Bitcoin Forum

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I was surfing twitter (https://x.com/TeddyBitcoins/status/1878500388313129243) few days ago and i made a screenshot this picture to ask question here if i can get the best way to secure our seedphrase.
Though read some post over here that states that we should store our seedphrase many place should emergency purpose or if we lost our device we can restore them back. My questions; If you duplicate your seedphrase and save them in your house and travel to the neighboring country where you spend like 2 weeks or more, suddenly you were phone about your house got melted down with your noticed and your seedphrase and hardware/software wallet are inside the building that got burnt what would you do?

Do you also agree that we should take at least a copy of our seedphrase attached into our traveling box with our luggages should such incident of wildfire outbreak happens again or such as natural disaster happens. Is that the best practice if i may asked and if you say "No" what about your house melting down just as what happened. What could be your reaction when such happened.

Let discuss, as we learn the best way to secure our seedphrase.

Let's not use the incident that happened in CA as a reason to put ourselves in danger. If you shuffle around this forum, you will see threads of how to safekeep your seed phrase from danger of water and fire.

It's safer for me to leave my seed phrase at home and travel out as long as I don't want to spend any of that Bitcoin.

Have you also imagined the danger of carrying a piece of paper that contains the seed phrase to 100 Bitcoin? Mistakes can happen; you can be searching for something and leave that in a hotel room, where you will accidentally make the roomkeeper rich, or your luggage can be searched in an airport, where the safety of that wallet is not entirely guaranteed.

Let me give you an easy step which is just one among many.

Use passphrase with your seed phrase. Safe the seed phrase in a bank that is not in the state that you are living. Save the passphrase with your father, mother, wife, children and yourself. Tell them that the passphrase is very important. Always remind them that they should not lost it.

Make sure that the bank you save the seed phrase is not in the same state with your family or some of your family that you save your passphrase with.

Save the seed phrase and passphrase with yourself but not together.

You have two seed phrase backup which is with you and the bank in a different state. You also have multiple passphrase backup.

If I have the back up seed phrase with me, I will directly to access the wallet using other devices. I will make sure that I still have the access. That is why we must make a back up for the important thing like that.

I can lose the hardware wallet anytime but if I have the seed phrase and all things needed, I will not have to worry because I can access it again. Perhaps I agree that we can take a copy of our seed phrase but we must keep that secretly so no one will know about that.

Your backup should be kept in separate locations. You don't just keep a single backup. Neither is it enough to keep separate backups in different spots inside a single building or house.

It also helps if your backup isn't just written on a piece of paper. There's a wide array of options out there for metal backups that could withstand fire and extreme heat.

Also, personally, I travel with a copy of my phrase. This might not be advisable but I do this in case I need to have an emergency access to my funds. It's probably best not to keep it in your wallet, though.

First of all, having your seed phrase written only on a sheet of paper on your office seems really dangerous in itself with or without the fires. With 100 bitcoins, at the very least I expect this person to store his seed phrase on a fireproof vault. Second, again emphasizing that when you own that much bitcoin you need to be less confident and make sure you have copies of everything. For one, do not store all of your 100 bitcoins in one wallet and you shouldn't store your seed phrase in just one paper with no copy elsewhere.
As long as you have another copy of your seed phrase you will be fine but if you really have nothing then I am sorry but I doubt you can do anything about that.

Right. For a guy with 100 bitcoins, he wasn't very smart. On top of that he keeps both the HW and the paper seeds in the same place. I have much less and I have it stored much more securely than that guy. What he has done is something like having 10 million dollars in banknotes stashed away in his house and going on holiday so quietly.

There is more than one mistake, it is a mistake to save the seed phrase on paper at home because as we saw in this incident the house was exposed to fire and thus the pass phrase paper was burned, so it is better to store it on a fire and water resistant metal piece.

It is also a mistake to carry the paper or metal piece on which the seed phrase is written while traveling because this exposes it to the risk of theft or confiscation by the police or losing it for any other reason, so if you want to carry the seed with you while traveling, you must camouflage it well so that it is not discovered, for example, cut it into small, scattered pieces and put it in different places that are not eye-catching.

It's really unbelievable someone can think just back up with a piece of paper, their wallet will be safe.

You need at least two back up, one is something you can leave in your house and resistant against anything e.g. engraved steel plate. Use stainless steel because it can resist against corrosion, fire, etc. The disadvantage is you might lost your steel plate due to tsunami or tornado.

To overcome against that, you can use something that you carry to anywhere and no one will notice it.

Example hiding your seed phrase inside a pencil.

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I don't believe in having only a physical copy of my seedphrase, especially if you live in an area prone to natural disaster or war.
In theory putting your seedphrase online exposes you to hackers, but in reality far more people lose their seedphrase because they lost the physical copy that was stored in their drawer or closet, or lost from physical damage, natural disaster, war, etc. Or they simply forgot where they put it or threw it away by mistake.

It also depends on how you do it. But there are relatively secure ways to store things online IMO. This is just a suggestion and my personal opinion and may not be right for everyone. Every person has to determine the best storage method for their own particular situation, technical skill level and comfort level.

For example, using a bitcoin passphrase (also called a hidden wallet) along with a password manager. So even if someone hacked your online account and stole your seedphrase, it would be useless to them without knowing the passphrase. Tens of millions of people use a password manager everyday to securely store sensitive passwords for their online banking and other financial websites, so to me that is a good enough way to secure your seedphrase.

So if your house burns down or gets destroyed by a flood or act of war, you won't lose your seedphrase.

I have saved my wallet seed at home and also on my mobile device. If I go on a long trip and if any accident happens during the trip, I can restore my invested wallet using the seed at home or if any accident happens at home and my wallet seed gets corrupted, I can restore it using the seed saved on my device even if I am away. Therefore, the invested wallet, be it a hardware wallet or a software wallet, should be stored at home and on my secure device. However, the invested wallet seed should be carried very carefully while traveling because it would definitely be very risky for me if someone finds out.

But I don't understand why he kept his 100 bitcoins in his office. 100 bitcoins are very valuable. Of course he should have kept the 100 bitcoins at home or carried a copy of his wallet seed with him. If he had a copy of his wallet seed, he could have recovered his bitcoins.

I would never consider travelling with my seed phrase except if I have need for them in the place I am travelling to. The highest number of thefts happens in transit. You are not also sure of safety in the place you are going to.

Keeping your seed phrase in a fire and waterproof metallic material and keeping them in different locations which are not close to each other is ideal.


Keeping your seed phrase in a bank is the same thing as keeping your money in a bank. Non-custodian wallets are designed to make you your bank. Keeping your seed phrase with your relatives might also be risky. These days you can't trust close relatives or friends with money. But if you trust anyone, it would not be a bad idea.

For redundancy, you should have multiple backups and place them in different locations. If you are going to travel, then perhaps you should buy an extra hardware wallet that you can take with you and keep your main wallet stored in a safe that can withstand natural disasters. It is also worth considering using multi-share backups, so that your funds cannot be easily stolen if one of your shares were to get compromised.

There's no such thing as absolute safety in this reality. Your house might burn to the ground. You might die and your relatives might inherit your property. Sh*t happens. I usually don't take my seed phrase with me, when I go outside my house. Such thing would happen to my house and it would be devastating, but we shouldn't be too obsessed with our material wealth. Money and assets just come and go, what's more important is preserving our own lives and moving on. House insurance would be a good move, but I doubt that the insurance company would recover the monetary value of lost Bitcoins.

Different locations? What do you mean by that? Most people only have one house to store a physical copy,
so it doesn't matter if you hide it in more than one location in your house if your whole house burns down.

You could store an extra copy in a safety deposit box at your local bank, but that won't do you any good if the whole city burns down along with the bank.

Agreed.
It's important to have backups even for the backups, and having it on the sheet of paper probably would need other measures too.

Any method has its pros and cons, and risks always exist around us, especially unexpected accidents caused by nature that we cannot foresee. So use whatever solution you feel gives you the most security to store your seed phrase.

Like me, many people feel insecure about sharing seed phrases with loved ones or carrying backups when traveling or working away from home…but I do it anyway and have been fine for years. I have never encountered any of the risks that people imagine, I'm not saying it can't happen but they are very rare. We don't need to exaggerate things, the CA incident was a rare incident and doesn't happen often so don't obsess over it too much.

Yea, I agree - however, we are talking about these rare cases where the backup and planning would save the funds in question, be it this situation or another.
And it's great that you have trust in your loved ones, that's very important too.

Do people on Twitter really suggest that? It sounds unbelievable that they tell you to carry around a backup worth 100 BTC whenever you travel. We have many cases of people forgetting their stuff, or losing in transit and there's little to nothing they can do to solve that. Do they believe they'll be immune to that? Not to mention the chance of another fire outbreak happens is likely smaller than losing your luggage in an airport. Sounds like a hassle compared to improving your backup choice like using a fire-resistant metal as mentioned above.

There is not a 100% solution to this problem. No matter which route you decide to follow, it will always have risks.

If you carry your seed words with you, you might lose them or get robbed.
If you leave them home, the house might get burned or again you might get robbed.
If you create multiple copies of your seed words then you will increase your risks of getting robbed.

What about brain wallet?

Have you heard what dementia does to a person?

…

Sometimes we just need a bit of luck to survive. Sometimes we are unlucky and it doesn’t matter what precautions you take.

It all depends on how much Bitcoin you have, if you have a lot of Bitcoin, you should have knowledge about what you should do and also consider and educate yourself to keep your Bitcoin safe and one of them is you should store your Bitcoin in large amounts in several wallets.

And besides that, you should store the seed phrase that you wrote on a steel plate and coated with steel that will be protected from anything, and put it in several places that you consider safe and places that you often visit. For example, in your residence, at your parents' house and several places that you think are suitable and also very safe to put the seed phrase that you have written on a steel plate and coated with steel that is not large in size but can be stored safely and only you know it.

Sounds totally right.
Many (including the man from the post) disregard the possibility of doubling the measures regarding the phrase storage and keeping it in multiple locations - after all, not everybody has that much opportunities / wants to make multiple backups that would need to be checked from time to time.
But your way out seems reasonable to me - however, would you put steel plates in all of these places?

Of course I did that and I also always checked it several times, and I put it in my house, in a warehouse that is only a few meters from my house, and besides that in my parents' house, in my in-laws' house because in their house I still have a room to sleep if I go there and I put it in a place that I think is very safe because the size is not big maybe the size of a zippo lighter and only I know and it is also very safe, waterproof and also fireproof which has been tested.

And I tell you in great detail because I'm sure, you won't know it either. ;D

Securing seed phrase is the biggest responsibility of holding your Bitcoin, it is the price of holding a decentralized asset that you are in total control of it's safety. Whatever strategy that a Bitcoin holder chooses to secure their seed phrase, whether it's to write on sheets of paper, on metals or encryptions, it is important to hide them in more than one location so if something like fire, natural disasters, theft or misplacement they can still have access to their coins. Safe places to hide seed phrase is another challange, each holder needs to figure this very important aspect, whether it's in their homes, offices, vaults, carrying it around when traveling, trusting others with it and any other options.

why would you have 9.5 million dollar in digital assets? you should at least liquidate 20% of it into gold, silver or any other form of money.
but that good news for the market, 100 Bitcoin will be lost for ever

it doesn't matter how much bitcoins you have in store you still should learn how to keep your bitcoin safe and pull all necessary things to make sure you have back ups and copies and etc even if you have 1 bitcoin or 100 bitcoins these are all still valuable money that i am sure would be pretty harmful to the person if these bitcoins were to be lost
lol you better wish your mother isn't one for cleaning and accidentally finds it and deems it unnecessary and throws it out without your knowledge but if this happens then you should know better to have a back up of what is written on the plate

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People have a way of painting a situation and make it look bad. The poster is obviously using the Palisades California fire disaster to cause FUD, probably to deceive people into having their assets stored in a CEX or bank. 100 BTC is quite a large bag and I'm sure someone holding such an amount of Bitcoin would have the seed phrase stored in multiple locations because of unexpected disaster like fire or flooding.

It could be lost or stolen during transit. Just have it stored in multiple locations.

It is interesting to discuss about What to really do when traveling to go on vacation for 2 weeks or more and have a lot of Bitcoin in a hardware wallet.

The most unsafe option is to take your Hadrware wallet or seed phrase out of your home, because we don't know when the crime will happen.
Someone could even target us when traveling to another country and try to hijack the hardware wallet or seed phrase.

I found some news and the fact that some influencers are the target of robbery because they have a lot of bitcoin and other crypto assets, this is the danger of doing too much Flexing and even telling the private wallet even though indirectly someone will do it towards the main wallet.

Then let's talk about the better option, keep the Seed Phrase or swallow hardware at home even though there will be some incidents such as for example the fire that is happening right now in Los Angeles, It is the worst fire that will burn everything.

The option to store the Seed Phrase must of course use a medium or a place that is completely resistant to all kinds of damage.
I have read about carving a Seed Phrase on a Seed Backup media that is now widely sold or developed by Hadrware wallet providers or manufacturers who do focus on Seed Backup only.

Like the THOR Seed Backup made by Cryptotag by having extraordinary durability, being able to withstand corrosion and fire with high temperatures.
It has been tested with a stress test that is quite crazy and is able to survive and still be readable. It costs only $350 and is able to secure a seed phrase containing millions of dollars in Bitcoin, which is quite worth it.

STRESS TEST
https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/reviews/cryptotag/

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/01/14/OpwyI.jpeg

Heat Stress Test
Highly readable, no data loss. Not much discoloration.
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/01/14/OpaLv.jpeg

Corrosion Stress Test
In excellent condition, no data loss.
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/01/14/OpuGg.jpeg

Crush Stress Test
No data loss.
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/01/14/OpXqH.jpeg

Source: https://thebitcoinhole.com/seed-backup



Or some other options to store in the ground quite safely using a Time Capsule made of high-quality Stainless Steel material and resistant to corrosion.


And now, it's better to leave the hardware wallet at home or take it on vacation, It's a really wise and reasoned choice, indeed nothing is safe, but at least minimize the loss of assets even though it requires quite complicated procedures.

This is people choice and they believe that BTC is more better than those asset what you have mentioned.

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Also with the incident happened on California it leave some thoughts to me that its more better to Tattoo my seedphrase on my chest and write secret codes for it, so that no other people would understand what I  write there. Provably with this I can make sure that my important details is safe and under my full control.

Although this is just crazy thoughts but somehow effective especially for those people who usually travel to different places.

Not sure if I believe the alleged claim in the Tweet. If it is true though, what a moron. Total lack of respect for such a large amount of money. Schoolboy errors all around, from storing it on paper to keeping it so accessible in the home, total incompetence. I hope it isn’t true but it wouldn’t be the first & won’t be the last time people lose Bitcoin through total negligence.

Maybe that person was very stupid, which is why he left the phrase in his wallet in the office. We should use a strong password in the wallet where we keep our bitcoins and the seed phrase of that wallet should be stored separately rather than stored in one place. Then maybe our wallets will be much safer. Like OP said a person had 100 bitcoins in a wallet and he left the seed phrase of that wallet in the office causing him to lose his wallet. If the person had stored his wallet seed phrase separately instead of storing it in one place, he might have been able to access his wallet later. Even if he had stored it in various hard steels instead of paper it would have been much better for him.

Yes, but no. Having our private keys on paper at home is part of the solution, but it is not the full solution. Engrave our private keys in high-density metal and store them inside a safe (they must be prevented from reaching 150° C or else their contents would be at risk) it's a good start. Having copies of our private keys in different places, or even always carrying those keys with us (rings, pendants) can also be a good idea. There are multiple devices that can help us, but the most important thing in these cases is our imagination.

Yes it's better to store the seedphrase on a steel or a metal protectives cloves where it wouldn't be that easily for fire to get it melted down, and it's also unwise for someone to have 100BTC in their wallets and never split their holding to different wallet for security purpose, and also why would someone keep their seed phrase in their offices without keeping them at home or maybe take some copies down their respective houses than leaving them at the office.

What is happening in California, is not a regular scenario. This is very unfortunate that someone lost such a huge amount of Bitcoins but that does not mean, keeping the details at your home is a bad idea. It is an exceptional situation to be honest.

You can keep it anywhere in the world and yet it can be stolen or destroyed. So keeping the details at home is not a bad idea. It's just bad luck. Let's not overcomplicate it.

A person should minimize the risks, that's all.

And many people out there keep their phrases in different, hard-to-find (so to speak) places. Which makes it so much more convenient when such a disaster arrives..

At one time, it must have crossed his mind what if something bad happened that could cause him to lose access to his wallet, but he preferred to ignore it or perhaps thought that he still had another time to save a backup of his phrases to a safer place or at least carry a copy just in case. It seems trivial yet very fatal, now there is only prolonged regret if he really put all his money there.

Rightly said, I usually tell people that the worst form of storage is to actually carry around the contents holding one’s merits there are many risks around from forgetfulness to been in trouble and got things stolen off one. The best form is to actually safe it at home in a resistance metal in case of any natural disaster and then backing it up at another location. This kind of tragedy that happen in the US can seriously not be avoided no matter how we put it. Even a metal plate having a seed phrase can be hard to recover in this kind of disasters due to rumbles


Yes the best form of storage is actually on metals but as I said up in this case study it can still not be able to recover it due to the damages on the environment. Also even if he has multiple wallets he will definitely have the seed phrase backed up in different places in his home and he would still be affected. Multiple wallets are only protected if the seed phrase are somewhere else or if it was phishing attack. For me he should simply have back up his wallet to another location

But perhaps you don't want to take the risks as even there are acts that is beyond our control. And that's where we really need to take precautious, and so even the extremes of back luck, we can prevent it as well.

So for me with what had happen to California, we should still be looking beyond the practice of opsec and like having multiple backups of our seed phrases in case something happened like this. And there are ways like metal plate or having your seeds in a vault in a bank.

You can have more than me place you’ve saved your seed phrase in and that should really make you give another important meaning to the safety of your bitcoins. Carrying the seed-phrase around in a piece of paper will make your bitcoins more vulnerable and can easily be lost to many circumstances that are unforeseen. Already saving your bitcoin and keeping your seed-phrase safe at home is a great idea, then looking for another place asides from home to save it is also a good idea but having to carry the seed-phrase around is like carrying your cash fiat money around which will make it more susceptible to robbery.

What happened in California is an isolated incident and you can't apply it to everyone.
Do you expect that all of the houses will get burned just like what happened in CA.

Just imagine the amount of security that you need if you are going to a vacation, and in one of your luggage is a piece of paper that contains a 12-word seed phrase that's worth 100 Bitcoins. Unless there's nobody that knows that you're holding that account then it's okay, but if you're that popular, I would rather keep it into my home rather than carrying it alongside my travels.

There have been many threads here regarding ways on how to secure our seed phrase and carrying them isn't one of them. Well, if that happens to me, I don't know what to react TBH. I mean 100 Bitcoins is a huge amount, but for sure, I will be having a duplicate copy of it, and I will hide it somewhere, and will not carry it on my travels that's for sure.

I don't believe in storing seed phase only on one place and it is advised that after writing down your seed phase in a piece of paper use fireproof, waterproof, and corrosion-resistant metal plates designed for storing seed phrases for example Crypto Steel and Billfold, don't just write your phase on a piece of paper and then keep it you need to safe guard it also, I have a friend who built a small store under ground just very small in his room and he protected all his documents with fire and water resistant metal plates design for storing documents and I believe is a very safe one, from the example given by the OP I really feel bad for the man who's house got burn and together with his seed phase and also knowing he has such amount of Bitcoin stored in his wallet is very bad, this is one of the reasons why some people are talking storing your seed phase on your private email address, if not for hackers it would have been good because even if you are sent out of your house and told never to return there you can still access your seed phase through the email, however I will always advise you do what you feel is best for you so you won't say someone gave you the advice that caused you to lose your seed phase.

You can carry away your seedphrase toyour traveling box but never tell to other people about that. You should keep that in secret and only you will know so there is nothing chance for other people to trick you.

It is a choice for us to have that seedphrase with or without us and we know what we will do with that. We don't want to have a problem with our assets so we will do many things to protect all things related to our assets. I just hope that nothing bad happen with all things related to me including my assets.

Saving our seedphrase in many places and hide that from other people will be better so we can still access the wallet using the backup seedphrase.

I always keep it in several places and when traveling access to wallets remains under control remembering to prepare myself if there is a high payment and can not be missed. Backed up on 2 phones and offline back up by writing it on a piece of paper stored in a personal safe. So far the steps I take are fairly safe and have been running for more than 7 years.