Just got into BTC a couple months ago, and right now I have my seed phrase stamped on a metal plate stored in a home safe. My main worry is: what’s the absolute safest way to keep these words so no third party—like a thief, a family member, or even a contractor in the house—could ever get them? I’ve thought about splitting the phrase into parts and storing them in different locations (bank deposit box, relative’s house, etc.), but doesn’t that just create more points of failure or risk someone finding a partial phrase? Curious how you veterans handle this without overcomplicating things.
Safest way to store seedphrases?
byu/Existing-Reality2303 inBitcoin
Posted by Existing-Reality2303
9 Comments
I have mine tatoo’d in the inside of my eyelids, that seems to do the job.
My approach is a few USB with the word encrypted and left in family members (secure places).
So they can’t access it but they have a backup
On a boat of course, in case the tax man comes knocking
You have two valid options and countless bad ones.
Option 1: use bip39 as designed, memorize your phrase. Simple, easy, flawless. People are irrationally afraid of this option due to miseducation.
Option 2: slip39. Come up with a series of hiding places and a guess for how many you think are likely to be found worst case. Then setup an m of n split to handle it, and start hiding slips of paper like it’s Easter.
Mistake to avoid:
Metal stamping. This just makes your keys easier to find.
Passphrases: human chosen passphrases make everything less secure. Don’t do it. Massive common fallacies on this topic, don’t listen to anyone who suggests passphrases; it’s the surest proof they are a moron.
Hardware wallets: most and likely all hardware wallets can be cracked, revealing any keys in them. You can use them, but always factory reset then or erase all keys from them. They are not terribly useful imo.
Windows: don’t run windows or macs to use your bitcoin. You will be hacked eventually. Closed source is the enemy of bitcoin.
Trusting people online: always dyor. This post will usually gets tons of butthurt replies trying to convince you to make one of the mistakes I warned about.
Not your keys, not your coins.
Look up how the US government recovered bitcoin from Heather Morgan. They found her keys in a Gmail file. Safe for them, findable by the government
Honestly what you’re doing now is fine. I wouldn’t worry about a contractor breaking into your safe and knowing what to do with a metal plate with random words on it
What kind of metal? I think the cheapest and safest option is some decent stainless steel (inox) washers and stamp the seeds phrase onto them, you can use the alphabet to order your 24 words.
To add an extra layer of protection against the family members or thiefs you can set up a passphrase and keep that one word memorized, to restore said wallet you’d need the seed phrase + passphrase
Stainless steel washers + passphrase. Don’t split the seed, that creates extra management for transfers & sales.
Look into multi-sig.
You can do things to improve your security with single-sig, but it quickly turns into a worse version of multi-sig. Like you end up with something that looks like a 2-of-2 or 3-of-3 multi-sig, but without the redundance of actually using multi-sig.