Can I just delete my wallet and use my 12-word recovery key as my “storage”?

[Bryansta]

Obviously if you’re making transactions you need a wallet, but if you’re just hodling, do people just write it down on a piece of paper and put that somewhere safe and call it a day? Would a bitcoin millionaire trust his funds to a scrap of paper and put it in a safety deposit box? I’m just trying to understand options safe storage. Thanks!

[OmegaStarScream]

It all depends on how you created the 12 words seed. If you did that offline and on a LiveCD, then you don't have anything to worry about, if you did it online though, then personally, I'd be paranoid.

Also, it's better to extend the seed with the custom words (You can use Electrum for that), and create multiple copies of the recovery phrase to hide them in different places.

[andulolika]

Ugh, 12 word passwords disgust me, yes you can hold your privatekey in a piece of paper and retrieve your funds with it. But omegastarscream is right, online generated keys aren' really safe.

[JasmineRose]

that was a briliant idea, for now i don't know wich wallet can do that because wallet address and recovery code is always separate.
i know, you think if 12 word is too low qualty secure system and maybe a billionare man/miss is doubt about it to handle off all their money in that wallet.
maybe someday we will see thw news of wallet like that, just maybe.

[stuffmusic]

12 word passwords disgust me

May I ask, is this a personal preference, or is there a technical reason why this might not be a good idea?

[andulolika]

12 word passwords disgust me

May I ask, is this a personal preference, or is there a technical reason why this might not be a good idea?

Dictionaries can be collected, I think a private key is stronger, and I would like it longer, just as xmr's monstruosity.
Probably a personal preference yes but if you don't do them very well you might be more vulnerable for sure, they constantly being farmed and stockpiled.

[passwordnow]

You just don't hold your private keys or 12 word recovery for 1 piece of paper. But as much as possible, you'll create a backup so whenever your paper gets rip off or gone, you can still recover it and thanks to that backup copy. How many backups? depends how many you want to create and places where you put them.

[andulolika]

You just don't hold your private keys or 12 word recovery for 1 piece of paper. But as much as possible, you'll create a backup so whenever your paper gets rip off or gone, you can still recover it and thanks to that backup copy. How many backups? depends how many you want to create and places where you put them.

I like physical wallets, I has satochip in my signature because is cheap and good, and nfc coming soon.

[giammangiato]

Obviously if you’re making transactions you need a wallet, but if you’re just hodling, do people just write it down on a piece of paper and put that somewhere safe and call it a day? Would a bitcoin millionaire trust his funds to a scrap of paper and put it in a safety deposit box? I’m just trying to understand options safe storage. Thanks!

Security first of all when there is money at stake or cryptocurrencies in this case, as already said by others before creating the mnemonic phrases, it is advisable not to be online at that time, saying "a safe PC is a PC off" and the most fitting phrase I've ever heard. So I don't think owners of bitcoin millionaires keep their sentences on a piece of paper, most likely they will have been written on the walls of the house too, safety first of all.

[bitmover]

Obviously if you’re making transactions you need a wallet, but if you’re just hodling, do people just write it down on a piece of paper and put that somewhere safe and call it a day? Would a bitcoin millionaire trust his funds to a scrap of paper and put it in a safety deposit box? I’m just trying to understand options safe storage. Thanks!

It all depends on how your 12 words (seed) were generated.

If it was generated in an offline and safe environment, you don't need nothing else. You don't need a hardware wallet, neither a mobile/desktop wallet. You can just save that piece of paper containing your seed words and whenever you wish you can spend those funds in any wallet of your choice.

Most security problems are related on how your seed was generated. If you used a bad wallet, or if it was generated in an insecure device, it should be considered compromised.

You trust the wallet just to generate your seed.

[BrewMaster]

12 word passwords disgust me

May I ask, is this a personal preference, or is there a technical reason why this might not be a good idea?

Dictionaries can be collected, I think a private key is stronger, and I would like it longer, just as xmr's monstruosity.
Probably a personal preference yes but if you don't do them very well you might be more vulnerable for sure, they constantly being farmed and stockpiled.

you are confusing passwords with mnemonics.
a password is in most cases not so random and is chosen by the user which makes a dictionary attack a viable option although 12 words is still a very hard one to crack.
a mnemonic on the other hand is simply a different representation of a random entropy that was created by the computer the same way it creates a random private key for you. so if you trust the wallet to create a private key for you, then you can also trust it to create a random mnemonic for you since they have the same exact security level on 12 words (128 bits of entropy).

[webtricks]

12 word passwords disgust me

May I ask, is this a personal preference, or is there a technical reason why this might not be a good idea?

Dictionaries can be collected, I think a private key is stronger, and I would like it longer, just as xmr's monstruosity.
Probably a personal preference yes but if you don't do them very well you might be more vulnerable for sure, they constantly being farmed and stockpiled.

Mnemonic code is as secure as private key. When you are generating 12 words mnemonic seed, the probability of getting same one is 1 in 2048¹². That is:

Code:

1 in 5444517870735015415413993718908291383296

I think that is secure enough against most of the brute forces. If that's not enough, you can even generate mnemonic seed up to 24 words. I prefer 15 words long mnemonic seed i.e. 160 bits of entropy and decrease probability of getting same one to:

Code:

1 in 401734511064747568885490523085290650630550748445698208825344

Well if that's not enough, you can always choose your custom passphrase to generate seed. Such passphrase will be used with mnemonic code to generate final seed which will be then used to generate private key and bitcoin address.

Well if that's not enough, you can be more creative. Choose two passphrases, let say 'mySecretPassphrase' and 'myNotSoSecretPassphrase'. Now after generating mnemonic code, create two seeds, one with each of the passphrase. Now send 0.001 BTC on the bitcoin address generated with 'myNotSoSecretPassphrase' + mnemonic and write down 'myNotSoSecretPassphrase' on the sheet where you wrote or printed the mnemonic code. Send your rest of the bitcoins on the address generated with 'mySecretPassphrase' but don't write it anywhere. Now even in the situation where someone got the hold of the sheet, they will be directed to the wallet having 0.001 BTC funds and no will even suspect that there is another wallet with the same mnemonic having all the funds.

In short, mnemonic seed is very secure way of storing and using bitcoins if you know how it works.

[Schaeferness]

The money is not in the wallet, it is in the blockchain.
The way to prove that this money is yours is by owning the private key for the address that you sent.
Some wallets manage multiple private keys and, instead of a set of private keys, give you a 12 word to access your currencies.
As long as you keep these wallet seeds out of sight and the way to generate them is sound, you are safe.

[odolvlobo]

Obviously if you’re making transactions you need a wallet, but if you’re just hodling, do people just write it down on a piece of paper and put that somewhere safe and call it a day? Would a bitcoin millionaire trust his funds to a scrap of paper and put it in a safety deposit box? I’m just trying to understand options safe storage. Thanks!

None of the replies thus far have answered your questions. The answer to your question is yes. The key to holding bitcoins is the private key, or more generally, the seed that generates the private key. You don't need software to receive or store bitcoins. You only need the address that comes from the private key.

When you create a wallet, you are given a recovery phrase (also called a "seed"). That is what the wallet uses to generate your private keys (and their addresses). You must store the recovery phrase in a secure place so that when your computer dies or the wallet is corrupted, you can still access your bitcoins. You must protect the recovery phrase because it is all that is needed to take your bitcoins, and in your case it is the only way to access your bitcoins.

[20kevin20]

Would a bitcoin millionaire trust his funds to a scrap of paper and put it in a safety deposit box? I’m just trying to understand options safe storage. Thanks!

I would personally not trust my scap of paper unless I knew it was stored really well. There are quite a lot of things you have to consider, so as long as you need to hold your coins for the long term, take into consideration any scenario such as fires, floods, thefts, hostage situations etc and try to prevent the possibility of damage by as many of them as possible.

Generate private keys (or a mnemonic seed) offline and/or on a clean OS, write them down on a paper and as long as these situations either don't come up or wouldn't affect your holdings, you can call it a day. Just make sure you don't use that seed/key anywhere besides a trusted wallet - some people believe that is the actual sending address and end up writing them instead of the receiving address by mistake. So remember: seed/private key for storage, receiving addresses for receiving BTC, external addresses for destination accounts.

[dothebeats]

You can do that, provided that you are really sure that that scrap of paper is safe in your hands and is not within reach of people who might know what that scrap of paper really means. 12-word mnemonics are just as good as your private keys too, though your capacity to memorize such may or may not be great, so it's better to store it somewhere easily accessible to you and at the same time, secure from anyone else.

People have their own personal way of storing bitcoin-related things, and whatever works for you that is still secure enough may not work for other people who are overly-paranoid on such things (but I understand where they are coming from, too.)

[hatshepsut93]

I’m just trying to understand options safe storage.

There's three main vectors of losing coins:
 the software way - for example infected system, malicious wallet, faulty RNG;
 an accident - a housefire, a flood, a family member threw  your wallet away while cleaning, etc.;
 a target theft - a thief knew what they are looking for a steal your seed, or use force against you to make you give up the wallet, this includes kidnapping for ransom;

Generating your wallet on an offline machine helps against the first type, and you also need a good security knowledge - you need to know how to verify software, avoid malware, etc.

Against accidents you need redundancy - have multiple copies of your seed in different places, use strong materials like stainless steel instead of paper.

Against theft you need strong physical security, keeping low profile to not attract thieves and use encryption instead of storing seed phrases or private keys in plaintext.

[pooya87]

Obviously if you’re making transactions you need a wallet, but if you’re just hodling, do people just write it down on a piece of paper and put that somewhere safe and call it a day? Would a bitcoin millionaire trust his funds to a scrap of paper and put it in a safety deposit box? I’m just trying to understand options safe storage. Thanks!

None of the replies thus far have answered your questions. The answer to your question is yes. The key to holding bitcoins is the private key, or more generally, the seed that generates the private key. You don't need software to receive or store bitcoins. You only need the address that comes from the private key.

When you create a wallet, you are given a recovery phrase (also called a "seed"). That is what the wallet uses to generate your private keys (and their addresses). You must store the recovery phrase in a secure place so that when your computer dies or the wallet is corrupted, you can still access your bitcoins. You must protect the recovery phrase because it is all that is needed to take your bitcoins, and in your case it is the only way to access your bitcoins.

there are a couple of points that the user has to keep in mind here.
first is that they should make sure they understand the methodology used to create the keys from the seed phrase. wallets may not be compatible with each other even when using the same algorithm (like using BIP39 but with different paths that can not be guessed) and sometimes they use entirely different algorithms like Electrum.
if that wallet stops being developed and becomes obsolete, the recovery steps could become tedious specially if the wallet wasn't popular.

secondly they should make sure the "recovery phrase" is actually used for recovering their keys (aka is a mnemonic like BIP39). there has been cases like blockchain.info where the term "recovery phrase" was used for the phrase that looked like a mnemonic but had nothing to do with keys but only to recover the account login password.

[peterurb]

The seed is a private key which is in words so it is easier to remember so you can pass through airport control with even millions of money. It is also easier to write, cause you to know those words, but when you will write "oa6d5adc" - some string - it is much likely, that you can make a mistake there.

But it is possible to use it that way, but when you are generating seed you should do it very safely and not at some website.

[LbtalkL]

Of course, you are free to delete your wallet as long as you have backup your passphrase or private key. You can log it back any time you want to. If you are planning to hold a bigger amount I suggest buying hardware instead of keeping yourself uncomfortable with your paper wallets thinking it might be lost due to hack or phishing. Hardware wallets have a disadvantage too if you lost it goodbye to your coins, while paper wallets if you made many backups you can recover it right away.