<p>There is no way to convert the resulting seed back to the original mnemonic.</p>

<p>As stated in the <a href="https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki" rel="nofollow noreferrer">BIP 39</a> proposal:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>To create a binary seed from the mnemonic, we use the PBKDF2 function
  with a mnemonic sentence (in UTF-8 NFKD) used as the password and the
  string "mnemonic" + passphrase (again in UTF-8 NFKD) used as the salt.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The seed (and optional passphrase) are passed through pbkdf2, which is not reversible.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-11-26T16:21:59.310Z
2019-11-26T16:21:59.310Z
Raghav Sood
<p>In bitcoin wallet that support <em>bip39</em> mnemonic code, is there a way to get the 12/24 words from the seed generated by them?
Or the translation is one-way only (from words to seed)?</p>

<wallet><paper-wallet><mnemonic-seed><seed>
Words to seed translation
dcfg
# Words to seed translation

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-11-26)

In bitcoin wallet that support *bip39* mnemonic code, is there a way to get the 12/24 words from the seed generated by them?
Or the translation is one-way only (from words to seed)?

**Tags:** wallet, paper-wallet, mnemonic-seed, seed


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2019-11-26. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

There is no way to convert the resulting seed back to the original mnemonic.

As stated in the [BIP 39](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki) proposal:

> To create a binary seed from the mnemonic, we use the PBKDF2 function
> with a mnemonic sentence (in UTF-8 NFKD) used as the password and the
> string "mnemonic" + passphrase (again in UTF-8 NFKD) used as the salt.

The seed (and optional passphrase) are passed through pbkdf2, which is not reversible.


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