Bitcoin Forum

I know for security and safety reasons thats why Bitcoin wallet have been set to have the seed phrase security.
Which is supposed to be ones wallet security pin,but you know as humans forgetting and carelessness is a must in our nature.
But the disadvantage is that this has led to many people loosing their Bitcoin in their wallet or should I say stuck with access to it.
Since their is no way you can stair up a forgotten password option in the wallet app

The first thing to do after creating a wallet is to save your wallet's private phrases in a safe place that you can have access to at any time.

This does not necessarily mean you should save them online or on your mobile for easy access because that can also make you vulnerable to hackers, but having your wallet keys safe is the first and primary thing to do.

Your wallet phrase is your access to your wallet and is what gives you the power and control over your wallet so I don't see it as a threat whatsoever.

Keeping your own money is your own responsibility to keep full control of it You could write your seed, pin and password in the paper and keep it in a safe place that is fire and water proof.
If you think you cannot take that responsibility to keep your own money as your own bank, then keeping bitcoin isn't for you.
If you just keep your money to any custodial wallet or exchange imagine if they were hacked and file bankruptcy like many exchange did this past few months. Your hard earned money will just vanish like it isn't yours because of that irresponsibility to keep your own money.

There's nothing that limits you to holding your Bitcoin wallet password or recovery seed only in one place. You can create as many backups as you want and in different formats - on paper, on CD, on USB, on metal sheets and so on. The problem is that some people treated it as just another password and made only one backup copy and then misplaced it, when in reality they should have treated it as nuclear launch codes.

This is why you should create a back up on steel plate or any other medias that resist against fire, corrosion, etc.

Be your own bank, this mean you have full control over your coins and it's your responsibility to protect your wallet. If you can't be your own bank and you let the third party control over your money, it's seems Bitcoin isn't for you since the reason why Satoshi create Bitcoin is to eliminate the third party. Holding on centralized exchange seems to be fine when nothing is happen, until it's too late when the exchange got hacked.

always try to back up our wallet seeds. save on one paper of course is not enough. do whatever it takes to keep the seeds in at least 2 different places.
I save it on paper with handwriting that I keep somewhere. and I also save it in a word document that I save on flash.
I do it not for all the wallets I usually use for trading. but only for the wallet in that I put my long-term BTC in.

This way isn't safe since word document has very low security even though you have encrypted the file and set a password, it's will become useless your computer has a malware that can break those extra security. USB flash drive has a chance your data get corrupted due to many factors, the best is safe in offline using steel plate [1], washers [2] etc that the material is resistant to anything.

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[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5323755.0
[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5389446.0

Your solely controlling (knowing) the secret keys to unlock part of the space in the blockchain is an essential part of bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Without these secret keys, it wouldn't be possible to provide decentralization and censorship-resistance, and it certainly wouldn't be possible to give people what they have been seeking - financial freedom. Bitcoin liberates people from the shackles of the old financial system and gives them a way to escape from ever-growing inflation and political corruption. Of course, the inability to restore access in case of accidental loss implies full responsibility for the actions you perform and also the thoughts that come into your head. But you can't be really free without also being responsible for your own actions. You either accept this new reality growing up financially or continue to rely on banksters seeking your money, time, and freedom. Backing up your wallet is not that hard; it is definitely worth it to learn about the best practices of dealing with private keys, especially if you value independence and freedom.

You are fully responsible for the wallet you have, losing access to open a wallet is a big loss especially if you have a number of assets there. Forgetfulness or carelessness is an unavoidable human trait, which is why you should immediately save your phrases when you first create a BTC wallet.
You can store whatever amount of money you have there, the important thing is that you don't lose access to open the wallet you have.

Why are you putting the natural mistake blame on technology?
Do you really think this is disadvantage of the wallet?

If they will eliminate this security protocol you will make more disadvantages of the wallet.
I think this is compulsory. And people should save the seed phrase to any safe place.

Let me suggest to those who forgot phrase or lost it.
1. Make a locker.
2. Purchase a notebook.
3. Write all phrases on it.
4. Save that notebook in the Locker.

You can get everything at anytime.
But if people keep safe the locker key and forget the key place. So they should consult to Doctor for treatment. :D

Wrong. Seed phrases were introduced so that users have an easy way of creating a backup of their wallets by writing down the "entropy" that created that wallet in form of 12 to 24 human readable words.
It has nothing to do with "security and safety reasons".

You are not supposed to memorize seed phrases, you are supposed to create a physical backup from them and store that safely in a secure location.

The current state of non-custodial wallets definitely ain't for the careless type of person for obvious reasons. There has to be a better way of handling backups though; still hoping that some UX expert would find out a better way of handling backups for the typical layperson that would hopefully nearly eliminate the need for custodial wallets.

Seed phrase and pins are two different things, basically you can't memorize the seed phrase so you have to note it down in some format while creating the wallet and you hold the responsibility of keeping it safe cause you want to have your money so you only can access your money. While pin is just an encryption to the login which is basically a layer of security and you don't need the pin if you have recovery Seed since you can import the wallet into a new one.

And if you say your ignorance can be a reason to lose your money then you will stuck in the centralized bank trap and broke forever.

I remember how I used to save private keys or wallet files instead of seeds and I didn't like it at all, but now it's much simpler and anyone can do it without having any advanced knowledge. The real problem is that some don't understand that non-custodial wallets don't have any insurance in case you screw things up, and those who are active in Wallet software could see dozens of cases over the years where new members asked for contact from Electrum developers, thinking that they could help them to recover lost seed or password.

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It is human nature to constantly change and adapt to new circumstances, and if you want to be successful in something, then you have to change or face the consequences. Bitcoin is still a bit more complicated than taking a bank card and remembering a four-digit PIN, but still not so complicated that most people can't figure it out.

Yes there is disadvantage of Bitcoin wallet and wallets in general in other cryptocurrencies. Wallet is absolutely control by you the owner, there is no second or third party in wallet control. So the safety of the wallet is in your hand. You have to write the private key down in 4 different places or more that is safe. Humans are not like computer  so differently you will forget some of the words from the key but writing it down is the best option.

There's been excellence in GUI; sending and receiving bitcoin is already a simple process. The reason why there is still "need" for custodial wallets is that people, not only do they recognize themselves as careless, but they're also irresponsible, and feel more appropriately if they hand over their custody to someone else.

It is our full responsibility as non-custodial wallet owners, so any efforts to back up personal phrases as well as possible with some of the things that have been suggested, the best is on a steel plate that will not fade or corrode, only we store it properly.

I know carelessness is human nature sometimes they forget or neglect to remember it but for me it can be reconsidered as long as saving the seed phrase is in a good place offline which must be done and I never save it online or any document.

I backed up the seed phrase in several places, steel plate, writing paper, more secure engraving all of that in different places that's what I did..

Some examples of how to properly store seed phrases: How best to secure your Private Keys and/or Seed phrase (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5211880.0)

Yes, GUI(specifically with UI) is almost sort of 'good enough', but the UX still needs a lot of work. We could probably say that the UX is 'good enough' when even our grandparents can handle the backup process and security well enough.

Most newbies wallet user sometimes mixes up things between wallet keys, private key, and pin from the wallet phrase:
When you are a none wallet you need to know and be able to differentiate between each of them at whatever point, wallet phrase is the most powerful among them all since the wallet phrase is what holds access to the wallet.  But many newbies fail to understand that and they easily believe that with their pin their good to go when the Bitcoin wallet is not the regular centralized bank account where a third party can access the security of the account and even make changes to them.

I won't say it's a disadvantage since it's the user's responsibility to properly and safely back up his wallets. This is the most basic and simple thing you're supposed to know how to do if you want to be your own bank and enjoy the true financial freedom.

What about biometric authentication, can such technology be used to generate wallets' seeds? I'm not sure how or if this can be done but won't it solve this inconvenience? I suppose it will make creating and accessing wallets easier and without the need for backups.

In future, when I have a high amount of Bitcoins in it, then I would use more advanced wallet type but for now, I think a software wallet is enough for me to secure my bitcoins.

But, besides keeping your Bitcoins safe in a hardware or software wallet, you must keep your wallet's backup key and password at a secure place. The backup key is the most important part of your wallet, it can be used to restore your wallet when something goes wrong and if you lose your wallet. You must keep this backup key in a secure place like a safe so that no one can access it except you.

Why should anyone be responsible for the way you handled your wallet keys, don't you think this does not applies to bitcoin alone, just try to mishandled your money in other currencies and smell the taste of loosing them and the fact is that in most cases it is so difficult to regain any lost fund, introducing password or any means to secure your keys from the wallet being used is as if you're making a whole complications of it all because there's no guarantee that you can not forget or mishandled your password since you can take your keys with feeble hands, also savings the password with online storage services is more of a compilation of dangers to the whole thing, it's better not to constitute more problem when trying to solve one.

For all i know, the seed phrase has more to do with the recovery process of a wallet than it does for security. If anything, in terms of security this could actually be a weak point of a btc wallet as you can not restrict access to a wallet as this is more like a master key.

They say to human is to error, and this is true and a weakness to such circumstances of owning crypto.
And with all these possibilities against us, I think the best option is to share with our loved ones such secrets to avoid carrying such responsibilities alone.

This is one part about crypto that sucks, and the thing with crypto is its either you have the private key or not and if key isn't there... then access is entirely lost, which is why extra care is needed to keep keys well secured to return access to one's coins.
Sometimes I think crypto isn't for everyone as it requires a little extra to use it but with time we shall get it right.

If human forgets, it's human's fault and if wallets were to give such option, it would no longer be non-custodial wallet, basically against Bitcoin's ethios.

That's right! While it's true that hardware wallets are the most secure way to store your cryptocurrency, they aren't without their drawbacks. It's certainly possible to make a mistake when using a hardware wallet, and remember, there is no customer service to call if you forget an important step or misplace a critical piece of information.

With that in mind, it's clearly important that you understand how to use a hardware wallet properly. At the end of the day, your money is on the line and you owe it to yourself to do things the right way.

At first place you are liable for your security and should protect your seed phrase, which is why it's clearly stated that you should copy down and save your phrase in a secret place where only you could have access to it or can be able to view in time to come.
Anyone who lost access to his wallet doesn't have any control to his assets, but what I does most at times is to store my assets on cex by then you don't have anything to worry about seed phrase, if password is forgotten you can reset and get back your account.

I think this a good point because it would be a lot whole lot easier for hacker and scammer in the web to toil with  your wallets and eventually your BTC

In some cases, someone who uses a desktop hot wallet may even be more secure than someone who uses HW, because they will not relax and think that they are completely protected just because they use HW. The biggest enemy that stalks crypto users is clipboard malware and fake wallets that try to convince the user to enter their seed for some false security reasons.

The advantage provided by HW is that the seed is generated on the device itself and the user is forced to check every piece of information before confirming it. However, many people take it lightly because they think that they will not be the ones who will have clipboard malware or something bad will happen to them with the backup. Every crypto user should always be on guard, regardless of the storage method they use.

I don't know about this backup key. Is it an option they add in creating your wallet in a software wallet ..
I think I skipped or missed to add up a back up key to wallet

Then I suggest you create a new wallet, save the backup seed and simply move all your funds out of your old wallet and into the new one. This will prevent loss of funds and you can always restore your wallet later if you need to. It's a good practice to backup your wallet seed every time you make a new wallet.