem support and ask them how to enable Legacy SegWit account in their wallet. Then you can move the funds in the Tangem wallet interface.
  4. That’s not a problem no matter what wallet you use. You just need to enable the Legacy SegWit account, or you need to move all your BTC to the default SegWit account.
  5. No, all your funds are in one wallet (backed up by one recovery seed). The funds are in a different accounts (ETH in ETH account, BTC in Legacy SegWit account, your default SegWit BTC account is empty as you mentioned).

You can find more information on different BTC account types at Bitcoin Account Types in Trezor Suite. If anything is not clear, let us know.

2 Likes
3

I too have all my BTC on a legacy Segwit address. For new puchases of BTC, should one store it on the Legacy Segwit account or the newer ‘default’ segwit account, or doesn’t it matter?

4

Hi @Keystone_1,

We make the segwit account the default as using it generally incurs lower transaction fees than the legacy segwit account when sending Bitcoin. The choice of using either account is up to you.

It’s worth also revisiting the option to resend bitcoin from the legacy SegWit account to the Segwit account that @radekP mentioned in his previous post. As we are currently in a low fee environment on the Bitcoin network (with fees generally in the range of 2-10 sat/vbyte at time of writing this post), you may want to consider sending some or all bitcoin on the legacy Segwit account to the Segwit account. If you then want to spend it when fees rise, it will be cheaper to do so. You can thereby save money compared with just holding the bitcoin on your Segwit account until the time you want to spend it.

Again it is important whenever transacting on the Bitcoin network to take into account your individual situation and needs before taking any actions and to do your own additional research into the account types and fee models related to them.