Bitcoin Forum

A friend shared this story with me and I think it's worthy of discussion here to further open our eyes to safeguard our private/seed phrase like our life depend on it. Our life actually depends on it because the purpose of investment is to make things easier for us in the future when we don't longer have strength to do hard work.

It was reported that a man lost about $12m worth of BNB because a cat eats a paper containing his seed phrases.
https://talkimg.com/images/2025/03/24/lHrMq.jpeg
full story here (https://www.thecryptotimes.co/cat-eats-seed-phrase-containing-12-million-bnb)

I don't know how genuine the story is but let assume it actually happens, what will be your reaction if you happen to be the one?

I still believe many people here have their seed phrase written on a paper which is not entirely wrong but how safe and secure is the paper? We've raised concerns about paper decay, burning etc but least we expect this scenario of animals eating the paper.

To invest is hard but it seems securing the investment is much more harder. Do we have zoologist in the house? Is there any chance of recovering the seed phrases either by killing the animal or any other way?

What happened to having several backup's of your seed phrase? I would say that the victim failed in a way to protect his seed properly or the story isn't just clear. Anything is possible we all know, but these are little things that we can do on our own to avoid any future problems.

His cat can't be blamed for this as he should have kept it in a more hidden or secured location and also have different back ups to his keys. Aside paper, we can aswell store own keys on metal backups that would be difficult for physical damage to occurs.

Why after I click the site, it show error 404?

I don't have cat, but I found cat could eat paper, this is funny lol https://www.thesprucepets.com/reasons-your-cat-eats-paper-5204208

If someone write their seed phrase on paper, they must protect the paper using something, just like kids movies who send message through the sea, they put the message inside bottle.

A cat is able to eat seed phrase that he can be used to access $12 million worth of BNB. The person is careless is what I think.

Carelessness. Why a single backup? Two or three backups are recommended. If he has more than one backup, this would not have happened.

The news has been taken down on the site.aybe it is a lie.

Killing the animal can not bring back the seed phrase. It is just gone.

It is stupid mistake but the story can be genuine. It can be fake with careful people but with careless people, they can do many stupid things like this.

This is a similar story from another careless people. It's her mom, but it can be a dog or cat and if he is unlucky, a dog or cat can eat his paper piece already.
How do you safely keep your recovery phrase written on paper? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5407326.0)

And as they are careless, it's very possible that they have only 1 wallet backup.
How to backup a seed phrase. (https://blog.lopp.net/how-to-back-up-a-seed-phrase/)

This is exactly what I was thinking when reading through the post.
I don't have anything remotely close to $12 million in bitcoin but I have more than one copy of my seed phase. It was reckless of him.
Even if the story is false, this should be a reason for others to have more than one copy of their seed phases and make sure they keep them all in safe and private places.

I am not sure killing the animal will help them recover the wallet.
To be honest, if they think about killing the animal to retrieve the seed phrase, I can only wish that they die before the kill the poor animal.

The story is definitely a lie. No chance of it being real.

For sure we can't ascertain the veracity of such a story. We get to find numerous of them whenever there's noise in the market with price  mooning. Bull brings noise while bear makes everywhere quiet. The first thing that ran through my mind was – How would someone have such a huge amount of investment and would write their seedphrase on just one piece of paper without duplicating it. As for my reaction, that won't be me. I won't be that careless.

Papers won't decay easily if we keep them away from damp areas. Again, for those who keep pets in the house; they should feed them regularly so they don't starve. Starving animals have a way of rummaging for food. Anything they can cut through becomes food for them.

I haven't read the story in the link, but if we assume it's true, we can laugh out loud and suggest that the guy feed his animals so they don't take revenge on him. But seriously, there are many ways to store seed phrases. Laminating paper, since plain paper seems unreliable to the OP, would also be one example of preservation. And yes, of course, everything we need to save should not be at risk of being eaten ;D and should be in places where not only people but also animals cannot access.

To start with who the heck actually stores their seed phrase in a shoe especially when they have a dog or cat as pet. For some reason I don't really know why, dogs and cats particularly just can't help raiding shoe racks and that's enough point to know that it isn't the safest place for your seed.

Most stories on of seed loss I usually come across these days for some reason just seem to be as a result of carelessness. We need to be more careful on how we store things like this.

We've moved on from the story of the wallet seed lost in a boating accident. Some of these stories may be for tax evasion and to attract views, but it's a mistake to leave a single copy of the paper. The biggest problem is in cases of environmental disasters, because if you don't distribute the papers, they will likely fall within the scope of a natural disaster such as fires, earthquakes, and floods.

Having multiple backups and doing backups with different methods too. There are better backup methods than writing it down on a piece of paper.

Securing Your Seed Phrase with Washers. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5389446.0)
Stainless steel Bitcoin Recovery Seed Plate. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5323755.0)
Metal Bitcoin seed storage reviews. (https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/)

I 've seen many people suggesting metal backups and I get why, but... there is an argument in favour of multiple (2 is enough most of the time) paper backups and is the following:

If someone's home gets to burn down, which is obviously a very sad thing to happen, it may be better for the backup to be destroyed, than having a doubt it was ever destroyed. I mean, they 'd always have the chance to recover the wallet from the other backup and send the coins to a new fresh wallet. If the backup is made of titanium or stainless steel, it may not be destructed, which gives the attacker some extra time to steal your coins.
Again, very unlikely scenario, but I am sure that paranoia is our best friend, isn't it?  :P

EDIT: If a fire takes place, there is a great amount of people who will enter the house in an effort to extinguish it. The remains will most likely end up somewhere near the house and the backup could be there.

Those that store such seeds on a paper ensures that they do the following things and here includes also his own mistake on this.

1. Storing a seed phrase on paper is not the wrong idea but avoiding or not knowing that such should be on a laminated sheet is the user's fault for not been aware.

2. If a cat can have access to where a seed phrase is been stored, then any other person too could eventually get an access to his seeds, which means the user is very poor in handling seed phrase management.

If you're also found in such situation of poor handling or management of your seed phrase, here are some alternatives to use for safe practice.


storing seed phrase with washers
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5389446.0

seeds backup tools
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5263482.0

additional security to your seed phrase
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5230920.0

When experienced investors gives out advice to newbie they are specific about seeking knowledge and one of the key aspect is security of ones wallet. I think most people do not pay much attention to this and most concentrate more on strategies they will use to accumulate more bitcoin. Security is usually thrown over board, in as much as bitcoin has given us the privileges and freedom of been our own bank, it is definitely paramount to consider most securing our wallet which holds our investment properly

For me most of the time the stories we hear of loss of wallet backups are usually due to owners careless and sometimes greediness, how can one simply dump their wallet back in a shoe, having it on paper is a risk on its own not to talk of not backing up a wallet holding such amount, I am force not to believe this story.

Nothing will change even if the animal is killed and that will be gruesome to an innocent animal, there is possibility that the paper wasn’t even swallowed by the cat as cats hardly eat paper like materials

so it took just a small cat to eat his seed phrase of $12M worth of an asset? would it look harsh to say that he doesn't deserve to hold such a quantity of an asset? anyone who has such worth of crypto should not wait to be told that he needs to have a backup of back up of backup of his seed phrase to prevent anything from happening to his asset. this is a clear negligence on his side and the question is, who are we to blame? the innocent cat that knows nothing about the worth of the paper it chewed?

this is part of the danger of leaving your seed phrase in just a single safe place. if it is not a cat, it could have been anything. a rat, a fire outbreak, you forgetting the place where you kept the paper, or just any other thing. I have my seed phrase written down in multiple places that are not even in the same location. I dont trust my remembering ability let alone the uncertainty that can happen if I rely on just a single safety location for my seed phrase. if you worked and earned your asset legitimately, you dont need to be schooled on the need to protect it like your baby.

If that actually happened, it would be more than a disaster.

How could someone with $12 million keep his seed phrase on a piece of paper? Even if all he had was $1,000, such an action would be completely illogical and show a great deal of naivety, not let alone the fact that he keeps pets at home. If I were that person, I would quit crypto entirely and sell my laptop. But I don’t think I could ever make such a foolish mistake because the seed phrase is the private key to our personal bank. If it’s lost, we will never be able to recover our crypto, and no one will be able to help us.

The cat is not to blame; it is an animal without reasoning and cannot comprehend, like we do, that someone could be so carelless as to leave the seed phrase for such a huge amount of money written on a piece of paper, without a backup and without storing it in a secure place.

This is crazy if true, but I talked many times how paper backups have many downsides compared to stainless steel.
Even if someone is using paper backup I would recommend creating multiple copies in different locations.

It's not hard, but most people think nothing bad will happen to them.
Paper and ink ca degrade even without digestion acid...

That may also have its problems because the more the copies of the seed phrase, the higher than chances of it getting into an unauthorised hands. However, it is better to have three to four copies saved in different places than have a single copy to be eaten by a cat as described in the story. This is what we call that handwork of "village people" in my country, a term used to described to someone who suffers misfortune.

I don't believe in some stories from the media, cause people can fabricate stories to get views and clicks especially during the period when the market is about to go boom, but let's just believe that it's real, I think the victim is careless, who writes a seed phrase on a piece of paper and expose it to their pets, I think he/she is very unserious else the person won't joke with such, just hope the person has a copy stored somewhere else maybe in a drive or so else it would be so sad losing such amount to carelessness, asides that I still don't believe the story, people can be so carefree when it comes to protecting valuables, cases like this is why the seed phrase shouldn't be stored on a piece of paper or jotter, if possible laminate the paper or it in a safe where it would be more safer from pets and rodents.

From the story, it seems strange if the owner just put something so valuable without worrying about anything, if it were me then I would be very careful about it, and always bring it and not leave it alone even for a moment until it was in the safe place. I think this is negligence, and this can be a lesson for anyone to be careful in storing seed phrases, consider it as gold that we should not ignore even for a moment. If that really happened, or assume it happened to me, then I would try my best to take the paper in a safe way from the pet, even though the chances of success are small.

Sometimes out of comfort we postpone some important things we should not, and then for an unfortunate chunk of people something happens and hits them right into their face while proving why comfort should not have been the first thing on their list of priorities.

I do not know if they were careless as some above me say or they simply did not think this could happen, or at least this quickly.  After all, who even thinks of a cat destroying and eating particularly the most valuable piece of paper in their own house?  You would think there is furniture, colorful stuff and what not that attracts their taste buds more than 12 million dollars on a paper would.

Poor guy.

That is actually right though. I feel it's important that even if we keep our seed on paper, we still need to keep it in other places to secure it as an additional way of securing our funds. Apart from using paper I think there is crypto capsule which helps in arranging the sees phrase accordingly and this help to reduce the risk of losing seed phrase to fire outbreak, flood or erotion, free from eating by rats or cats and lastly to stay away from any natural disasters. So seed should be kept in different places to avoid such incident.

If I am in the position of the guy who cat ate his seed, I would not do anything but I will be angry at my self for allowing such thing to happen when I have the power to secure it.

Either the story Is real or not always keep a multiple backups for your seed phrase incase of future unforeseen event .
What a wish ;D
Well cat do not chew like human and It somehow rare for cats to eat paper but  they can shred it  (I have one and I haven't seen it go after papers  :D before ). I think it's a fabricated  one plus how tf will someone be so careless with something worth that amount...

I also came across this story sometime yesterday. Killing the cat for dissection purpose is clearly a zero effort to recovering what has been lost. Should we blame the cat?, No, because the person who failed to keep his seed phrase in a more secure location is at fault here. Besides, just like some users had pointed out, why did he fail to have multiple backups considering the large amount involved.

This is clearly a case of someone shooting himself in the foot for no reason. He had just one key to $12M. What a big risk, even far greater than the risk of investing in Bitcoin. I think this is another story to serve as a reminder to those who hasn't made such mistake, but it's quite sad that such an amount was used to set an example.

Agreed mostly people choose to do easy things instead of important ones and then they regret it when something unexpected happens. What happened to this person is really shocking who would think that cat would ruin and eat very valuable paper worth $12 million? This is very strange and unlucky event that shows how important it is to take care of things and be responsible instead of being lazy and careless. And yes we can not help but feel sorry for person who lost so much.

One thing's for sure, it's not Pickle that's mistaken. All cats have that tendency. Therefore, the person who owns the cat should've already thought of a way or ways to make sure his millions are well protected.

First off, why leave the paper containing the seed phrase openly on a desk? Second, why keep one copy only? Third, why not buy metal backups that would protect seed phrases against fire, water, and other elements? Finally, it's millions. You don't procrastinate keeping your millions safe.

Beginners - Keep your rooms clean, keep your backups ready to use & bring away (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5443458.0)

How secure is your seed phrase depends on how you generate your wallet and it is a more complicated question. Your topic title is not accurately expressing what you want to discuss so let me derailing the topic a little bit.

How Many Bitcoin Seed Phrases Are Only One Repeated Word? (https://blog.lopp.net/how-many-bitcoin-seed-phrases-are-only-one-repeated-word/)
If you use a bad wallet software for generating your wallet seed, your wallet mnemonic seed is not secure.

To avoid topic derailing by bad topic title, you can follow guides on how to write good and relevant topic titles.
Topic title style guide. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=102944.0)
Make your topic title, posts more attractive. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5182260.0)

This is too emotional by the way, lol ;D

It's not just about killing the animal, it's for forensic purposes. It'll be hard to retrieve the paper without killing the animal unless through operation which I consider more cruel.


Just like you, many others have suggested having multiple back up but come to think about it, won't it increase the chance of one's wallet being vulnerable? I mean having multiple back up also means multiple security because there's chances of someone getting access to one or some of the copies. For someone who's careless as the guy in Op will surely have difficulty in managing multiple back up, they'll eventually lose track of where they keep some.

Yeah but forensic purposes for human stupidity ;) This is unacceptable for me. By the way, if I had $12M in a single backup and any animal ate it, I would just live knowing that I 've lost my fortune.

Doesn't take a zoologist to know that the seed is long gone not long after the cat at it :P


I hope eating $12m is enough to satisfy that cats boredom and curiosity for the world for life ;D


Owner is definitely at fault...$12m, no secure location, accessible to a cat (thus accessible to anyone?), no backup. Extremely careless. To treat $12m that way is probably someone with $120m or more. Maybe a Justin Sun publicity stunt lol...or a stunt to make a memecoin out of Pickle the cat...or both, lol.

How confident are you that you won't go extraordinary ways to get the paper recovered? Remember, this is $12m and not $12k 8)

Moreover, how will you feel seeing the animal flaunting it's tail around you after making you lose such amount?

I don't support animal cruelty but sincerely, I won't neither be comfortable to see an animal moving freely around me with my $12m. If I don't get rid of it, I would definitely do something crazy eventually. This is not even good to imagine btw.

I get the idea, but I am too sentimental to hurt any animal. Especially knowing that a cat can't do anything to protect herself against human monstrosity. But again, having lost $12m because of a mistake like this, is too bad to be true. I highly doubt it's true  ;)

This can be a terrible and immoral solution to recover the eaten wallet but you are missing a point, and the bottom line is people have similar practice by their instinct and personal traits. Like a careless person will do very similarly, in a way of carelessly with his fund of either $12k or $12M.

Don't think that if you are careless now in practice because you have only $100 or $500, if you get richer and have a bigger fund like $1,000 or $10,000 or $1M, your practice in creating, storing, backing up your wallets will turn to be very differently, in a way of safer and more secure. I really don't think many people will change their personal traits too much after getting rich.

So when you are in this market, let's learn and improve your practice day by day, then if you luckily get richer, you already have good practice in security, and won't lose your coins.

It's funny how so many people on this thread might think that killing the animal might get them back their seedphrase. It literally isn't going to be possible as even by the time of being aware that the animal had eaten your seedphrase,it must have been digested by it's organs or chemicals in its stomach. Thats if the animal didn't tear it to pieces even before it swallows. To me this whole story was cooked up for the social media as usual, so let's not think too much about it.

Can someone be this careless? I know if he had used a metallic steel plate, there was no way a cat would eat it, but c'mon. Even with a piece of paper, for someone that had that much, he should atleast have some sense to have the seed phrase stored in multiple places incase there's an earthquake, flooding or fire outbreak, he can still recover the funds. Honestly, I find the story hard to believe. I feel like this never happened and it's just some media trying to make headline.

Writing down your seed phrase in a piece of paper is not the problem here the problem is based on how you save that paper which you have written your seed phrase, people have used that method and have been using it for long, the carelessness of one shouldn't make such process an unsaved way of storing your seed phrase, some have used the  method and have even made it water proof which is laminating the paper.

Let's imagine that the person didn't have duplicate of his speed phrase stored in other places but how can he place such important documents in a place that is accessible to his pet, I think he was very careless for not hiding his important stuffs away from his pet knowing what is involved, he's going to learn a big lesson if he recovers from the shock because the damage cwn not be undone even though he kills the cat. The story may not be entirely true but the message has been passed and people will be more careful with the why they handle their importance documents, things that are private should be kept privately and they shouldn't be kept where it can easily be seen by anyone nor be destroyed by pets.

Owning as much as $12M worth of BNB while storing the seed phrase on paper is an extreme display of irresponsibility in this story. The cat deserves some credit for that singular act, how on earth will someone with such amount act like a total novice in the crypto game

This fellow can afford metallic backups if this story is true or If the goal is to avoid spending any funds while ensuring long-term security, then having multiple well-protected paper backups is a reasonable approach. even at that, proper precautions are necessary to mitigate risks.

Unless a cat/dog is so skilled and capable of opening a safe or some other form of protection, I would never get angry if something like that happened to me, because an animal cannot know how valuable something is. There is no blame on the cat, only on the owner who clearly left the paper within reach of the cat.


If you protect paper properly, it can last for hundreds of years, but of course you need to keep in mind the quality of the paper and ink, and of course the type of protection. Laminated paper, which is also of good quality and stored in the appropriate way it's not something to worry about too much.


The cat did not literally swallow a piece of paper, but very likely tore it into pieces and ate it, and when the paper got into the cat's stomach, it logically began to disintegrate due to the action of stomach acid. If you want to remove something from someone, you don't necessarily have to kill them, you can subject them to surgery, but in this specific case that would be completely pointless.

12$ million worth of BNB! That's a huge amount, your friend must be a whale! Well, it is so unfortunate that his seedphrase got eaten by his own pet cat, which is really frustrating too because 12 million dollars is not a tiny amount, and not there is no way to recover the paper eaten by the cat as we all know (don't have to be zoologists) that anything that goes into the stomach ends up in small pieces.

So there is no way to reverse this, all gone, except the person could perform hypnotic therapy on himself from professionals so somehow they perform some hypnotic thing on him/her and he comes to remember the same words. This can work, as it has already been tried by many people who lost their funds due to some unfortunate events.

This story may not be true but if it is then this is pure carelessness, how did the cat get to find the paper? Why is within the reach of any living thing? Losing $12 million worth of BNB because your cat ate the paper that contains your seed phase, what happened to having a backup of your seed phase in case you lost the other one, and why is the paper not in a safe container locked away from second or third parties. This story never happened, maybe it was made up just for some headlines or to tell people to be careful not to keep any written information about their seed phase on the table when there's a cat in the house.

Even though you created a seed phrase offline its better to have a multiple copies of it its the responsibility of the holder of the wallet of course to make sure the safety of their accounts, for me id recommend to at least a three copies of your seed phrase into your house of course the places you are the one who knows where it is not just on a common places every one can see and if someones knew related to the crypto possible they stole your funds. Recently banks now offering a safe place storage I didn't know what it called but of its the same like you are renting a small place that is only for your important files including the seed phrase.

I also have some doubts about this story since if a person have such huge amount stored on his wallet for sure he would have multiple back ups to make everything safe. There's so many unimaginable things to read from that story.

If he have $12m in his account for sure he have multiple backups to make sure that his funds is safe. Also that person is not newbie because he can afford to spend lots of money for crypto. That's why same as you I kinda not buying this story. Unless if there's proof of legitimacy of that claims.

---

But check this guys it seems this is the reason why they create that fake story.

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/03/26/lmmUI.jpeg

Because they want to hype a shitcoin.

This is sad. it seems having pet is of no use anymore. However, the person in mention lost his fund because he relied on one way of storing his asset. The cat is not to be blamed in any way. If he had hidden the writing seed phrase it will be of no reach to the cat also his entire storing of his seed phrase was only in written form. It is expected that we store our seed phrase in several methods so that in case one becomes compromised another we be there to back us up.

I am sorry to say but is the cat worth $12M? You know what I am saying g right? I will do the needful to retrieve the seed phrase, I love animal though but this amount is just too much for me to ignore, unless the seed phrase is written on a paper, which won't matter because after the cat swallowed the paper it would be too late already, but if the seed phrase is on a bracelet or plate I will have to retrieve it in a gruesome way, I am sorry.

These are basically baseless and fabricated stories that are spread to attract people's attention. Not all news in the media is trustworthy. There are some news stories that are shared in the media primarily to increase views and clicks. An investor who might have $12 million in BNB wouldn't put their Seeds where a cat could get to them and ruin them. He will keep his device or documents in a place where no one can easily access them. Therefore, one should never believe such sensational news that has no truth or basis.

Although we do not know the truth of this story because I first heard in life that a cat could eat paper. However, the person who has happened to such an incident may be completely foolish because he has not been careful about his seed phrase at all. It is extremely true that the seeds of a wallet need to be stored in different ways to keep the phrase safe, that is, one or more ways should be considered. Maybe the animal shouldn't be blamed for this incident at all, because we all know that animals are helpless.

There is no guarantee that the person will be able to access the wallet if they kill the creature, so their next step should be to properly secure the wallet.

This innocent cat has suffered enough while digesting SEED phrase trying to lay its paws upon the stash , thus, please, have a heart to animal. ^{I don't see any way of recovering the seed phrase digested by cat.}

Kidding apart, that was a real Hacker Cat!

P.S. Those who are really concerned with the security of their SEED phrases may adopt this method  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5494771)which will guarantee the seed safe-blanket for any case one could imagine.

If you save your seed phrase in paper, you should not just use that way but back up using other materials or ways so you don't have to worry if you loss one. It is about how we secure our seed phrases from something bad that may happen. I don't read the story but it is important to have back up of the seed phrase because we don't know what will happen later. If we learn the details how to secure the seed phrase, we will think what we can do and how we will do that.

That sounds rubbish because if a person is holding $12M in BNB then why would he have the seed on a paper ?
I get it that paper wallets are safe but wouldn't anyone secure it in a hard metal or something.
It's not that someone would just keep that paper lying around like some random piece of paper.
So I personally think it's a cooked up story and the person would definitely have a backup of the seed.

This story is really funny and I am really trying to wrap my head on how such a thing can be possible. Well if the seed phrase was stored where the cat can find it and eat it, then there's every possibility that someone else might have even seen the seed phrase. It simply means that the seed phrase even though it was written on a paper, was not properly stored in a secured place. I can't see a cat opening a safe box that's properly locked. It's really funny seriously, maybe that's not an ordinary cat. It could be a spiritual cat that was just sent on a mission to find the seed phrase and destroy it. Although I still find this story very difficult to believe, but it is a reminder that, our seed phrase should be stored in a multiple safe places.

It is really disappointing for that investor, $12M !!! Which is a huge amount. But I think the fault here is actually that investor, can animals understand right or wrong? The cat has eaten whatever it finds in front of it, is it the cat's fault here? Why would that investor put his Seed phrase in such an easy place? Which without his knowledge, his pet cat has taken the Seed phrase and eaten it. I will never put the Seed phrase of a $12M wallet in a place that anyone can easily take. I have written the Seed phrases of my wallet in a diary and kept it in my locker, which I have kept the key to open only with me. And I have put the key in a place, that no one can find unless I take it out.

I will not discourage people not to write down their seeds phrase on a paper base on this incident that happened for cat to eat someone seeds phrase. Don't write your seeds phrase on one paper when you know you have animals and children in your house, you know what will happen when your children or animals play to that direction were your seeds phrase paper is, which is not advisable for crypto users to expose the seeds phrase paper to were children and animals live.

We all know how risk it is, when we lost our seeds phrase because there is no how you can have access to your coins again when you lost the wallets and the seeds phrase, because you can only recover your coins through your seeds phrase.

The story doesn't sound real, it's most likely fabricated to teach a lesson or to gain traffic, nobody in there right frame of mind that has millions of BNB, who knows the implication of losing their seed phrase will keep it carelessly. A lot of questions arises like why keep it in the reach of children and domestic animals? Why have just one copy of your seed phrase and not hide it in a secured location? If the story is true, that means that the owner is both ignorant and careless, if he loses his coins he has only himself to blame, not the cat. For me the only valuable thing to learn in that story is that cats can eat paper, so it's a lesson for people that intends to keep cats as pets to be informed and keep valuable documents out of their pet's reach.

No one knows if the story is true or not but if actually the story is true then the investor must really be so careless to have kept such a valuable asset where his pet can lay hold on, let's not talk about the amount involved is the investor supposed to keep such important document in the reach of aanyone talk more of his pet he should have kept it in a hidden place where only he can have access to I believe it he did there's no way the pet would fly up to get the seed phrase where it was kept. The amount in the wallet don't have to be equal to what the op talked about before you can protect your seed phrase even though you have a little amount in your wallet protect your seed phrase because it is your personal property it should be made private.

Maybe doing simple operation could be more better by opening the intestine to restore back the seedphrase::)
On a norm storing seedphrase on printed paper aren't that secured because water or any incident such as fire or file decaying could cause someone to lose their investment as such as how cat has eaten up the important part of the seedphrase. It's also important to store private keys or seedphrase on different places in case of any of this incident happens.

Even if we want to write seed phrase down on a paper , it is important for us to take note of the environment environment where the book with the seedphrase is been kept. Some people are very careless, they believe if a seed phrase is written in a book it is enough for the safety of the seedphrase.. when seed phrase is written in a book or paper,  the most important thing is to protect the book and keep it in safe place, the book now becomes very important because of what is inside.

There’s absolutely no storage method that can actually guarantee 100% safety of your seed phrase, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do your best to secure it, for those who choose to secure their phrase using the paper method, you’re right that it’s not enough to just write them down and drop it where it can be easily accessed. The thoughts of some people is that, even if someone randomly bumps into it, they’d probably not know what those set of words are, which is a very careless way to think because you might never know who might actually see it, it could be someone who knows exactly what it is, and if you’re unlucky, that careless mistake might just cost you your entire asset.

Having several backups is the best thing one should do now. Just having only one place to secure your seedphrase on is not a very good way to save bitcoin, anything can happen. Yes, securing your seedphrase phrase is harder than saving bitcoin in your wallet. This has nothing do do with the zoologist, there is no way those seedphrase can be recovered again after been chewed and swallowed by the cat. I will say this is a reckless behavior from the owner and should be blamed for this. In this age and time when technology is advanced, he should have had many sources to depend on to save his seedphrase.

First of all it's wrong to write down your seed phrase in one paper. However if you put your seed phrase in a paper you don't have to write it down in one paper because you have to keep it in different places in your house or anywhere which you think is safe to keep them. In these case nothing can be done here because even if the owner of the cat who's BNB is gone kills the cat he can never recover the seed phrase. So he has to be careful next time and know that seed phrase is not something one would joke with. Actually this is a lesson to investors that do not keep their seed phrase in a safe place.

You are right that it is not good idea to write your seed phrase on just one piece of paper. It is better to break it up into smaller parts and keep them in different safe places. This helps keep your phrase safe if someone tries to steal it or if you lose it. Person who lost their BNB because of their cat is good example of what can go wrong. Now it is too late for them to get their seed phrase back. This should teach investors to be careful with their seed phrases. We need to keep them safe so we don't lose our money. Everyone investing should learn from this and make sure to keep their seed phrases safe.

Please make sure to save identical full backups and don't do seed-splitting.

Andreas Antonopoulos / Bitcoin Q&A: Why is Seed Splitting a Bad Idea?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5nSibpfHYE
Jameson Lopp / How to backup a seed phrase (https://blog.lopp.net/how-to-back-up-a-seed-phrase/): "In order to protect their backups from physical attackers, some folks naively split the seed phrase into several parts. This exponentially weakens your seed phrase against brute force attacks."

It might be cooked up story as you assumed but that doesn't longer matter. What matters now is the moral of story telling us how negligence could cost someone a huge amount of money as involved in Op story. Despite the continuous singing of wallet security here on a daily basis, some people won't listen. Perhaps, they think they don't have reasonable amount in their wallet at the moment but they will change when they have enough not knowing that asset security is something you need to learn from root as you begin your crypto journey. By reading about people losing money due to negligence whether the story is genuine or not might give them a second thought not to joke with their seed phrases.


Splitting the seed phrases and hide in different places? That would be the easiest way to lose track of your phrase and end up losing your assets. I would probably buy into the idea of having a duplicate/multiple copies of the phrase but breaking it into segments in different places doesn't sit well with me thou.

Based on this story, I can only make one conclusion: the best place to store seed phrase is a cat! No one will be able to extract seed phrase from cat for sure.  :)

P.S. A cat is not a recommended storage location for seed phrase.

If you have huge money in Bitcoin then better keep multiple copies of your seed at different geographical locations like one in your house and another in your bank locker. If you have all copies of your seed at one place then it's like you are creating a single point of failure for your seed. Imagine a scenario in case the whole house is burned down due to fire or damaged due to earth quake or flooding. To be on safe side and mitigate risk, it's a good strategy to store your seed at different locations.

Good question, I wonder how careless such person can be. Aside having multiple locations of storing your seed phrase which is a nice idea what happened to storing them in a safe storage medium like a water proof safe which can be encrypted which your regular 8-24 character password which can be easily remembered.  I never thought cats have interest in eating paper  ;D but jokes aside the story only explains how careless someone can be for a cat to get hold of his seed  phrase worth several millions, for a portfolio worth such amount he should have employed the use of advanced storage medium like a hardware wallet like ledger for storing his mnemonic seed.

I have discussed this several times in several threads before that it is never safe to store our Seed Phrase in a single place.
For this we have to choose the multiple stage method. If we want to store our seed phrase in the offline version as well, then we have to consider storing it online as well.
I would compare this to the driver session of crypto investment. There we do diversification to balance the amount of loss and profit, just like here we also have to do diversification to ensure the ultimate security of our private keys.
In this case, online or offline, we can add some different characters to our private keys which we can memorize. In this case, our private phrases will be more.

What causes lost of coins is in security of seed phrase, and that’s why we need to make sure we keep our seed phrase safe from perpetrators to penettrate into our wallet, its obvious from my perspective that seed phrase is meet for you see alone, when two or three persons have access to a seed phrase it's no longer a private key, so we have to accord ourselves such task of keeping it's wallet away from you.

I don’t think this is a good idea, to be honest. You should never rely on your memory when it comes to storing sensitive or important information like wallet private keys or seed phrases, even if we are talking about just a few characters or words. You never know what might happen to you or your memory (God forbid) a few years from now.

Actually, you should avoid storing your private keys or seed phrases online as much as possible. However, if you must do so, then before doing it, make sure to encrypt them with a reliable and strong encryption algorithm.

Seed spliting is very bad and terrible idea, because Bitcoin wallet private key and mnenonic seed can not be bruteforced easily. If you do seed spliting and lose one or two parts of your seed spliting, you will definitely lose that wallet and won't be able recover it and your bitcoin.

Making your wallet backups is to secure and save your wallet and your bitcoin fund, not to destroy it. This method is terrible backup idea and I agree with you and Andreas.

This is reason made people panicly and disappointed when Ledger launched their Ledger Recover.
Ledger Recovery - Send your (encrypted) recovery phrase to 3rd parties entities (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5452900).

There are some deiform losses that we can never recover and that is the reality. From this point of view, we will not be able to recover it.
The trick that I personally use is that I have some numbers that I have been using for seven-eight years now and no one knows them except me. I try to use those numbers in every password or private information and also use characters and special characters and when I save my password somewhere, I save only characters and special characters and I memorize the numbers in such a way that I will never forget unless I have an incident like memory loss in the future.
I don't disagree with this but I have seen several incidents where the providers of encryption methods are involved in stealing user data. Now the way is to create our own encryption application but I haven't gone to that level yet so it hasn't been done yet.

The security is what many don't even pay attention to, not knowing that this is even more better known that the investment they are interested in starting, because i don't see an essence in building an empire without having any form of defense on it, we have to know more about the use of the security measure in cryptocurrency, because this will be the ultimate reason why we are investing and withstand the risk of not loosing it all.

If this really happened, it means those paper backups were placed in an easily accessible spot, so much so that even a cat could get to them. I have cats, but I’ve never seen them shred paper to pieces, though I guess it depends on how they were raised and what they’re used to playing with. 

Backups like these should at least be stored in a cabinet where a cat (or anyone else) can’t reach them. Ideally, they should be kept in a much more secure location, not just a drawer in the living room. 

By the way, the article link redirects to a 404 page.

How did the cat win the paper with the seed phrase? Arhhh that's probably storage too easy to reach and that's easy on your mind!

Again, I keep a copy of the seed phrase in a safe place where only I know where it is.

Moreover, in a desk drawer or cupboard it is easily accessible to anyone.
As much as possible should be able to secure in a place where other people's money space is not often there.

Yes, this can happen, and I don't think there's a reason for anyone to fabricate this story.
You said you have cats, and I believe you should understand the curious of pet like cat sometime when they feel like playing, or testing out their claws they can use any object they see even if the thing is not put in an easy to accessible spot for the cat because it depend on the closeness of the cat and it owner.

A seed Phrase is very important for each an everyone, but most of peoples are very caress they do play with the their seed phrase, instead of them to keep it in a save places but they won’t and that’s such kind of things happen to many people’s; if not how can someone lost $12m worth of BNB this is a very sad news to be sincere speaking.

Although that written a seed phrase in a sheet of papers is very dangerous, because of scenarios animals but we still not everyone are save is just have to be careful when ever we keep our seed phrase some of the people are recommended a phone that is better to keep it in phone, and which is also dangerous since the phone might lost too.

I completely agree with you.
Security is the most important aspect of any investment, even more important than the investment itself because it’s useless having an investment when you can’t boast of the security of your investment, because you can just wake up one morning and all your life’s worth has disappeared into thin air. And the worst part of this whole thing is that, a lot of people in the industry fail to acknowledge this fact. You’ll see someone writing their seed phrase on a notepad and just carelessly drop it on the table, which is a very reckless way to behave with one’s phrases.

Storing your bitcoin in a good wallet, non custodial and open source. Make your wallet backups and store them safely, secured and secretly. You can think of backup purpose and make your proper practice.

Your backup is to keep your bitcoin safely as you have another chance of recovering your wallet. Its purpose is not to help other people stealing your bitcoin. Even you don't  get a hack or loss by someone else with access to your wallet backup and your bitcoin, you have another risk of losing your bitcoin.

Like this careless man
His backup is in a garbage can (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5407326.0) as his Mom did not know that piece of paper is important with him.

Anything that can be easily damaged is not advisable when writing your seed phrase or storing it in it because it can easily be torn off. You can find a better way of storing your seed phrase than writing it down, and people are finding it very hard to save it because it contains many words, so one missing one can change everything. The example you gave about a man losing everything to his cat—I wonder how the man is going to feel about losing such an amount of money.

and you can even save it in a deposit box in the bank the only thing that matters is when you can keep saving because it holds a lot of value, and the worst thing that can happen is when you save it online, that can be one of the worst steps you can take so it is better to consult other alternatives to save your seed phrase because there are a lot of options out there that can help give more idea on how to save bitcoin.

LOL, you are not recovering that from the cat.  ;D

That honestly raises the question: where the hell did he store it in the first place that was so easily accessible?

I can't help but feel this is a rookie mistake. That investor must be pounding sand right now.

Well, is it really believable that you would put $12 million worth of BNB in a place where a cat would eat it and ruin it? If this were real, then of course the person who broke the security system should have stored it in a specific, secure location as a backup. The person whose security system was compromised was a complete idiot for leaving a wallet with so much dollar value in a place that had no security.

well to me I think the scenario seems to highly and unlikely and it rises several red flags, how can a person leave a larger amount of cryptocurrency, such as $12 million worth of BNB in an insecure location where it could be easily accessible or destroyed to I feel it is indeed reckless and careless behaviour.
 
I feel leaving larger amount of cryptocurrency insecure location or using insecure practices may indicate a lack of understanding of carelessness, it's advisable to mostly secure storage like hardware wallet and cold storage to protect larger amount of cryptocurrency and have an backup system storage, and also implement backup procedures such as storing private keys in a secure location to prevent loss of funds.

Some people are just so careless with wallet security they don't take their security very seriously, or they could be doing some sort of rearranging in the house which could expose some valuables without them noticing it. At this point, all one could do is guess what led to such incidents and how come the person was that careless since they don't give more information about the whole event.

I don't know how true this story is however there's every possibility that it can happen if is true is very sad I wonder how the man will be looking at that cat right now there's every possibility that he will hate that cat for ever however someone should not be keeping just one phrase seed in one place I think you should keep one online and offline line but if you are scared of online scam or hack then you can use offline storage but you will not just store it in one place you can store it in 3 to 4 different places so if one gets damage it won't affect you.

This story doesn’t look real, and even if it is real, then this person in question is somehow careless; how can you leave your seed phrase in a place where your cat can easily see?
I think seed phrases are important security words that should only be accessed by the wallet owner, as such, saving it should be in a place where only you will have access to it, it should be in a saving box where only you and maybe a close family relative could have access to not in an open place where your pet can see.

Paper saving method is what most people use because it is cheaper and if well secured it is good; but there are other methods where you can use metal to customize the words but they are expensive.

Definitely no one will be happy in this kind of situation, emagine having $12m Worth of BNB and it's paper backups is being eating by a rat, it's not really funny. Thoughni don't know if the story is true or not but even if it's somehow true then it's a very sad story. If it was me I will as well thing deeply about it, and may even have emotional trauma. Of course it can happen to anyone that's why we really need to be careful.
 
One of the way to keep our see phrase safe is by paper backups, but in most cases it's not safe. We need to keep our seed phrase where it will be free from fire outbreak, flood and free from insect or rodents attack. Or morover it should be crested on a metallic plate that will be fireproof, waterproof and dust proof. To withstand any condition.

People don't know the reality of keeping there seed phrase safe and this is why they don't care it is only when they eventually lose there asset that they will start knowing the value. And they make there self venerable and that is how they will lose there money.

And I think before you buy and store people should be be given lecture before they even start investing because a lot of people are actually very careless when it comes to the manager of their funds. And  sure something will happen and they will not even know because they lack the basics and this is why it is very important to know all the safety measures that people use in saving there seed phrase and if anyone is not convinced with what they see then they should look for another means that they feel it will be suitable for them because people believe in there own idea better. The most important thing is for them to be serious with how they keep there stuff.

Yes, this happens to those who keep valuables scattered around. When their valuables are lost, they realize the importance of these valuables. The OP's incident may have been someone who felt the security of a million dollar BNB wallet was unimportant. He wasted $12 million on a cat, yet he didn't realize the importance of this security system until it was destroyed. Maybe he regrets it now, but if he had understood its importance before it was wasted, he wouldn't have to regret it so much now.

It may be true story that cat eat the seeds phrase, but the seeds phrase is not secure because assume the seeds phrase was inside the box or inside his inner room, it will be hard for cat to have access to the paper he wrote the seeds phrase. I guess this is a lesson to those newbies who don't have the knowledge of giving their seeds phrase a solid protection by writing them down and separate them in different places.

He never knew that his cats can do such a thing to his seeds phrase, which was the reason he leave the seeds phrase unsecure in his house.

The person was careless and ignored many security recommendations for safe wallet backups, and the cat is only a random factor for his nightmare. If it's not the cat, it can be something else but the ending result is the same, the wallet backup can be stolen, lost, destroyed and in the end the user lose that wallet and fund inside.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies must be stored safely and very secure but there are many steps for achieving it. From choosing a good wallet software to use for your wallet creation, wallet backup methods, and how to test your wallet backups as well as store backups safely for future recovery.

If you start a first step bad, later steps can not help, but to be safe you must do all necesssary steps very carefully and rightly as recommended.

Very funny story I wanted to read more details on the story but the link shared in the ops is not working, if this is true, it shows a high level of carelessness from that ops because having stored your seed phrase where a domestic animal will just get access to destroy it is the height of negligence and this is a bad outcome for the victim since the information is gone forever.


On another note, I think the seed phrase will be saved in another source, at least maybe on his phone draft somewhere he kept it before duplicating it on the paper.

He fucked up big time although am also a little bit curious and at the same time confused to where and how he might have possibly save his seed phrase that the cat would have gotten access to it.

Right now the possible best I can come up with is maybe he wrote it now on paper and save it on something that actually looks tantalizing for the cat and who's the cat not to fall to the temptation. 😆

Apart from writing the seed phrase down in a paper, where are we supposed to write them down to save?

I don’t think writing the seed phrases down in a paper is a wrong idea, it is safer than leaving them in your phone as image or taking them to your mail or anywhere online to save your seed phrase, saving in a physical place where you can easily access it is better, but duplicating the paper could have help in this situation because it will not be saved in one place, therefore, the cat in this case cannot eat the two at the same time; furthermore, I think if the one paper is even properly kept, the cat cant get access to the paper if saved in a box or safe diary that is always locked in a safe place.

Anytime I come across such thread that talk about how to secure our seed phrase, I do always make reference to this thread Securing your seed phrase with washers  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5389446.0) by fillippone; the thread is well educative and I learned he recently update the images in the post for easy access; using the methods outlined there will be better, but it is expensive, but I think for someone to have such amount, they need to go any length to secure their wallets and this method in the above post will be helpful.

I don't know how true your story is but it's a shame the cat ate it. You shouldn't have taken such a big risk to your security especially when it comes to digital assets and important information it's not wise to store everything in one place. To reduce the risk you should store the data or seed in multiple places for security and ease of recovery if you spread the data or seed across multiple places if data gets corrupted in one place it can be recovered from another. Keeping it in multiple places wouldn't have affected you as badly.

For me the only way that you can secure your seat phrase is for you to write it out and the stuff for a place where nobody can find it so it is only way someone can secure it's seed phrase, so we need to know and we need to understand the basic things that has to do with security of your personal seed phrase knowing that, it's important to have a private document of your seed phrase so that people will not have access to your seed phrase.

It's not a laughable something, theirs every tendency that what op said is hundred percent accurate, because I could remember vividly when people in this platform or community was encouraging people not to save their seed phrase on email, laptop and phone, and they were encouraging people to only save their seed phrase offline through document

So that people will not know exactly were the seed phrase is been saved, so that people will not have accessibility, so from my perspective I think that we need to know that we need to keep our private key were it will not be steal, and it will not be burned from any fire outbreak.

Firstly edit the bold text to the correct word.
To my option, I think the only safest way to secure our seed phrase is using this method. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5537943.msg65269202#msg65269202) writing it out is better but it depends on how and where you keep it. In a floody environment it's better to use a safe crypto steel because it doesn't get spoilt in water but will probably shift to another area which you might not be able to find. Actually heat (fire) might be impenetrable but it depends on the temperature.