Where do you store your 24 word phrase?

[jerry0]

Back then i used electrum.  Back then i would write down the 12 word on a piece of paper and leave it in my apartment.  Of course that is not safe in case something happens to my apartment etc.  I thought about keeping an online backup such as imagine a cloud service like dropbox or google.  But of course i don't just type the 12 or 24 word phrase on it and then if you access my email, you have access to my document with it.  Because i would type the seed in keepass.  So in order for me to get to the file, i have to have to email and password.  Then have my keepass password in order to open it. 


I heard people say this is not safe because keeping it online is never safe it case it get hacked.  Well if theres a fire or anything happens to your computer/apartment etc, then everything burns down, then what?  I heard people say they have a safe and vault but would if its a huge fire etc.  Thus my thoughts were as long as you have an online backup of it... make sure you put a long password for your email and also keepass, then you have access to it.


Do people here still not recommend this?  I got a nano ledger s and thus keep my btc there.  At the moment, i wrote it down on a piece of paper.  The thing is i could type the seed in my keepass... thus if someone got my laptop, well they still have to know my password for keepass.  Or if email get accessed somehow, they still need to get my password for keepass. 


Does anyone here have ideas on this?  I heard people mention they break the 24 word in half or a few pieces and put it in secure location.  Like i heard people say 2 different bank deposit boxes.  Would that be smart?  Of course theft could happen in those but very rare.  But if you leave it in say 3 places, well if something happens in one place, well you won't have access to say 8 of words if you break it down into 24 words.  Does anyone have thoughts on this?


What is the best way to do this?  Also heres another scenario.  What if you travel quite a bit.  I do this quite much and thus i keep my nano ledger with me.  So where do i keep my 24 word seed then?  The thing is with electrum with the 12 word seed, sure you could possibly remember the 12 words.  I never tried but that probably wouldn't be that hard.  Like imagine you remember just the first 6 words, that wouldn't be that hard.  Now with the nano ledger s, 24 words is way too much. 


Now obviously walking around anywhere with your seed is foolish.  But if you travel quite a bit and have your nano ledger s with you, what is your best suggestion?  But in general, should you store your seed in your home?  Or in a bank or somewhere else?  The other place someone mentioned that was interesting was imagine you have a box in casino where you keep money/chips there.  That certainly seems like good idea but i dont have access to it.


How many cases has there been where there was fire and someones laptop/computer and safe or their documents got destroyed?  Certainly there has to be quite a bit.  So does anyone have tips on this?  The other thing was maybe store it in a usb drive in keepass and encrypt it and store it somewhere in the house where like in a box where it would look like nothing?  The other thing i thought was how about breaking it in 2 or 3 pieces and putting it in a book etc?  But of course you dont keep 8 words there.  You add more words like a sentence and try to make it look like its just scribble?

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[seizetehday5]

I will try to answer as many questions as possible but I feel I will miss a few or won't have the answer to all of them.

-Don't keep your seed at your apartment unless it is in "cryptosteel". That will protect it from fire and water.
-Keeping it in two different bank vaults is as safe as you can get, and it is the method I currently choose. (you can use 3, I know people who use 4 places even).
-Don't know where to keep it if travelling, I don't travel much. In that case I leave mine at bank, but again don't travel much.
-Best suggestion for travel is to get another Nano S and load it with travelling expenses or the couple of coins you feel are going to make moves during your travel.
-Generally I wouldn't store my seed at home, I would do this for a secondary device that had an insignificant amount on it perhaps.

[jerry0]

Anyone else?

[cissrawk]

I heard people say this is not safe because keeping it online is never safe it case it get hacked.  Well if theres a fire or anything happens to your computer/apartment etc, then everything burns down, then what?  I heard people say they have a safe and vault but would if its a huge fire etc.  Thus my thoughts were as long as you have an online backup of it... make sure you put a long password for your email and also keepass, then you have access to it.

Here what i do for this, I take a screenshoot and change the format from .jpg to random format and change the file name and backup it on my android phone since android is pretty safe from backdoor or spyware. If you want make a backup online, then create a new email from gmail after that create really strong password and link your new email to your main email. After that upload your backup to google drive and set private or only you. You must create random password for new email, since you already linked your account then you can try forget password from your main email. But still if you dont have access to your main email then its gone :/ .

Do people here still not recommend this?  I got a nano ledger s and thus keep my btc there.  At the moment, i wrote it down on a piece of paper.  The thing is i could type the seed in my keepass... thus if someone got my laptop, well they still have to know my password for keepass.  Or if email get accessed somehow, they still need to get my password for keepass.  

Probably some of them still recomend this.

Does anyone here have ideas on this?  I heard people mention they break the 24 word in half or a few pieces and put it in secure location.  Like i heard people say 2 different bank deposit boxes.  Would that be smart?  Of course theft could happen in those but very rare.  But if you leave it in say 3 places, well if something happens in one place, well you won't have access to say 8 of words if you break it down into 24 words.  Does anyone have thoughts on this?

I just split my word by 6 and safe it to my wardrobe and one on my pocket. Of course i still have backup on my phone just in case. So, i dont know about bank deposit boxes.

What is the best way to do this?  Also heres another scenario.  What if you travel quite a bit.  I do this quite much and thus i keep my nano ledger with me.  So where do i keep my 24 word seed then?  The thing is with electrum with the 12 word seed, sure you could possibly remember the 12 words.  I never tried but that probably wouldn't be that hard.  Like imagine you remember just the first 6 words, that wouldn't be that hard.  Now with the nano ledger s, 24 words is way too much.  

Write some of words to paper and put it on your pocket. Lets say you remember 10 words (more is better) just write rest of 14 words on paper and keep it. Even if someone got this, they still need to find rest of your words.

Now obviously walking around anywhere with your seed is foolish.  But if you travel quite a bit and have your nano ledger s with you, what is your best suggestion?  But in general, should you store your seed in your home?  Or in a bank or somewhere else?  The other place someone mentioned that was interesting was imagine you have a box in casino where you keep money/chips there.  That certainly seems like good idea but i dont have access to it.

I keep it on my home.

How many cases has there been where there was fire and someones laptop/computer and safe or their documents got destroyed?  Certainly there has to be quite a bit.  So does anyone have tips on this?  The other thing was maybe store it in a usb drive in keepass and encrypt it and store it somewhere in the house where like in a box where it would look like nothing?  The other thing i thought was how about breaking it in 2 or 3 pieces and putting it in a book etc?  But of course you dont keep 8 words there.  You add more words like a sentence and try to make it look like its just scribble?

Probably, my first answer can help you with this.

[deevan]

I will give you some different idea to store your 24 words seeds step by step.

1. Take any English dictionary, for example, online Oxford Dictionary, note down its (Author name, Date of publication) I'll tell you why at the end.
2. Now you have your 24 words seeds phrase for your nano ledger, for example, it can be like below
(1st.cat, 2nd.light, 3rd.bag, 4th.candle 5th...........................................24th. orange)
3. Since all seeds phrase of your Nano S will exist in the Dictionary so what you have to do now is find on which page no. of online dictionary the words are listed for example the 1st-word cat is listed on page no. 7, the 2nd-word light is on page no. 9, the 3rd-word bag is listed on page 12, the 4th-word candle is listed on page 17, & so on for all words, till 24th-word orange is listed on page 34, note down all the page no. & highlight the words till 24th word in a dictionary & save it.
4. For example, your result will be like (7,9,12,17,...............34)
5. Now the numbers & dictionary will act as a private key if you want you may throw away your card on which 24 words you have noted down.


Now no one knows what is your strategy for keeping safe your Nano S keywords, so you can just store above nos on your computer, on mobile or anywhere if some steal it they can't understand what is the meaning of these nos. Only you and only you know what is the meaning & which Dictionary you have used to encrypt it in this case i.e Oxford Dictionary. If you accidentally delete that online Dictionary, no worries you can also find it online, I told you above to note the Author name & date of publication so it will be easy for you which version of Dictionary you have used to encrypt your seeds.

Okay, one more thing if you accidentally deleted the dictionary with highlighted keywords from your PC or your window fails, & you have the numbers but now how will you know what was the word you marked even if you know the page no. of the word. In this case when you are noting down the page no. also note down the line no. & place no. of that word against each page no. Ultimately your result will be like below.


Page no.   Line no.   Word Place no.
7               eg. 5              eg. 2
9               eg. 14            eg. 6
12             eg. 2              eg. 4
17             eg. 16            eg. 1
.                .                      .
.                .                      .
.                .                      .
.                .                      .
34             eg. 1              eg. 7

[Xester]

Thinking of being hacked is just overkill. You can simply keep your phrase on an email. I do make a unique email for every key that you make. My friends and my group have also started to copy this style and it is safe. Other thing is to print it on a piece of paper and laminate it and paste it in your wall, but you need to insert it on a group of words and place it on many group of number and you are the one who only know where it is.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Some of the advice in this thread is truly awful.

Never take a picture of your seed and store it unencrypted on any digital storage. You are just asking to lose your coins with the simplest of hacks or thefts.
Never rely on your memory to memorise all or part of your seed. The human brain is far too fragile a thing.
Never save your seed in an email address. You are reducing the security of your phrase to a simple, brute-forcable password.

[Tipsters]

Back then i used electrum.  Back then i would write down the 12 word on a piece of paper and leave it in my apartment.  Of course that is not safe in case something happens to my apartment etc.  I thought about keeping an online backup such as imagine a cloud service like dropbox or google.  But of course i don't just type the 12 or 24 word phrase on it and then if you access my email, you have access to my document with it.  Because i would type the seed in keepass.  So in order for me to get to the file, i have to have to email and password.  Then have my keepass password in order to open it. 


I heard people say this is not safe because keeping it online is never safe it case it get hacked.  Well if theres a fire or anything happens to your computer/apartment etc, then everything burns down, then what?  I heard people say they have a safe and vault but would if its a huge fire etc.  Thus my thoughts were as long as you have an online backup of it... make sure you put a long password for your email and also keepass, then you have access to it.


Do people here still not recommend this?  I got a nano ledger s and thus keep my btc there.  At the moment, i wrote it down on a piece of paper.  The thing is i could type the seed in my keepass... thus if someone got my laptop, well they still have to know my password for keepass.  Or if email get accessed somehow, they still need to get my password for keepass. 


Does anyone here have ideas on this?  I heard people mention they break the 24 word in half or a few pieces and put it in secure location.  Like i heard people say 2 different bank deposit boxes.  Would that be smart?  Of course theft could happen in those but very rare.  But if you leave it in say 3 places, well if something happens in one place, well you won't have access to say 8 of words if you break it down into 24 words.  Does anyone have thoughts on this?


What is the best way to do this?  Also heres another scenario.  What if you travel quite a bit.  I do this quite much and thus i keep my nano ledger with me.  So where do i keep my 24 word seed then?  The thing is with electrum with the 12 word seed, sure you could possibly remember the 12 words.  I never tried but that probably wouldn't be that hard.  Like imagine you remember just the first 6 words, that wouldn't be that hard.  Now with the nano ledger s, 24 words is way too much. 


Now obviously walking around anywhere with your seed is foolish.  But if you travel quite a bit and have your nano ledger s with you, what is your best suggestion?  But in general, should you store your seed in your home?  Or in a bank or somewhere else?  The other place someone mentioned that was interesting was imagine you have a box in casino where you keep money/chips there.  That certainly seems like good idea but i dont have access to it.


How many cases has there been where there was fire and someones laptop/computer and safe or their documents got destroyed?  Certainly there has to be quite a bit.  So does anyone have tips on this?  The other thing was maybe store it in a usb drive in keepass and encrypt it and store it somewhere in the house where like in a box where it would look like nothing?  The other thing i thought was how about breaking it in 2 or 3 pieces and putting it in a book etc?  But of course you dont keep 8 words there.  You add more words like a sentence and try to make it look like its just scribble?

I don't know anything about the 24 word phrase. All I know is that you are making sense in what you are saying. Keeping a hardcopy of your personal information is a good practice since I also wrote down my private key 3 times and distribute it on three different and memorable places for me. I am interested on how did you get a nano ledger because in our country, it is very rare.

[cissrawk]

Never take a picture of your seed and store it unencrypted on any digital storage. You are just asking to lose your coins with the simplest of hacks or thefts.

It probably save if you change the picture format to another format. Lets say *jpg to random format like *awqe atleast it will safe for people who dont know how to check the real file format. But if someone open it with notepad and check the code, probably they know what format it is and the thief can change the format back to *jpg again. So, we need to change some code a little bit and this is what i do until now and save it on my phone.

[Reid]

I will give you some different idea to store your 24 words seeds step by step.

1. Take any English dictionary, for example, online Oxford Dictionary, note down its (Author name, Date of publication) I'll tell you why at the end.
2. Now you have your 24 words seeds phrase for your nano ledger, for example, it can be like below
(1st.cat, 2nd.light, 3rd.bag, 4th.candle 5th...........................................24th. orange)
3. Since all seeds phrase of your Nano S will exist in the Dictionary so what you have to do now is find on which page no. of online dictionary the words are listed for example the 1st-word cat is listed on page no. 7, the 2nd-word light is on page no. 9, the 3rd-word bag is listed on page 12, the 4th-word candle is listed on page 17, & so on for all words, till 24th-word orange is listed on page 34, note down all the page no. & highlight the words till 24th word in a dictionary & save it.
4. For example, your result will be like (7,9,12,17,...............34)
5. Now the numbers & dictionary will act as a private key if you want you may throw away your card on which 24 words you have noted down.

Wise one. 

Love how he explained this.
It could be the best one since the one who will find the dictionary if you somehow lost it will need to decipher all that highlighted words. (if you will highlight it)
Since not everyone knows what would it be, the choices will be trash it or waste some time to decipher it and where would they input it.

They have so many ideas here and I really love it. Might be doing some of them later.
Something like a notepad in my smartphone then change the extension into .ERR or something else. They will not think the error came from the extension just like that.

[bitart]

I recommend the cryptosteel way, or something similar.
If Cryptosteel is a bit expensive, try the following:
Order some stainless steel business cards from ebay (few cents / piece)
Buy or borrow an engraver tool.
Engrave the seed (with some modification, if needed to make it harder to guess what's that) into the metal business card.
Put it into your safe or into a safe in the nearest bank branch.
Voilá

[Ausgewielt]

It is dangerous to tell people about where do you store 24 word phase , isn't it? Please don't share such thing in public. It will give many hint to criminals who want to stole our cryptocurrency. Anywhere is a good place to store a 24 word phrase as long as nobody knows and we still remember about where to find it. Hard copy is very good to prevent us from lossing access to our wallet, no doubt we need that but don't tell anyone.

[Iggor]

I will give you some different idea to store your 24 words seeds step by step.

1. Take any English dictionary, for example, online Oxford Dictionary, note down its (Author name, Date of publication) I'll tell you why at the end.
2. Now you have your 24 words seeds phrase for your nano ledger, for example, it can be like below
(1st.cat, 2nd.light, 3rd.bag, 4th.candle 5th...........................................24th. orange)
3. Since all seeds phrase of your Nano S will exist in the Dictionary so what you have to do now is find on which page no. of online dictionary the words are listed for example the 1st-word cat is listed on page no. 7, the 2nd-word light is on page no. 9, the 3rd-word bag is listed on page 12, the 4th-word candle is listed on page 17, & so on for all words, till 24th-word orange is listed on page 34, note down all the page no. & highlight the words till 24th word in a dictionary & save it.
4. For example, your result will be like (7,9,12,17,...............34)
5. Now the numbers & dictionary will act as a private key if you want you may throw away your card on which 24 words you have noted down.


Now no one knows what is your strategy for keeping safe your Nano S keywords, so you can just store above nos on your computer, on mobile or anywhere if some steal it they can't understand what is the meaning of these nos. Only you and only you know what is the meaning & which Dictionary you have used to encrypt it in this case i.e Oxford Dictionary. If you accidentally delete that online Dictionary, no worries you can also find it online, I told you above to note the Author name & date of publication so it will be easy for you which version of Dictionary you have used to encrypt your seeds.

Okay, one more thing if you accidentally deleted the dictionary with highlighted keywords from your PC or your window fails, & you have the numbers but now how will you know what was the word you marked even if you know the page no. of the word. In this case when you are noting down the page no. also note down the line no. & place no. of that word against each page no. Ultimately your result will be like below.


Page no.   Line no.   Word Place no.
7               eg. 5              eg. 2
9               eg. 14            eg. 6
12             eg. 2              eg. 4
17             eg. 16            eg. 1
.                .                      .
.                .                      .
.                .                      .
.                .                      .
34             eg. 1              eg. 7

One of the best advice that I have heard so far. Actually, you will be an Enigma machine for your seeds.
Just gun to your head can break this one. So shush your mouth.

[Zentor]

I am storing it in few cryptocontainers using opensource software that was audited and checked by me and backup it in few cloud storages

[simongoat]

I haven't done it but I thought about writing them down with that pen you need an ultraviolet light to see it with. Then you could write it anywhere.

[zenrol28]

Being so much paranoid can kill you. Just write it down and keep it on a zip-lock and put it somewhere safe. And thats it, just like that. You're thinking too much. Also spread your bitcoins don't just keep it in one place, there are so many ways to keep your bitcoins, try all of them. I write my word phrase on an old notebook and keep it somewhere not safe, since no one know i got bitcoins.

[gentlemand]

It probably save if you change the picture format to another format. Lets say *jpg to random format like *awqe atleast it will safe for people who dont know how to check the real file format. But if someone open it with notepad and check the code, probably they know what format it is and the thief can change the format back to *jpg again. So, we need to change some code a little bit and this is what i do until now and save it on my phone.

He's completely right. You need your botty smacked. Everything you're doing is needlessly risky.

Multiple micro sd cards with the seed in txt files in properly encrypted folders created on a computer that'll never see the internet again will do the job. Deposit them in various places and you should be fine. 

[shamzblueworld]

Okay some of the options here are really useful, but I think all this makes sense when you have enough amount in the wallet.
There are many options one can take like some posted above,
splitting up the words on 2-3 different places can be a good option as well, but what if you need them and then you don't have them nearby.
I think if its a 12 word, it is possible to memorize it easily.
And even for a 24 word phrase, its possible to memorize it, or maybe you can encrypt it into something easy to remember, but then you'll have to remember the decrypting process as well.

[gentlemand]

Okay some of the options here are really useful, but I think all this makes sense when you have enough amount in the wallet.
There are many options one can take like some posted above,
splitting up the words on 2-3 different places can be a good option as well, but what if you need them and then you don't have them nearby.
I think if its a 12 word, it is possible to memorize it easily.
And even for a 24 word phrase, its possible to memorize it, or maybe you can encrypt it into something easy to remember, but then you'll have to remember the decrypting process as well.

Human memory is simply hopeless. Unless you're superhuman you'll forget within days. I have tons of encrypted files that I can't get into any more and I forgot the passwords within a few weeks or months, and they would've been variations on my usual ones.

Unless you spend a few minutes every day practicing and double checking, your seed will be toast in no time. And to be able to check and remind it'll need to be written down anyway.

Spend $50 on sd cards and a knackered laptop and you should be secure as can be for life.

[DAOfan]

It is very unsafe to store your seed phrase on a computer. It is exponentially bad to keep it on someone else's cloud service.

Writing down your seed (using a pen) on a piece of paper and then storing it in your safety deposit box at the bank is a pretty good solution if you do not have a whole lot of bitcoin. One even better solution would be to buy small engraving tool (I have seem them for less than $10) and engrave your seed phrase on a piece of stainless steel. That way it won't get burnt up in a fire or get wet if there is a flood.

However, keep in mind that the bank does not ensure safety deposit boxes (in the US at least). So make sure you have separate insurance if you have a whole lot of bitcoin stored there.