Hey all – I have a Ledger cold wallet that I’ve been using to accumulate BTC for years. The last time I plugged my Ledger into my laptop, it was a bit sluggish and I’m worried that the hardware may be failing. I have my seed phrase engraved on some steel plates, but I’ve never tried to recover my wallet using the seed phrase.
How can I test my seed phrase safely without typing the seed phrase into my laptop or cell phone? My concern is the risk that comes from potential malware or other risk that comes from revealing my seed phrase anywhere.
Am I overreacting? Should I just use a trusted wallet and type my seed phrase into the app on my laptop? I want to do this before my Ledger fails in case I need to move my funds.
Thanks in advance.
P.s. don’t bother with private messages, I won’t answer them.
Testing seed phrase safely
byu/Degen-stuff-man inBitcoinBeginners
Posted by Degen-stuff-man
4 Comments
Don’t type your seed phrase anywhere. The only place you want to enter the seed phrase, would be into another cold wallet. There is no way to test the integrity of your wallet. It’s either compromised, or it’s not. Ledger devices have frequent updates. If you’re not checking for updates atleast once a month, you will forever deal with a sluggish ledger.
Ideally you should test your seed backup before making large deposits with something like this :
1) send a small test amount of BTC to HW wallet (This is akin to your savings account) like 300-500 usd of btc
2) Setup a lightning hot wallet on your mobile phone for spending BTC .
Two popular options –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_4b-y4T8bY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtMXsJxx1X0
3) send that balance from your HW wallet to lightning wallet which will also load it into a lightning channel so you have quick and low fee txs with your lightning wallet (this is like your checking account for spending and replacing )
4) reset the HW wallet
5) Recover the HW wallet with the seed and you will see a 0 balance but also see the tx history indicating that its the same wallet
6) Send the remaining amount of Bitcoin to your HW wallet
What this does is :
1) trains you how to recover your wallet
2) sets up a lightning hot wallet like you should do regardless
3) removes any risk of losing Bitcoin from setting up the hardware wallet incorrectly
4) creates some added privacy with your spending wallet
5) proves to you your backup is correct and works
——————
Sounds to be you are already beyond this point **and your hardware wallet is starting to fail**(common for ledger as they make unreliable junk in my experience)
So the solution is simple , just buy another hardware wallet and enter your seed into that before getting rid or wiping your old hardware wallet.
I would suggest investing in another type of HW wallet and not a ledger , list in faq
https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/g42ijd/faq_for_beginners/
Another solution , less ideal than going through the complete recovery test is to use ledgers recovery check app
https://support.ledger.com/article/360007223753-zd?redirect=false
**Reminder – Do not ever enter the seed into any desktop or laptop or website or share it. Hardware wallet seeds should only directly be entered into hw wallets themselves**
If your HW wallet is failing, get a new one. Ideally a Trezor!
Then you can restore your wallet using your seed phrase on your new wallet. You can even create a new wallet on your new HW wallet and then just transfer your funds there.
You shouldn’t get too “attached” to one wallet… it’s normal to create new ones over the years. One shouldn’t chop and change too often either, though!
“Overreacting?” In crypto, overreacting is just called “good security practice.” Don’t stop.