Bitcoin Forum

I am still living with my siblings and ihave done some research about crypto wallets online, they said keeping your recovery words offline is the best way, now I plan to write down my recovery seed in my book, remember I said I live with my siblings, I can't guarantee myself that they won't get to where I write down the words, my brothers and sisters are still younger than me but I don't know if they knew anything about crypto and wallet, but I have an idea, if it's stupid do tell me.  

I plan to write down only ten words out of the twelve and cram the two missing words in my brain, maybe the 5th word and the last word,  is this a good way or you have a better way to go about this? Please tell me.

I assume it is bitcoin seed phrase? You can use passphrase to extend the word. But know that if you lost the passhrase you will lose your coins just like if you lost the seed phrase. Do not backup the seed phrase and the passphrase in the same location, but instead in different locations. Only one backup is not advisable, at least you should have two or three backups.

If you can afford it, but a cheap fireproof safe. Cram that piece of paper together with some important documents so the paper would look like a scrap of paper you accidentally bunched in with your documents.

Optional: passphrase

Sometimes life can present you with a surprise.  Not from your brothers, who could accidentally stumble upon your seed phrase. This can be a random injury that will damage your memory. I would not rely on the brain; just read stories about how people lose their memory; no one is safe from this.
If your brothers are still small, save your seed in those places where children cannot reach. In the end, use a metal plate, as often advised. But I think that in any case, in the house of each person, there may be special places away from prying eyes. The seed phrase engraved on metal would be useful if you own great capital and are very paranoid.

Don't ever rely on cramming your passphrase on your brain because you are not writing exams with it to reproduce it within few weeks of the exam, so total cramming of all the twelve passphrase or some of it is out of it, apart from loss of memory you may not have the capacity to reproduce it after a year even as a young person. Is unfortunate that you have younger siblings that you are not sure would keep your document safe if they see it but that is also what you have to do, to keep your security code offline. You can make a separate self higher than they can reach, moreover you don't keep your passphrase just in one spot. You need to duplicate it more than two places at least.

Your backup can be damaged and your brain can get physical or memorial damage/ loss anytime. You can control your physical backups but you can not control what will happen with your brain. Wake up, get a heat stroke, whatever unexpected accident can find you anytime.

Use brain for backups is bad idea.

Do it simple, you will mess things up by complicated procedure for your backups and many when you need to use them, you forgot about how you set them up.

Advice from Antonopoulos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8jlnZuV1i4

Do your siblings have a habit of going through your stuff? If yes, then you could buy a  small safe as those things ain't too expensive ( you can find basic models for ~$50). If no, then there must be a place in your room where you can safely store it.

Regarding your trying to remember few words from your seed phrase, I definitely wouldn't advise you to do that. It may seem easy at first but many things could happen to you that will make your forget them (concussions, stroke etc) and then you might end up getting screwed.

I'd remember just 1 word and hide the rest. It doesn't have to be the last word, it can be the first one too or the third one. You can even put a random word in the mix and mark it with something like a simple dot and you'll know that this one should be substituted with the one you remember. I doubt that your siblings will be smart enough to go through the list of seed words, trying every single one, until they get the right one, but if you forget your word, you could spend a day doing it and eventually recover the wallet.


The risk in this is that it will only increase the curiosity of OP's siblings. A piece of paper inside a book, especially a boring one like something related to programming, especially if your siblings aren't into this stuff may remain hidden but if you buy a safe it will only let them know you're holding something valuable. A small safe can be easily stolen because it's light and easy to move.

If safe wouldn't stop OP's siblings to go through his stuff, then he has much bigger problems than how to securely store seed phrase. I don't know about you, but I personally wouldn't live with someone who I think is capable of stealing the whole safe.

And if you can't afford it, just bolt the paper/book to the wall, or hide it under a heavy cabinet. Be creative :)

You don't only have a problem with the fact that one of your brothers and sisters could see your seed (although they probably won't know what they're looking at all), but also with the fact that that book, notebook or something won't end up in the trash, be damaged in some way (water, fire, chemicals, pets...)

If I were you, I would get some kind of small fire-proof box, put the seed inside and hide it somewhere where no one would think to look for it. As for the place to hide, I would recommend that you consider (if you are able to) hiding inside the wall or under the floor, but you have to be a master to cover up the traces of the works.

Don't complicate things and never trust your memory.
As mentioned above by others, a solution for you is to extend your seed phrase with a passphrase. Just note note that you should keep your seed phrase and passphrase in different locations.

Another solution is to use a multi-signature wallet. For example, you can create a 2 of 3 multi-signature wallet. In this way, you will have three seed phrases and you will need two of them for spending fund from your wallet. (Note that you must have all the master public keys, so you can generate the wallet in the future.)
Don't do this if you don't know what exactly you are doing.

If OP is worried about his siblings getting into his wallet after finding a bunch of words written on a piece of paper then I'm assuming the worst, which is that it's a bunch of mischievous scheming creatures lurking around the corner and waiting for him to leave the room to go through his stuff.

I have siblings and we're on a different level because the only thing I'd need to worry about with a paper wallet is that they would find it and throw it into the bin. They wouldn't know what a seed is and wouldn't even try to do anything with it. Maybe I'd find it remade into a paper plane or with a shopping list written on the other side.

If OP suspects they'd try to take over his bitcoin wallet, he already has some serious problems that a safe may or may not fix.  

So what is your issue with writing down your seed phrase under the same roof as your siblings? I suppose it isn't about them possibly tearing down that page or accidentally pouring a liquid on it or scribbling over it or anything like that. Is it about trust issues? If it is, you better device a way to keep your seed phrase in the most unlikely of places. Sometimes, hiding means keeping it in the open rather than keeping it in a secret place.

If you write it in a book, don't write it as a list. You might want to right one word per page. But make sure you also have backups. Use a passphrase also. While I also thought of keeping the passphrase to myself without writing it down, I think that could be riskier. So you better write it down as well but perhaps separately.

I won't trust my memory so I advice you not to take such risk either, just keep the complete recovery seed phrase in a safe place because even if you are living under same roof you may have your own private room or atleast a safe box where you keep all your stuffs and dump the paper there inside a container and when you know you can afford to have a safety locker then just buy it and keep the pin on yourself never share with anyone unless you trust them with your money.

Your siblings since they are younger than you will respect some boundaries if you set them, it will be a different scenario if you are the younger one, but not so in this situation. Also since they are younger, in most cases you can outsmart them. Even if you write down your seed phrase on a paper, do not be foolish to labeled it "seed phrase" or any name related to cryptocurrency or wallet. You can decide to extend the words by adding some dummy words too, or removing some words too.

That strategy of course is still not the safest because you cannot guarantee that other people will not get to it.

That's a good idea and I might adopt it also, the most important is not losing a copy of your passphrase if you lose then all is lost, if you are keeping a huge amount of Crypto you might want to rent a bank vault, like the one you see in John Wick movies checks your local bank on the cost of renting a bank vault, the cheapest I stumble annually is $20 so why not rent two bank vault in case something happens in one of the banks.

Do you think having anything in a safe is not enough to create attention that something valuable is in there? Like during thievery. If the safe is so small to the extent that it can not create attention, I can recommend it, but if not very small, not advisable in my opinion. This just reminded me that my brothers were even able to open my dad's metal safe many times when we were young is another thing to I can consider. I do not think I can go beyond using passhrase, or the create a multisig wallet. The last option I can go for, especially if the seed phrase is for both bitcoin and altcoins is to create the wallet on an airgapped device, get like three memory cards and encrypt the memory cards with a password, but which I do not not have to 100% rely on as I will check like monthly to know that the memory card are working good. I will prefer passphrase or multisig if it is bitcoin which can make me feel more secure and comfortable.

But will your memory last for the 5th and last words? A person's memory will decrease with age. I hope you have a full word backup somewhere else as a backup, don't write it down on a piece of paper as it is very vulnerable to corruption. Offline Storage will indeed be safe from hacking, but not safe from damage and loss. There are many ways you can store passphrases properly and securely. An example is using a stainless steel plate which is stronger and more durable.

You can try these but I won't

Bitcoiners with Alzheime4's. How do you wok it out? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5439600.msg61751848#msg61751848)
Big-brain self-custody solutions? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5441762.msg61838696#msg61838696)

Well it depends on the risk you feel you face having your seed phrase in the same house as your siblings (and you haven't really specified), if the risk is that of your siblings stealing your seed phrase and by extension, your funds, thus there is really nothing you can do than to move out of the house and leave alone before using Bitcoin and writing down your seed phrase, because if you are living with someone who you think can steal your seed phrase, then you are in danger of not only losing your Bitcoins, but quite a lot of valuable things you own.

Having said that, if the risk is of them accidentally damaging your seed phrase, then there are ways to avoid that, you can have it kept in places you keep private stuffs where only you can access, there are many other suggestions that have been provided above too, if this is the risk you face, i think it is easy to solve, but if it is the aforementioned one, then you need to find a way to stay alone or with persons you trust.

Just don't let others clean up your room, like this man.
How do you safely keep your recovery phrase written on paper? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5407326.0)

If you have a wild imagination you can create an idea out of these replies and recommendations.

Some of the ideas I had read so far was:

• Making a treasure map on where they put their seed phrase combining with a puzzle on the safe box before they get to open.
  
• Put everything in a thumb drive that you always carry on with you whether disguised as a wrist watch or a bracelet or something.
  
• Create a custom designed necklace that has a secret locket where you can hide your seed phrase on a paper.
  

While some of them just don't want to put some effort to hide it they just rely on the internet to remember their keys as what the above have been suggested.

Offline is the safest approach to keep your keys safe, I recommended carving all the phrases on a stainless steel that you can find, it doesn't have to be a round shape steel like a plate, it can be that of a box shape, carve the phrases on it and find a safe location to hide the stainless steel,  this is way safer than trying to cram some words off-head, what happens if you lose your memory or some kind of an accident happened.

That's also what I said before. Just cramming on memory skills would be very risky. Humans will have a period where they will forget something important, as OP did. If that happened without any backup then there would be nothing to do. Using a stainless steel plate is a good idea and will be safer for offline storage.
But while everyone was explaining various good methods and suggestions, the OP never appeared again. He just creates a thread and then it disappears.

I would still not rely on the establishment of boundaries and it would be better to secure it in another way. The safest thing would be if the brothers and sisters never know or see your seed-phrase. Of course, until the moment when you are ready to share this information with them (if it happens) and when they are ready for it.

It is best to store in a place where they will not get (outsiders included). You will have to think a little about the choice of place and method of storage. Look around at home and try to come up with your own. It can be the use of the design features of your home, interior items and something else. And of course, you should not rely on easily destructible storage media like paper.

The thing is that everyone pocket is not the same while $50 might look not expensive, to another it could be an expensive sum. So in the case where the $50 for a  safe seems to be expensive then you can boldly write your seed phrase down in a plain sheet and have it placed  where you keep your important documents like your certificates and major project works, as your siblings won't wanna tamper with your certificates knowing the usefulness of them, this thereby also keeps your seed phrase safe from them too.
Mind you, my advise is only a cost effective one, in case you can't afford a safe.