Writing down seed phrase: printer ink or pen ink ?

[unknowncustomer]

Hello,

I would like to write down my seed phrase but I am hesitating between writing it on a sheet with a pen or typing it on my notepad app on my computer and print it ?
Which one will last longer ?

Thanks !

[mocacinno]

Hello,

I would like to write down my seed phrase but I am hesitating between writing it on a sheet with a pen or typing it on my notepad app on my computer and print it ?
Which one will last longer ?

Thanks !

I don't think there's a simple answer to your question... To many variables...
Inktjet/laser?
Original toner/copy?
Fountain pen/biro?
cheap recycled paper/high quality paper?
Stored in sunlight/Stored in a banksafe?
Laminated/unlaminated?

I think the more important consideration would be: why enter your seed on a potentially vulnerable device? As soon as you enter your seed on a notepad, there's a slim chance it gets exposed (especially if you save it afterwards), it gets sent over your network and it's stored in the printer's memory.
The risk is small, but pen and paper are 100% offline, so that risk is smaller....  You're printing it anyways, so the attack vector of an evil maid reading the piece of paper should be equal between printed and written seeds.

Now, penmanship comes into play.... I asked my wife to write down my seed... If i'd have written it myself, i probably would have been better off printing it in the first place, since i cannot read my own handwriting mere minutes after finishing writing something down

[PawGo]

Does not matter. Laminate.

[Charles-Tim]

Hope it will not be known to the person that will print it for you or saved on your device? If you have printer at home, there is nothing bad about that, also if you can laminate it. But going outside to do that is not advisable, your seed phrase must remain seen and known only by you, anyone else that sees it already knows it. Also delete it permanently on the device you saved it after printing.

The best simple option in this regard is for you to just write it down on a piece of paper, it is not bad either. Have like two replica and keep them individually in different locations.

But you may decide to go for safer options like:

Store your bitcoin seed / private key safely (Water, Fire, Shock-proof)

Edit:
Read mocacinno post below to get the printing accurately. I will also better stick to writing it down with pen which is offline.

[NeuroticFish]

I would like to write down my seed phrase but I am hesitating between writing it on a sheet with a pen or typing it on my notepad app on my computer and print it ?
Which one will last longer ?

As said, it depends on too many variables. I've seen erasable pen, which also fade in time. The receipts are printed and do fade (I think it's thermal and not the best example, but still).
But a proper pen (usually ball pen, I'd guess) or marker would do. A proper printer would also do, just keep in mind that adding printer into equation is usually considered lowering the security.
Also as said, if you laminate it'll be better.

I'll add that you should also store your seed (in a way or another) in multiple (geographically different) places.

---
Edit: If the funds worth the hassle, you may also consider CryptoSteel or this solution: Securing a Bitcoin seed phrase in stainless-steel washers

[mocacinno]

--snip-- If you have printer at home, there is nothing bad about that --snip--

unless you are paranoid... Personally, i will not let my hardware wallet's seed phrase touch any electronic device ever.
Offcourse there are ways of printing a seed *correctly* (in the opsec sense), but that would require you to use an offline machine, boot it using a live distro, type the seed in a file which you save on an usb stick, reboot the pc you used to write the seed down (maybe even use a tool to "test" the machine's memory).

Then you'd have to put your printer in offline mode, print from the usb stick, power cycle the printer and fill it's memory with big printjobs (or completely destroy the printer by fire).

Then you'd have to burn the usb stick, or at least overwrite it with random data several times... Also from an offline pc.

Yup... paranoid people exist And if you're serious about keeping loads of BTC @home, paranoia is good... Better to be paranoid than to be robbed...

[pooya87]

It was covered by @mocacinno but I want to point out that one of the main reasons why encoding algorithms such as BIP39 exist where they take a bunch of bits in computer language and turn them into human readable words, is to help users write it down easily without needing a printer. I'd go with pen and paper (or replacement medium like metal sheet).
Just make sure to double check what you've written and in the end you should try recovering your wallet using what you wrote down (maybe a couple of days later) to see if you did it right.

[dkbit98]

I would like to write down my seed phrase but I am hesitating between writing it on a sheet with a pen or typing it on my notepad app on my computer and print it ?
Which one will last longer ?

Writing seed words on piece of paper is always a better option than keeping digital copy, but if you really want something that will last for a long time use metal plates.
I don't trust printer ink is going to be good enough because it can use cheap ink color and that can fade fairly quickly like those receipt bills.
Metal plates should be from stainless steel or you can make cheap DIY version of backup using washers you can buy in your local store, here is one example with instructions for Securing a Bitcoin seed phrase in stainless-steel washers.

[PawGo]

Recently I was contacted by someone who lost part of his WIF because of gun oil in safe lock... So, you never know.

[LoyceV]

Which one will last longer ?

You can quite easily check this for yourself: dig up some old school papers, the earlier the better. Then get some old books you have. I expect all of them to still be totally fine.

In my experience:

• Paper, ink and toner will probably last for centuries. Just keep them dry! And keeping another backup in another place doesn't hurt of course.
• CDRs, electronics and thermal printing on the other hand expire. I expect all of it to be useless within a few years up to a few decades.

[DaveF]

If you don't want to go the metal way as others have posted, and use paper make sure it's good paper: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5296179.0
And obviously make sure it's in a safe place. As the saying goes, don't re-invent the wheel. Doing things that you think will make it more secure, like rearranging words or splitting them in odd ways can loose all your BTC if 10 years from now you forgot what you did and now have your restore words that you don't remember how to restore.

-Dave

[BlackHatCoiner]

And keeping another backup in another place doesn't hurt of course.

That's a must, in my opinion. If, knock on wood, something happens to the piece of paper, you should have a back up, which should also be backed up later. Always keep the seed phrase in two different places.

If we're talking about significant amounts, make sure that even if your house is set on fire, you won't lose one of those pieces.

Recently I was contacted by someone who lost part of his WIF because of gun oil in safe lock... So, you never know.

Weren't we both in a thread where one had their paper wallet eaten by a bug? 

[o_e_l_e_o]

I'm going to disagree with everyone above saying it doesn't really matter and instead say you should absolutely write your seed phrase by hand and not use a printer.*

You say you would type it in a notepad app and then print it. By doing so, there are multiple ways your seed phrase could be stolen. Keyloggers could steal it, or screen capture malware could steal it. Even if you delete the notepad file after you are done, unless you actually write over those sectors on your hard drive then the data isn't erased, and is vulnerable to being stolen by malware or anyone with physical access to your computer. Almost all modern printers keep recently printed documents in their memory, and again, your seed phrase could be extracted this way.

mocacinno has outlined how difficult it is to be absolutely sure something you print remains completely secure. It isn't easy. What is easy, though, is bypassing all of that and just writing it down by hand. Yeah, some people might call me paranoid, but I've never lost as much as a single satoshi, and why take the risk for literally no benefit?

*Unless you really know what you are doing, but if you are asking this question, then you probably don't (no offense intended).

[pooya87]

You can quite easily check this for yourself: dig up some old school papers, the earlier the better. Then get some old books you have. I expect all of them to still be totally fine.

It depends on the quality of the paper and the ink, almost always it is good and will last a very long time as you said but I've seen cases with low quality paper and low quality ink (pens) that faded away after a year or two.

You say you would type it in a notepad app and then print it. By doing so, there are multiple ways your seed phrase could be stolen. Keyloggers could steal it, or screen capture malware could steal it. Even if you delete the notepad file after you are done,

Technically you should do this on the same computer that the seed phrase was created on. Meaning if the computer is air gap then this risk doesn't exist, if it is not then storing it in a notepad adds only a small risk on top of already very risky setup.
P.S. You don't have to save the notepad on disk to print it.

[stompix]

There is one thing I really don't get.
If we're talking about durability only, not risks of having the private key exposed while printing or risking writing the wrong letter when you do it yourself, why not do both? I mean, it's paper, its costs are ridiculously low, it doesn't weigh a ton, and two pieces of paper 2x10 cm are just as easy to hide as one unless you want to print each letter on an A1 sheet.
So why not do both, put them side by side, and hope at least one will last a century?

In my experience:

• Paper, ink and toner will probably last for centuries. Just keep them dry! And keeping another backup in another place doesn't hurt of course.

Depends a lot on both the printer and the quality of the paper.
While I was graduating university there was an influx of shitty paper that looked great as it was white and almost shined in the light, even cheating papers with small characters printed with the cheapest inkjet were quite easy to read when hiding in your sleeve (not that I did ever that), but none, absolutely none of all my work during those years, although kept in a bookshelf, has more than let's say 60% of the original print, some of the pages have even miraculously glued themselves to each other.
If you use good stuff yeah, it will last a lot, hopefully, but I would still trust a stainless steel plate over the paper, a pen might be mightier than a sword but a steel plate beats the crap out of any sheet of paper.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Meaning if the computer is air gap then this risk doesn't exist

Absolutely. But very few people actually use properly airgapped computers, and if you have the technical knowledge required to properly airgap a device, then you are almost certainly already aware of the risks of printing a seed phrase over hand writing one and how to mitigate against those risks too.

if it is not then storing it in a notepad adds only a small risk on top of already very risky setup.

Also agree, but the risk here is that OP is not generating his seed phrase on his computer at all, but is generating it on a hardware wallet or even a mobile wallet, and then typing it in plain text in to his non-airgapped computer, in which case the additional risk is significant.

[DaveF]

Meaning if the computer is air gap then this risk doesn't exist

Absolutely. But very few people actually use properly airgapped computers, and if you have the technical knowledge required to properly airgap a device, then you are almost certainly already aware of the risks of printing a seed phrase over hand writing one and how to mitigate against those risks too.

Makes me wonder how easy it would be to create a bootable Linux disto with nothing but printer drivers so to speak.
No networking but CUPS installed as @ETFbitcoin mentioned AND although driverless printing kind of works, on the rest of the DVD / USB you would have nothing but all the printer drivers you could find. That and a copy of something to generate a seed phrase.

-Dave

[LoyceV]

Makes me wonder how easy it would be to create a bootable Linux disto with nothing but printer drivers so to speak.

It depends on the printer: in my experience, a new printer is terrible to install offline, while many old laserjets work out of the box.
I don't really mind having network drivers, just unplug the cable and disable wifi. If that's not enough: remove the physical card.

[FatFork]

Makes me wonder how easy it would be to create a bootable Linux disto with nothing but printer drivers so to speak.

It depends on the printer: in my experience, a new printer is terrible to install offline, while many old laserjets work out of the box.
I don't really mind having network drivers, just unplug the cable and disable wifi. If that's not enough: remove the physical card.

And then I realized one day there's an easier solution to this:



As you can see, I always unplug the cables before printing. 

[PrivacyG]

Finding an old printer is hard unless you have one at home that you definitely know is safe.  Finding a new printer is a bad idea since new technology means more points of failure for situations like yours.. I mean it is almost impossible to buy a device nowadays that has no wireless technology in it.  Purchasing an old printer from someone else is a bad, bad idea as you have no idea who and how someone may have messed with it.  So printers are a big no for me.

If you don't want to go the metal way as others have posted, and use paper make sure it's good paper: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5296179.0

Why would I choose another material over stainless steel?  I get that chances are you will not get past airport security check without them finding and investigating your metal seed phrase since it is metal unless you are lucky.  But besides metal detection, is there any other situation or reason paper may be a better choice than stainless steel?

-
Regards,
PrivacyG