Bitcoin Forum

What mistakes did you make, and what advice do you have for others to be careful?

What are the best and worst ways of storing a seed in your opinion?

I have never lost my coins or my seed phrase.

My advice: never trust your seed phrase with any kind of centralization e.g. safe deposit box, cloud storage, microsoft word, compressed file etc.

Best way: open a multi-sig wallet 2 of 3, hide each signatures in different place, use steel plate in order to resist against corrosion, burn etc.

Worst way: ask someone to open a wallet for you or publicize your own seed phrase to everyone.

I made a mistake in the past by not considering the importance of storing my seed phrase securely and making multiple copies of it. I saved my seed phrase in a notepad on my personal computer. Unfortunately, my computer suddenly encountered a blue screen error. As I didn't have any backup copies, I wasn't able to recover my seed phrase, and consequently lost access to my Bitcoin.

My advice is to secure your seed phrase in a safe and secure location. Create multiple copies of the phrase and ensure that only you have access to it. Do not store it on your computer or any online platform such as Gmail. There are many better options available to store your seed phrase and it is important to consider them to protect your assets. Always think ahead and take necessary precautions to keep your seed phrase safe.

I never had a physical backup of my seeds for my hot wallet Electrum storage which is indeed a mistake but I did it due to my laziness so I lost access to the wallet when the device was corrupted but luckily there is not funds left in that wallet it happened so from that on I always wanted to have at least one physical back of seeds (write down on paper) even if its a wallet intended for temporary use.

How much BTC was lost ? didn't you try recover your PC storage?

I think, everybody has his own way of storing their phrase seeds to ensure their seeds phrase is protected and safe because if you fail to save your seeds phrase in a good place, your coins can be at risk if anybody in your family know where the seeds phrase is in the house. The best way to store your seeds phrase is to write them down and save them in a place that you are the only one that have access to such place  in case anything happen to your system or phone, your coins in your wallet will not be harm since you still have the seeds phrase to restore them back and continue having access to them. The worst way to store seeds phrase is to save them in your phone or laptop and the day you misplace your phone or laptop, there is no way you can gain access to your coins again.

Haven't personally lost any of my backups as well. But after being in the cryptocurrency space for 8+ years, the most common are:

• Lost the seed because they wrote it down, then forgot where they stored it.
• Got the backup leaked because they stored the backup on their email/txtfile/spreadsheet/chatlogs/etc and their device got hacked(hence the leak)

I didn’t lose any bitcoin seeds or coins or wallets but I did for many altcoins. Basically coins like Doge or small amounts of ETH back in the day I would just delete the wallet because it had so little in the wallet it wasn’t worth moving.

This was went dogecoin was like fractions of a penny and when ETH was in the single digits. So instead of sweeping those addresses I just erased the wallet when I was done with it, coins lost forever pretty much.

Also I used to send in whole numbers instead of exact figures. If I had 1.04 ETH or so, I would just send 1 ETH because the rest wasn’t worth typing out.

I created several Bitcoin paper wallets for friends and family members and then deposited a small amount of Bitcoin to it for their birthdays.

My mistake was not to make backup copies of this for them, because 3 of them lost it and I was unable to recover those coins. (It was when the price was around $1000 per coin)

Now I print several copies and I laminate it.

I have never personally lost my phrase seed what I do is I wrote down my seed phrase on a piece of paper and hid it somewhere only I know where I did not make any copies nor have given anyone a hint of where I hid the paper I suggest you do not keep it online because it is very vulnerable from hacks and system failure

So far over the years of my crypto journey, I didn't experience that I lost my seed phrase or forgot about it, maybe because I have my own way of securing it and accessing it. Honestly, in my first years or early days of my crypto journey, I only typed my seed phrase in a notepad on my computer and let it sit there, but luckily I didn't encounter someone who hacked my computer and accessed my passwords and seed phrase. But maybe because I have knowledge when it comes to technology and the internet, I know what to avoid and what to do to secure my properties. Remember, if you are storing your seed phrase on the internet, like Google Drive or cloud storage, then stop it immediately because hackers could easily access it. But if you are storing your seed phrase on your device only or on a computer, remember to encrypt your files containing seed phrases and don't access malicious websites because there are places where you can get malware that could access your device and steal what it can.

I have never made a mistake or lost my seed phrase since entering the market until now. There are many ways to store seed phrases such as writing them in notebooks, engraving them on small steel plates…you can use whatever method you feel is safest for you. As long as you always store them offline, never store your seed phrases on an online platform. Another thing is to always have 2 to 3 backups and store them in various safe locations so that in case one of them is lost, we still have access to our bitcoins.

For me, I write my seed phrase in a notebook and have 2 more copies stored in different places and of course they are all safe.

I haven't lost my seed phrase before,  but I am very much aware of the danger that comes with careless storage of seed phrase and one the ways that one can have issues with seed phrase storage is by not making a hard copy and storing it offline and in different places.


Also storing your seed phrase online which is at risk of getting hacked into by thieves, we have always been warned against making such mistakes, off storing them online such as in our email draft and the rest of the other online storage, this is why, it is very important to have a well-informed mindset before you even set out to open a wallet.

So far, I haven't made a mistake in losing the seed or private key of Bitcoin. Does this include the wasted Bitcoin from participating in doublers and HYIP sites before? That would probably be more embarrassing to think about now.

The best way to secure Bitcoin, especially if it has a significant value, is to have a hardware wallet. Never store your seed online. What I do is I simply write down all my seeds in a notebook that only I know about.

I have not lost my seed phrase before. The seed phrase is the money because it is what I need to spend my coins, so I can not lose it or it would be very difficult for me to lose.


Storing seed phrase on phone is not good because your phone can be compromised with malware
Storing it on Google cloud, iCloud and other online cloud is not good. It can be hacked. There are real life examples.
Storing your seed online generally is bad
Storing your seed phrase where people can see it is not good

Store your seed phrase offline
Store it on paper, laminated paper, steel or titanium sheet. Do not use aluminum.
Have like two or three copies.
You can use passphrase with it but store separately in different locations. If you lose either your seed phrase or passphrase, you will lose your coins.
Think about natural disaster and if it happens, how you will not lose your seed phrase

When I saw the various natural disasters that happened last year, I realised the importance of storing seed phrases in waterproof and fireproof materials. Another important condition is to save the seed phrase in locations that are far from each other. The earthquake in Turkey, Syria and Morroco affected large cities, while the Libyan flood destroyed the coastal city of Derna. It might be good to store your seed phrase in different locations if possible different cities because of large-scale natural disasters.     

A notebook might not be appropriate especially if the wallet holds large funds because it can be easily destroyed. Waterproof and fireproof materials will be a better option in case of emergencies.

I have never lost access to my recovery seed before, I always write them down in a book and no single natural disasters have made me lose them, I have lost my bitcoin before but that's me importing the recovery seed into a bad/fake Bitcoin wallet and I got drained.

Writing down your recovery seed is a safe method if you can keep the book safe, but I recommend multiple recovery backup, just in case, you only have to make sure it's back up offline, you can write it down in two separate locations and keep your mouth shut about it.

Avoid taking screenshot of your recovery seed, do not store them in any online cloud storage, if possible you should get a hardware wallet, they are always safer than software wallet, make sure the bitcoin wallet you are using is fully open-source like Electrum.

I am not just that careless person unless I do not have an interest in a thing. But I must say that I'd lost access to my wallets, not even once, but the good thing is that I do not have money in any of them, which could also be responsible for the careless handling. The first one I lost access to was the one I forgot my password and also lost the seedphrase. That was around 2014, I never took it seriously. But recently, I made a terrible mistake, still, I do not have money in my wallet, if not, it would have been disastrous. I got to know of an issue when I wanted to move money to the wallet.

As a smart person, I first uninstalled the app and reinstalled it to be sure of the seed phrases, it was then I discovered that I copied the wrong seed phrases. I later went back to the registration page of the app to find what was wrong, and that was how I discovered that the pattern was not as usual as I thought. The style was confusing, so I copied the right words but in the wrong arrangement. Thank God I've never sent money into it.

As for the best ways to keep the seed phrase, I don't think there is a better way than to write it down manually and also duplicate it. But ensure that you keep them in separate places. I also like to code one word out of the words there to make it more secure in case an uninvited eye sees it. However, I think the worst way to keep it is to save it on your gadgets.

The only ones I've ever had had my computer crash and couldn't recover the data, but luckily those were only addresses that no longer had bitcoins. Participating in this forum has helped me learn a lot of ways to protect personal assets. I have also heard about some storage services but the way I learned is to keep it in a place where only the original copies are kept you can only open.

Like many cases that I have seen, they said they wrote down the seed phrase on paper, got a tattoo,... and in the end they still got it stolen or couldn't remember where the things were kept. :)

Probably all the best ways to store seed phrases have already been described, starting with laminated paper with a recording of the seed phrase, a flash drive, and ending with a capsule from a Ledger with a fairly decent price.
But I want to tell one story where more than 1000 bitcoins were received as a bribe, and the owner of these bitcoins was, of course, caught because he was engaged in activities that violated the law, but the fact that he stored his seed phrase on his computer shows how foolish storage locations can be, especially for such a large amount.

https://www.cryptopolitan.com/russian-accused-of-taking-bribes-in-bitcoin/

One of the things I'll never forget about my journey to crypto, was when there was a system issue and all my seed phrases were saved there on the computer. I was a newbie to crypto and I was making money because of signature campaigns and white paper translations. My computer was suddenly reformatted and all the files were lost. I was so complacent that time, that I had to hide all the seed phrases of my accounts in 1 device only, I didn't have any back up copy and that time I didn't have hard wallet so what happened was that everything I worked on was gone.

I've lost quite a few; it's still unknown if any of them had any significant balance, but you get my point. I used to write them in text documents and scatter them on my computer. The majority were lost due to the poor organizational skills of that time. Don't use text documents, and if you write them on paper, don't lose them. I also recall writing on pieces of paper, which were never to be found. However, I did manage to recover a few of them, some of which were empty, and another one had a few mBTC in it. I don't know if this counts as well, but I can confidently say that I've also lost a few wallets, which I remember had some kind of balance on online wallets and services, most of which either shut down or were unable to recover my accounts.

Now that we're talking, I still haven't fully learned my lesson because I'm yet to secure my seed as safe as I'd want it to be. At least, I'm no longer using online wallets.

I lost my seed phrase because I just kind of forgotten that I've got a wallet and that I need to take care of it and the lesson that I want to impart on you about this is that you should have a purpose when it comes to why you're creating that wallet so you've a reason to keep it and at the same time make yourself comfortable about why you're keeping that wallet and the seed phrase, don't want to end up like me being a loser when it comes to wallets and also if you can and you've got a lot of wallets for different purposes because you're on different sites that require you different wallets, it's a good idea to tabulate them, get some spreadsheet going on with the wallets with their purposes, the seed phrase and where they're being used and connected.

I never made any mistakes on losing even a single key for my wallets because I keep them offline, I wrote it on a piece of paper then hid it in a safe place.

Storing your seed online and on any devices you are using is risky. Though storing my key phrase in a piece of paper is risky as well beacause it can be damaged by fire and water or moist but that is what I used from 2017 up until now even though we are hit by super typhoons it's still safe with ziplock and a plastic container.

I haven't lost my seed phrase. And I have backups for my backups incase of any eventualities. I have heard of someone who hid his seed phrase. After some time, he had an accident that cause head trauma. IHe went into a coma for sometime. When he woke, he was suffering from amnesia. The accident affected his devices where he had his wallets. Because of his amnesia, he couldn't remember where he kept his seed phrase.

In the case above, one of the best ways of securing your seed phrase is to tell at least one trusted person of its location because life may come at you very fast. Not having a trusted person tell about the location of your seedphrase in my estimation is one of the worsts ways or mistakes someone make.

Probably make backups.
 
There is no best way to store seed phrases. Which method is suitable should be selected individually. A phrase written on a piece of metal should be one of the reliable storage methods.

Worst way? This is probably plain paper or storing seed phrases on a text file on your PC.


For sure, because you haven’t been in the cryptoindustry for very long. :)

This is why I always support the idea that we need to share the seed phrase secret with those close to us . Just in case we encounter an unexpected problem where even we cannot remember our bitcoins like the example you mentioned . But I find it very strange that on this forum there are some people who are so conservative that they have no one to trust, not even their parents . Not only do they not trust anyone, but they also seem to value bitcoin more than the relatives who raised them, their parents . I wonder how people who are doubting their parents will feel if their children also value bitcoin or something more than their lives in the future ?

4 years, indeed not very long, but it still quite long.

How it can be wrong? that's relate to someone else life decision, there's no good or bad.

If someone think it's better to lost the coins to make it scarce than pass it to other people, you can't argue with his decision.

You can be grateful if your parents understand with you, what if they didn't care with you and publicize if you're a Bitcoin holder to their friends? many parents want to get validation and to make them proud.

I never lost my seed phrase before and I think this forum here is responsible for that because my time here has let me know how vital keeping your seed phrase is. Imagine having millions of dollars on your wallet and then you woke up one morning and you lost the device to which the wallet is located and you want to get access to that account, I could only imagine the frustration that one would face and I pray I never experienced such situation in my life.

The best way of storing safely your seed is write it on steel paper after that concrete it in a place where only you knows where it is. You must have a passphrase configurated on your hard wallet, it'll help you a lot if you hard wallet is stolen.

It is mainly early adopters of bitcoin that lost their seed phrase and maybe there was no seed then. It used to be a private key comprising of overly lengthy combination of words and numbers. There was no much awareness of how to secure ones bitcoin then. So, many of them relied on whatever means they thought is best to secure their bitcoin. It was during this period that the majority of bitcoin lost in history, either to scammers, Ponzi schemers or personal lost. People are wiser now and are able to secure their bitcoin.

One of the worse ways could be memorising your seed phrase while one of the best is saving offline in more than one location.

I don't have to disbelief this story. But my question is how much bitcoin was in the computer that you could not fix the screen to retrieve your seed phrase. Well, I consider this as one of the thousands made of stories to complete post quota

I lost access to my Ether wallet for a long now and have tried several times to gain access to it but no way because I didn't copy my private keys correctly and the reason Is that I failed to verify the phrases after that I wrote it down, so this is a possible mistake anyone can do and boom your funds are gone forever, and you would no longer have access to your Bitcoin again, Therefore while writing your keys down somewhere and for some people that would want to write theirs down, ensure you verify the keys back to back, that is ensuring you can gain access/login to your wallet with what you have written down.

I made a mistake in the past, by losing several of my wallet phrases, where at that time I was still relatively new to crypto, and was still confused about the many types of wallets, if I'm not mistaken, the wallet I lost was an EOS wallet, TONwallet, this mistake was because I cleaned it. The computer without saving data on the drive, my fashdisk
  From that incident, I was more careful in storing my seeds in 3 places that I thought were quite safe, and I used a hard wallet from SFP to store my assets without publishing my wallet.

Most of the people here who posted on your thread didn't lose their seed. It's because they already knew what they would do to keep their seeds safe.
Same for me. I didn't lose any of my seed phrases. I created many accounts in different wallets (Metamask, Electrum, Keplr, Trust Wallet, Daedalus, etc.), and I never, ever lost any of my seed phrases.

I guess it's because I always keep it safe, and when I say safe, it's stored in a place where there's not only 1 lock on it but 3 locks. The only problem with that I guess is our house will catch on fire, I will be having a hard time pulling out the seed phrases but I think my seed phrases are safe (at least for me). Having another copy of that seed phrase would be helpful as well.

I never made such a mistake like this and I can't imagine losing my seed phrase.

Best advice would be, make a lot of back ups of your private keys, I recommend writing it down on a piece of paper and hide it somewhere safe where you're the only one who knows it (make sure of that). You could also store it in a data storage like a hard drive but make sure again that that drive is for your seed phrase only. Don't use it regularly to avoid being corrupted or getting a virus.

I haven't been unlucky enough for that misfortune yet, but I've heard the horror stories.  Folks tend to make a couple big mistakes.  For one thing, it's way too easy to tuck that piece of paper away somewhere safe and then just straight up forget where you put it.  Outta sight, outta mind ya know? Especially if you dont use that wallet too often.  Such a silly thing to do and  that's why they say to make a bunch copies to store other places - give one to your family member, maybe get a safe deposit box, or even engrave it on metal if you're super paranoid. 

Here's another dumb mistake: saving your seed phrase on a computer or your phone or something.  I know it seems convenient and all, but thats asking for trouble if you get hacked.  Then some thief could swoop in and yoink all your funds just like that! No bueno.  Gotta go old school with paper copies all over the place.

It was just private ky during that time, seed wasn't introduced yet when I lost my access to one of my old BTC wallets.

I wrote the private key in a text file on my laptop. I kept the laptop under my table for a longtime. I barely couldn't remember which folder I hid that text file anymore. Too paranoid that someone would access it so I hid the file somewhere that I myself can't remember. And worse the password as well. It's not huge anyway.

I have some Bitcoin in my blockchain wallet which were not huge back in 2016 but now it's worth a lot and I have forgotten my password and can't remember though I have tried every possible password.

I had saved the seed phrase in my laptops notepad and forgot to remove it from charging overnight and since it was in sofa the laptop along with a later of sofa was burnt and i couldn't recover the phrase till date.

I never lost a seed phrase before but I however can't import my Bitcoin into a new wallet, I had Bitcoin in a coinomi wallet, when I downloaded another coinomi wallet, and i tried to import by putting the seed phrase, the wallet keeps telling me that I missed a spelling. I'm sure that I had the right words in the correct order, and I've even tried using different similar word combinations still no success, the Bitcoin is still there but I can't access the wallet till date. I've nareted my experience in couple of related topics as this one, asking if any members has had this experience with coinomi wallet, because I'm sure that I copied the correct seed phrase when I opened the original wallet. I've reached their customer support on telegram, but the response wasn't helpful. That's my bitter experience.

Mostly because the seeds aren't stored properly is the reason why many people lost their seed or keys.
I have also lost my wallet seeds, more than one wallet all because I was not careful enough to keep them safe. But good thing was the wallets don't have much funds but they are old wallets I would have wanted to keep.
Storing seed phrase looks easy but any mistake can be costly. The moment you forget where the seeds are kept that is the end to having access to wallet.

Yes, it would be better to write on paper and we keep it in a place that other people can't know and we can easily remember it and if we keep it well I'm sure we won't lose the private key, because if we don't keep it well of course It will be very frustrating when you have a balance in your wallet and no longer have access to it, so we have to really take care of it so we don't experience things like losing our private keys.

I haven't and I won't because right from my start in crypto, I had the belief that seed phrase are meant to be kept in a secure place and that reason alone makes me always cautious of where to keep it to avoid losing it because losing it denies me access to my crypto holdings.

All the best and worst places to keep seed phrase have been mentioned but to add to that, never disclose to anyone the amount of crypto assets you have in your portfolio because times are evil, and nobody is to be trusted again

It is intrinsic to your post, because I must write my experiences of the good, bad or my techniques for someone who is just starting out in the forum, it is to give ideas to the hunter...

Well, a little sarcasm there in that previous paragraph, but it is reality, there are thousands of ideas explained, there are various guides written in this forum.

So, it may be that you are looking for one that is not known.   ;)

#TBT

I did have lost some PK or phrase but not on my Bitcoin wallet but rather into some altcoins that i do have in the past on which into those ICO days on where it did really leave out
that kind of huge regret considering that i have seen some of my coins did make out some pump but since i had forgotten those wallet PK's then i do end up on losing those valuable
coins which i didnt even expect for it to make those huge pumps. This is why it would really be that best that you should really be mindful about on saving up everything even
not on your Bitcoin PK or SP but also in other wallets as well or which you do seem that does have that potential.

Once you do lost it all then there's no turning back and you would really be that basically be losing all of those funds that you do have into that wallet.
Never make out such negligence on which it would really be causing for you to miss up those golden opportunity on making money due to high profits or increase.

The seed that I lost was just because I forgot about it, I lost the seed basically I dont know where I put the files and I just dont know what the file name is, I mean there are a lot of computers that i used already so i dont know if its there or what I just didn't put too much attention to it since I just dont know back in the years if Bitcoin is going to be a big deal or the wallet is important.

There are also some cases where I lose Bitcoin many times because of custodial exchanger and wallet, there are times when my Bitcoin got locked up on a local wallet that I'm using they just freeze my wallet because I have some issues on my KYC I guess, and at the same time they where having some issues since they think that my money came from illegal transactions since it was from some other address something like that.

For sure putting your Bitcoin in a custodial wallet is probably one of my biggest mistakes since I lose a fair amount of money on that, as well as not putting too much attention on how I manage my wallet and password.

In my opinion, the best way is just to have a file on your seed put it on your drive then have a backup on a flash drive, then have another backup on something like a notebook so that you have a hard copy of that as well in case.

Well to be honest there is no "best way" to store a seed. Your seed phrase will never be 100% safe. You can only lessen the probability of losing your coins in one way or another. It depends on how committed you are to your own security. Or you can outsource that responsibility but you would end up sacrificing your privacy and coin custody. I would not recommend doing that.

For me, the worst way to store a seed is on commonly used devices which have/had access to the internet. your phone, on a USB, on a laptop or desktop computer. Especially storing it online, like in a cloud. or even offline, on some text document. Equally dangerous ways to store your seed phrase. :-\

I have not lost any seeds because I am very careful.

I have not lose any seed phrase till now and I am grateful to Allah for that, I wish not to be in any condition like this. But if I have to guess the reasons that would cause people to lose seed phrases, then there are many that come to my mind. For example, one of my local community members did not save the seed phrase of a wallet (that was meta mask so it was basically not about BTC) he thought he would save it later but due to the auto-update feature of Firefox I think the extension got reset and now he has no key anymore to restore it. But he got lucky somehow. He has made a thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5445831.msg61953763#msg61953763) if you want to read the whole story.

He restored that wallet by using the hierarchal mechanism of metamask, which was a lucky thing for him. Talking about the worst way, it would be using some service from a platform ensuring you 100% recovery, because most of these platforms are fake and they in the end will ask you for a recovery phrase and sometimes, these platforms succeed in recovering the wallet but don't give you the access to it until you give them some big reward because they force you to give them.

Personally, I never lost my Bitcoin wallet seed phrase, but I heard a couple of stories. When Bitcoin was very cheap, a few people were too lazy to secure their seed phrase, and that's how they lost it. But lately, people are very careful to secure their wallets when the price of bitcoin is too high. I don't think people are lazy now to store their seed in a secure place, especially those who have a basic idea about Bitcoin. I always advise you to use a hardware wallet to secure your funds. And it should be an open-source wallet. Secure your seed phrase in multiple safe places. So there are no chances to lose your all seed phrase at all.

I wrote it on paper in a handwriting that only I understand, like a code, and stored it well hidden in my house.

Some time ago I created a topic on the Brazil local board about hiding places, take a look there:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5476806.0


These hiding places were what I liked most:

https://static.tudointeressante.com.br/uploads/2017/12/lugares-para-esconder-coisas-1.jpg

I've seen others claim they lost their seed phrase, so I took my seed phrase safety seriously because losing it when I have money won't be good at all, and I know how it feels to lose money. And is that genuinely bought? Bitcoin would have accumulated a large amount of it. And now that bitcoin has gained significant value, people will be disappointed since it will be as if they have lost their chance to make more money in life for those who are already wealthy. And people are now looking for more measures to keep there wallet safe and I don't blame them at all it involves money. So everyone have to take this advise seriously. And everyone has become wiser and will value their bitcoin at all cost. And the suggestion given show that their are even easier ways to now keep your assets safe.

This mistake I have ever made about my seed phrase is saving the image of the seed phrase and my private key in my email address.

I will never advise anyone to do something such because it is straightforward to hack and you will easily lose your funds since if someone gets access to your email either by using your phone that contains the mail logged in or by compromising the mail they can easily empty your wallet; all these are very easy to do, that is why I see several threads about the effect of using email to save your private key or seed phrase, I changed to another method of saving which is by written down in a book that I can never forget or left so as to remember whenever I am in need of them.

I've never had the experience of losing or forgetting a seed phrase, but I've seen other communities here who lost their seed phrase because they couldn't remember where they saved it. The other is because the PC desktop or laptop was hacked and they didn't save it on any USB flash drives.

Others are also careless; they don't think that the seed phrase is like a car key without which the car won't start. There must be a duplicate, so the same goes for the seed phrase; there must always be a backup.

In general, for long-time Internet users, losing passwords, and especially information that has financial content, would be extremely stupid in our time. Those who previously used digital wallets, before Bitcoin, had to save passwords or other keys. For those who constantly communicate on forums, their accounts are probably precious, so surely everyone knows the value of saving their information outside the devices they use. Probably everyone has heard the words “virus”, “stealer” and even “hacker”.
From the very first steps, beginners are encouraged to save their seed phrase when creating a wallet, and those who do not listen to recommendations but are too confident will lose and repeat the lessons that the Internet teaches them.

I have never experienced losing a Cryptocurrency wallet seed or phrase, I hope that doesn't happen either. Maybe this has become my habit, I always write every password, seed, phrase from email, crypto wallet, Trezor, ledger, even exchange and Google authentication manually in a special book and store it in a cupboard and back it up in RAR form on a flash disk. Sometimes I also save some in my special email address. And I am very grateful that after several years I will access it and it is still running smoothly and without any problems. Actually, there are many ways to store seeds/passwords/phrases and it depends on us which way is comfortable and safe for us to store them. I suggest not backing up in just one form, make several alternative backups so that if something undesirable happens we still have other backups.

Sad to see stories how people lost their seed phrases. I hope I will never face this problem, I'm simply having it on a two copies of paper in a different places.

That's a nice thread because it gives an idea of how losing a seed usually happens, and also shows that, thankfully, the majority of people here have never lost their seeds.
I can say that I haven't lost any BTC, so I haven't lost access to my money, but I think I have lost my seed once or twice because of forgetting where to find it. But I was using a wallet with a password, so I could still access my funds, and then just create a new wallet and write everything down this time. Maybe I just got lucky, but I generally consider myself a fairly responsible and careful person.

Most likely those that have joined the forum won't be experiencing what has happened to the old investors that have shared their stories.

It's giving the reminder on how we should keep our seeds very well and don't be confident with remembering them and only have one set of copy. It's important to always have a back up.

And that's why you'd see many people here telling that it has never happened to them because of how people have shared their stories before not just on this thread.

Writing them down in a book works wonders, but like a trusty sidekick, it's good to have a backup. Splitting the phrase across multiple locations, offline and hidden like buried loot, is a genius move. Remember, secrecy is your shield against prying eyes and digital vultures.

Screenshots are a big no-no, clouds are even worse – think of them like leaky sieves for your crypto. Hardware wallets? You're preaching to the choir! They're like Fort Knox for your digital gold, way sturdier than any software wallet.

Ouch mate, that's sad to hear. But that should have taught you an expensive lesson. And I hope you are now doing the right thing. It would be great if you state the current practice you are doing now with your keys and cryptos. When I was a newbie in crypto, I also didn't back up my first wallet or the keys inside it, but luckily I didn't stumbled any problem up until the time I gained more experience and start creating my very own back up.

The only memorable fail that I made was when sending a crypto. It was XRP. And we know it requires a tag right? This is where I messed up. Not only once but a couple of times. Damn. But eventually, I mastered it.

I haven't lost mine, but I know a guy who did, but it was in the old days, probably 2013. The deal was, he mined bitcoin at work. He worked as a security guard and he'd bring his computer to work in 2012 when you'd mine using FPGAs. Those were a little stacked towers of mining chips that were a bit faster than GPUs but still slower than ASICs. He kept everything on a single hard drive with no backups, but bitcoin wasn't worth much. He was making some money every month, but it wasn't a lot. I won't tell you the exact numbers but it was less than $100 a month and he'd sell bitcoin every few month.

Then he got bored with it and kept some of the unsold coins on his computer and in 2013 someone broke in to his place and stole his whole computer. They cleaned out the place. Stole his TV, computer, console, basically everything that had value and was light enough to be carried out. It was right before bitcoin went above $100 in that big Spring rally and the thieves never knew what they were stealing because the money was still on that address a year later. They probably wiped the drive so that the new buyer wouldn't know who the stuff used to belong to. I bet some kids bought it and played games on it not knowing that it was stolen.

This wasn't a lot of bitcoin, less than 2BTC, but it would be worth at least $60k today.

Why he did not have a backup? Because that was dust that he mined to have money for beer and smokes. 1 bitcoin was worth $10, so he wouldn't care if he lost $15 or something like that. Today you can get that much money if you get someone to register on a bitcoin exchange with your referral.

How to best protect yourself? Get at least 1 backup and hold it in a different place. If you have a garden, buy a watertight capsule, engrave the seed on a piece of metal or plastic and bury it somewhere where it will be easy to find for you, like right next to a tree. If all else fails, even when your house burns down you'll always have that backup that will never get destroyed

Never experienced losing it and wouldn't want to. When I first started in this industry, I know how to value money. I know what risk is present with projects and coins. Given all these, losing your Seed phrase is being negligent. If you value something, you would be caring too much for it and negligence is what you will want to avoid . Even with my physical wallet, I always check it before leaving a plaace whenever I am outside simply because I cannot afford losing any amount so what more with my seedphrase wherein all of my holdings are present? Again, if it is important then put value into it. And if you happened to made mistake before, be sure to learn from it and avoid doing the same thing. There are ways to keep it secured. There are instances such information is being stolen and would you allow it that your own careless actions would cost you that much? Without anyone forcing to get it from you?

This is just a realistic point of view of giving importance to what is important.
I tend to use mnemonics and first letters are what is written on my notes. Then the whole words would be mispelled to other words and to other pages of my booklet, secured in vault. It should be something that the drunk version of you at least won't know.

I have only had an experience having lost my seed phrases when I got a new phone and needed to restore my trust wallet. I was rather fortunate not to have stored a lot of BTC in it.
Then I didn't know the importance of keeping the seed safe, until I lost the access to the account.

Since then, whenever I am using a new wallet, even if am trying it out, I write it down, I save it on my notepad and I go back after some time to check if I can still access the wallet with the seed phrases I have carefully kept safe.

To me the best and cheapest way to store your seed is to write it down on paper and place it in your wardrobe. AFAIK all digital storage are vulnerable to hacks. The irony is that most of us don't take security of seeds and wallets seriously unless they are exposed to some sort of hacks in which the bear losses. 
Hardware wallet is no doubt a good option for people who can afford. In crypto, security of your asset lies in security of your wallet and that in turn depend on how safe your seed is.

I can't remember if I have ever lost my seed phrase or lost my private keys but I believe the best way to save your keys and seed phrase is to back it up where only you can have access to it. Please do not save the seed phrase and keys to your mobile devices such as laptop and phone that you always carry around to everywhere you are going since you can easily lost it. For example when your phone got stolen from you automatically you lost your key and seed phrase this applicable with your laptop as well so avoid moving with them.

I think most of the mistakes made by many Bitcoin holders who lose their wallets is not storing their seeds in a safe place and some don't back up their wallets. This is usually done by many early adopters of Bitcoin.
The reason I say this is because I lost Solana to such naive habits when they started SOL ICO. At that time, I earned about 200 SOL via airdrop, but never backed up my wallet.

My very first wallet with around 0.02 BTC in it was lost when I damaged my phone and the only backup I had was in a pen drive that was lost in a house clean up. I could potentially recover it if I have it stored somewhere but unfortunately there's just no way to recover from it. It wasn't much back in 2015 but that's already a couple hundred or thousand dollars now, and could be added to my stash for long term storage.

Pro tip: always have multiple back ups and don't end up like me.

I haven't lost any seed phrases. Download iancoleman.io/bip39 generate 3 words and add your favorite password.
I keep multiple copies of the webpage for offline use.

Basically every beginner seems to make one or two costly mistakes in their early days, the most of which results in financial loss. I also made a really careless mistake while storing my private key when I started out, i started using Trust Wallet so while backing up my seed phrase to my wallet i saw a warning message that warns against taking screenshots of the seed phrase and that screenshot cannot be taken so instead of writing down my seeds and saving them in a secure location i felt too lazy to go get a pen and paper to write it down, then i asked my friend to take pictures of the seed phrase using his phone and that i will get it later from him to safely save it. That was how i forgot about the seed phrase, after some time i tried to reach my friend but i couldn’t, den a few days later he reached out and said he lost his phone.

Despite this, I didn't remember about the seed phrase until a few weeks later when I had to access my wallet due to a phone issue that required a factory reset. At that point, I realised my friend had taken screenshots of the phrase and had misplaced his phone. I was so upset that I believed there must be a way to avoid it, but there was none, and that's how I lost all of my money. Everything is valuable to you as a beginner, therefore I hoped I could turn back time and fix my error.

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My advice to beginners and everyone out there is to take their private keys and seed phrases seriously, they should never joke with handling it and always secure it in a safe place. The seed phrase is more important than your asset itself because without it there is no way of accessing your assets.

To prevent damage from exposure, we should always write our seed phrase on a metal surface rather than paper. We should also produce duplicates of the phrase and store them in different locations. Avoid saving it in a location that is easy for others to access or too deep for you to reach.

Writing down on a metal plate and adding extra phrases to make it impossible for anyone to use and make duplicate copies and keep in multiple locations is the best strategy to save your seeds.
While writing down on paper—which is readily damaged when exposed to certain conditions and saving your seeds online such as in your email—are, in my opinion, the worst ways to save seeds, and these two approaches are the most popular ways people store their seeds.

Same with me, I have not lost any of my seed phrase or private keys because I have learned from people who have lost their phrase and private key, so I keep my on very secure so I don't fall victim. I have learned different ways to secure your private key on the Internet, and the forums are just for you to be careful and don't let anyone know your secrets Is it only your love once, You can notify your wife or children so they will know where your property is if you are no longer there. You can store your seed phrase or privacy key In a paper and hide it in your room or box and hope that no one can attempt to touch it.

People that save their private key in their smart phones put their money at danger because if you lose your phone or it is stolen, you will be unable to access your wallet again, unlike an exchange where you can reset your password and gain access. And exchanges are not a good location to put your coins because anything can happen and they might crash, causing you to lose everything. Therefore, the ideal place to save your coins is in a wallet that no one can access except you, which is why you must keep your security very carefully.

I think I lost 2-3 seed in my whole cryptocurrency career. One was caused by terrible browser extension type of wallet of altcoin which is sort of out of topic... Main 2 bitcoin wallet seed losses were caused by
1. hardware failure. Well I was using 10 year old laptop. It was secondary laptop so pretty safe to hold my seeds because I wasn't using it for online purposes at all. Its harddisk died. Probably fried.
2. This was caused by mismanagement by me. I lost paper I wrote numbers letters etc. Its all gone.

If it's about bitcoin in particular, I would say that ive never made a mistake with my wallet seed since I got into crypto in 2016, all the bitcoin wallets I've used since then are still intact till today, non have been hacked, and non have I forgotten it's seed, I have a booklet were I wrote all the seed phrases of all the bitcoin wallets I've used, and still using, from the past to present, and if at any time, I decide to go back any wallet, I just up the seed and restore that wallet.

Well, based on my experience so far, I would say that the best way is to write them down On a piece of paper, and a book or jotter you and you alone have access to, and then keep it some where safe, though, if you ask me, I did say that this method is not a perfect one, but it does not, it's been working for me since 2016.

And, I think the waste way to store your seed is to store them online.

As long as I have been on bitcoin forums and have never lost bitcoins to anyone from holding bitcoins I have never made the mistake of holding bitcoins. But my advice for every bitcoin holder is to keep your bitcoin wallet seed phrase very safe.  Keep the wallet seed phrase to keep your bitcoins in a safe place so that no one can steal them somehow. But the best way to keep the seed phrase of the wallet containing bitcoin safe is to write it down in a notebook. I write down the seed phrase of the wallet that holds my bitcoins in a notebook and keep that notebook in a place where no one but me can see it.

I have never lost my private key before, but I have seen lots of people lose access to their private key before. Most of the people that I know who have lost their private key are the ones who once stored it on their mobile device, some of them lost their phones, and some of them lost their phones. The funniest part is that one of the people I know mistakenly deleted the private key where he stored it.
 
When storing a private key, it should be stored completely offline, where you know there is no internet connection, because if your private key is stored on the internet, hackers can easily have access to it. You can just carve your private key on iron steel and store it in multiple places where nobody will be able to see it.

I didnt lose my seed because I have my backup and make sure there's secure storage in it, seed is the key to your wallet so once you forget this you already lose your money, I am using a hot wallet of course still there's a seed but we know there's no safe in the internet so i tried to have at least a hardware wallet to have a safe and secure, base on my experience i always make multiple copies of it which is all I know to make sure there's no chance i lose if there's a natural occurrence might happen still I have my money again don't forget where you put it or else you will lose it forever.

There's one time that I'm so sleepy but need to fill up something to participate on a airdrop but unfortunately instead of putting my address in the sheet I accidentally put my private key and next to that someone stole my asset stored on that wallet and luckily I don't have big balances stored at that time so damage has not so big and I really learn a lot of lesson for that mistake I made.

For advice never do anything especially if its important if you are sleepy since everything goes bad once you are not fully aware on what you are doing.


Best way store it outside/offline to avoid getting penetrated or commit mistakes for handling it. Worst is to save it on apps or any online platform since risk is so high there.

One thing that people don't always learn from past mistake maybe sometimes they would want to experience it themselves before they apply safety to their wallets, when they understand security very well I think it would be hard for someone to say he lost or misplaced he sees phrase or private key. Security is the most important in cryptocurrency investment and holding whomever that knows what their keys hold to them they wouldn't be careless with their keys.

Your hiding place is in indeed a great place of hiding or keeping seed phrase. To be sincere I love it. There is no how on earth somebody would know about it. You know I try sudjesting something similar to this your pass phrase coding to another thing that is far from others understand the secret behind it. But I was told in my local board that inscribing or self moderating my pass phrase could be a great risk to me expecially when I forgot it. Because there is nothing to help me out. Except you still have the original seed kept in a secret place also incase of emergency.

Some time ago I had a case where I lost a certain amount of money because I didn't save the sids or private key. It was in a mobile app on my phone. Mobile apps can be very convenient and many of them require you to save your sids and private keys. But it's usually a matter of the user's own thoughtlessness. You tell yourself that you will do a back up tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, but you keep forgetting to do it. Sooner or later there comes a situation when you think you have saved your sid or private key, but you haven't. I too thought that my sid was saved and just deleted the app when I didn't need it. But it turned out that there were funds in that wallet that I lost access to irrevocably. Something like 1000 dollars. It wasn't fatal, but it was very unpleasant at the time.

But you just write them down in a notebook and have no other backups? The method of writing the seed phrase in a notebook is considered the most popular, but I think we need to have 1 or 2 backup copies instead of just 1 main copy. Notebooks and paper are both very perishable, have you ever thought about the fact that if they get burned or wet, you will lose access to your property? So, I think no matter what method we use to store our seed phrase, we should have at least 1 to 2 backup copies and store them in different places.

Not a seed, but a private key. This is purely because I don't know much about data security and privacy.
Using a Windows VPS to import private keys is the worst idea. It happened when I didn't know the best way to secure my wallet, I deliberately imported the private key that I used in the altcoin wallet application.

About a week after I turned off my VPS and deleted the instance, it turned out that all balance of my wallet had been completely drained. I can't confirm where the disaster came from, but my biggest suspicion is that I imported pk to VPS. Leaving private keys hanging around online, was the worst thing I've ever done.

I've got mine typed on a Notes app in a phone that I rarely use, it's been my go to way of storing seed phrase and other important information that I need to store in case I need it, it's efficient but the problem is the obsoletion of the device which I haven't yet found a way to solve efficiently, I haven't changed the device for about 6 years already but I feel like the thing that I need to do is manual transfer.

Thanks to God that I didn't experience loosing Bitcoin Seed ye. I've lost bitcoin and crypto other ways but. like trading or investing. which I think is equally painful LOL
But one advice as a Bitcoiner I can give to anyone is to keep your seed in 2, 3 place just in case if you loose one. then you can recover your seed using your seeed from second place.
Best Place way of storing a seed is write that down in a peace of paper and and keep that somewhere else. have a Diary for all your Bitcoin and Crypto wallet backup keeys and seeds.
and worst way oof storing a seed is to store it online, or in your pc. if you have it kept in your pc there are good chances that it migh get stolen by a malware.

- The best way is: write your seed on paper, encode or reverse a few characters in it. Then divide into 2 copies, 1 kept at home, 1 kept at the bank's storage service.
- The worst way is: saving your seeds online, any online form should be avoided, even saving it in the notes app on your phone is not recommended. Besides, do not share your wallet address widely.

I don't use it but I am curious about what you posted. By Notes app, do you mean a third-party app? Especially those who are not from trusted companies? Bro, I think this is more risky, you can't trust all these third-party apps to store your seed phrase. Those who still stored it better than you on their gadgets are still being advised to keep it manually which is offline and it is deemed to be the safest approach in this regard. If at all, use the means provided by your gadget directly, not as you did. You never can tell what could happen and I hope you are not a subject of monitoring, the people who you are using their app may be desperate and that might be one of the reasons why some are even building such apps. They could have their backdoors whether you are giving permission or not. I am not that tech-savvy guy but going by the little I've read in this regard, it shows that it is not the smartest thing to do. This is also the reason why I do not import my seed phase anywhere even if the wallet advises me to do so.

I haven't been on bitcoin forums for a long time but since I've been there I haven't been active enough to build a good position. But I'm working here with whatever experience I have with Bitcoin. But I haven't been able to hold bitcoins so far which is why I can't answer this question properly because if I could hold bitcoins then maybe I could say that I haven't lost bitcoins to anyone so far. But here as I am active and working I keep my wallet seed phrase very safe. I wrote down my wallet seed phrase in my notebook. Hope I don't get scammed because my notebook is kept very safe.

I ran into such a situation once and I wrote down the seed phase of my trust wallet in a diary. But when I set off on a long journey with that diary, I fell into the hands of robbers. A group of robbers stole my diary along with my luggage, mobile phone and wallet. Despite my best efforts, I could not keep the diary safe from the bandits. So that was the first experience in my life and I have never forgotten that experience till now.

You made two mistakes at the same time.

First, you did only one back up in your diary. It is bad because back up must be done in some forms, you can do it in a diary but must have other back ups. When you lose your diary, you can have other back ups to use.

Second, you brought your back up around with you and ignored risk that you will lose it. Back ups must be at your home, safely and secretly. Of course you can store your back ups at different locations, not only at home, or only one location at home. However, put your backup in your luggage and bring it around is very risky, not recommended.

It's your choice and I won't say it's a good or bad method because each method has its pros and cons. But I want to tell you that all electronic devices have a lifespan and they can fail at any time so storing important data on them is a huge risk. Like in some cases, many people store seed phrases on their hard drive and it is not connected to the Internet at all but once it is irreparably damaged they also lose access into data. I think you need to look at that situation and add other ways to protect your data rather than just storing it on that phone.

I open a metamask wallet while working on an airdrop and get to work before saving the seed phrase. Before I temporarily copied the seed phrases and moved them to a better place, due to a sudden mistake on my part, those seed phrases were deleted. Luckily I didn't have any dollars in there but I tried to put $100 in that wallet which would have exposed me to a big loss if something had happened. In the end it didn't happen. I would tell others that saving your wallet's seed rate is more important than anything else you do. As soon as you receive the seed phrase, store it in a safe place or you may lose all your money.

I have not lost any of my holdings of Bitcoin or Altcoin by doing anything wrong. But many may have lost their holdings of Bitcoins or Altcoins due to their own mistakes. But there are also some reasons to lose it, one of which is to keep the wallet seed invested carelessly. There are many people who join various airdrop campaigns with their invested wallets who work on all these campaigns and connect the wallets with seed phrases to claim tokens and as a result they lose their holdings. But the safest system for keeping seed phrases is to write the seed phrase in a notebook in such a way that no one can ever find your notebook. Thus if one can keep his wallet seed phrase safe then he will never lose his investment.

I have lost my seed phrase before but later I found it. I lost it because I was alone in the house and family was on vacation for the last Christmas Holiday and since I was alone I drop the seed phrase paper under the parlour center table. And I forgot to remove it so when the children came they saw it there and use it the book to write their nursery rhymes and misplaced the book as we. So for the time when I wanted to use the seed to login to another device I could not find it again and I look for this paper for three months and finally I saw it under the bed. And the advice I will give here is that even though you are alone in the house always keep your seed phrase in save place and secret place because you don't know when a visitor will come to the house and picked the seed phrase from your house. Always be security conscious.

Even making yourself that storing or putting up those keys in your own bedroom there's still risks for it to be misplaced on which this is something that would really be having those kind of instances.
This is why myself i did put up my keys on different 3 flashdrives on which one is on the attic of my own bedroom and one is placed on my own personal bag and one is placed on other parts of the house.
Of course its not really that out of reach of other people even with other family members on which we can really be able to make ourselves that confident that it cant be known by other people
whether family members or not.

So far i havent lost mine after 9 years here on crypto space on which i could say that it does still work. I havent that purchased some hardware wallet even those
things i do have doubts that they were totally that not that exposed or have known those pk's or having that tight security or whatsoever.

Based on the many experiences of people saving seed keys, perhaps what you have mentioned above might be a bit too dangerous to keep secret keys in your wallet or write them in a diary, yes, humans can't escape the name of forgetting.

From my experience, I created 2 new emails that were not confirmed from various other activities, just created them and I also maintained their security with 2-step verification by connecting my personal telephone number and Authenticator App. And before connecting the Authenticator Application, I also saved the barcode or code from the Authenticator so that at any time if my cellphone is damaged I can open it again.