To any Bitcoin holder who lost their seed: How did you lose it?

[riverdip]

What mistakes did you make, and what advice do you have for others to be careful?

What are the best and worst ways of storing a seed in your opinion?

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[Helena Yu]

I have never lost my coins or my seed phrase.

My advice: never trust your seed phrase with any kind of centralization e.g. safe deposit box, cloud storage, microsoft word, compressed file etc.

Best way: open a multi-sig wallet 2 of 3, hide each signatures in different place, use steel plate in order to resist against corrosion, burn etc.

Worst way: ask someone to open a wallet for you or publicize your own seed phrase to everyone.

[LesterD]

I made a mistake in the past by not considering the importance of storing my seed phrase securely and making multiple copies of it. I saved my seed phrase in a notepad on my personal computer. Unfortunately, my computer suddenly encountered a blue screen error. As I didn't have any backup copies, I wasn't able to recover my seed phrase, and consequently lost access to my Bitcoin.

My advice is to secure your seed phrase in a safe and secure location. Create multiple copies of the phrase and ensure that only you have access to it. Do not store it on your computer or any online platform such as Gmail. There are many better options available to store your seed phrase and it is important to consider them to protect your assets. Always think ahead and take necessary precautions to keep your seed phrase safe.

[Findingnemo]

What mistakes did you make, and what advice do you have for others to be careful?

What are the best and worst ways of storing a seed in your opinion?

I never had a physical backup of my seeds for my hot wallet Electrum storage which is indeed a mistake but I did it due to my laziness so I lost access to the wallet when the device was corrupted but luckily there is not funds left in that wallet it happened so from that on I always wanted to have at least one physical back of seeds (write down on paper) even if its a wallet intended for temporary use.

[riverdip]

I made a mistake in the past by not considering the importance of storing my seed phrase securely and making multiple copies of it. I saved my seed phrase in a notepad on my personal computer. Unfortunately, my computer suddenly encountered a blue screen error. As I didn't have any backup copies, I wasn't able to recover my seed phrase, and consequently lost access to my Bitcoin.

My advice is to secure your seed phrase in a safe and secure location. Create multiple copies of the phrase and ensure that only you have access to it. Do not store it on your computer or any online platform such as Gmail. There are many better options available to store your seed phrase and it is important to consider them to protect your assets. Always think ahead and take necessary precautions to keep your seed phrase safe.

How much BTC was lost ? didn't you try recover your PC storage?

[Sebas.tian]

What are the best and worst ways of storing a seed in your opinion?

I think, everybody has his own way of storing their phrase seeds to ensure their seeds phrase is protected and safe because if you fail to save your seeds phrase in a good place, your coins can be at risk if anybody in your family know where the seeds phrase is in the house. The best way to store your seeds phrase is to write them down and save them in a place that you are the only one that have access to such place  in case anything happen to your system or phone, your coins in your wallet will not be harm since you still have the seeds phrase to restore them back and continue having access to them. The worst way to store seeds phrase is to save them in your phone or laptop and the day you misplace your phone or laptop, there is no way you can gain access to your coins again.

[mk4]

Haven't personally lost any of my backups as well. But after being in the cryptocurrency space for 8+ years, the most common are:

• Lost the seed because they wrote it down, then forgot where they stored it.
• Got the backup leaked because they stored the backup on their email/txtfile/spreadsheet/chatlogs/etc and their device got hacked(hence the leak)

[adaseb]

I didn’t lose any bitcoin seeds or coins or wallets but I did for many altcoins. Basically coins like Doge or small amounts of ETH back in the day I would just delete the wallet because it had so little in the wallet it wasn’t worth moving.

This was went dogecoin was like fractions of a penny and when ETH was in the single digits. So instead of sweeping those addresses I just erased the wallet when I was done with it, coins lost forever pretty much.

Also I used to send in whole numbers instead of exact figures. If I had 1.04 ETH or so, I would just send 1 ETH because the rest wasn’t worth typing out.

[Kakmakr]

I created several Bitcoin paper wallets for friends and family members and then deposited a small amount of Bitcoin to it for their birthdays.

My mistake was not to make backup copies of this for them, because 3 of them lost it and I was unable to recover those coins. (It was when the price was around $1000 per coin)

Now I print several copies and I laminate it.

[btc78]

I have never personally lost my phrase seed what I do is I wrote down my seed phrase on a piece of paper and hid it somewhere only I know where I did not make any copies nor have given anyone a hint of where I hid the paper I suggest you do not keep it online because it is very vulnerable from hacks and system failure

[Assface16678]

What mistakes did you make, and what advice do you have for others to be careful?

What are the best and worst ways of storing a seed in your opinion?

So far over the years of my crypto journey, I didn't experience that I lost my seed phrase or forgot about it, maybe because I have my own way of securing it and accessing it. Honestly, in my first years or early days of my crypto journey, I only typed my seed phrase in a notepad on my computer and let it sit there, but luckily I didn't encounter someone who hacked my computer and accessed my passwords and seed phrase. But maybe because I have knowledge when it comes to technology and the internet, I know what to avoid and what to do to secure my properties. Remember, if you are storing your seed phrase on the internet, like Google Drive or cloud storage, then stop it immediately because hackers could easily access it. But if you are storing your seed phrase on your device only or on a computer, remember to encrypt your files containing seed phrases and don't access malicious websites because there are places where you can get malware that could access your device and steal what it can.

[DanWalker]

What mistakes did you make, and what advice do you have for others to be careful?

What are the best and worst ways of storing a seed in your opinion?

I have never made a mistake or lost my seed phrase since entering the market until now. There are many ways to store seed phrases such as writing them in notebooks, engraving them on small steel plates…you can use whatever method you feel is safest for you. As long as you always store them offline, never store your seed phrases on an online platform. Another thing is to always have 2 to 3 backups and store them in various safe locations so that in case one of them is lost, we still have access to our bitcoins.

For me, I write my seed phrase in a notebook and have 2 more copies stored in different places and of course they are all safe.

[Ojima-ojo]

I haven't lost my seed phrase before,  but I am very much aware of the danger that comes with careless storage of seed phrase and one the ways that one can have issues with seed phrase storage is by not making a hard copy and storing it offline and in different places.


Also storing your seed phrase online which is at risk of getting hacked into by thieves, we have always been warned against making such mistakes, off storing them online such as in our email draft and the rest of the other online storage, this is why, it is very important to have a well-informed mindset before you even set out to open a wallet.

[Text]

So far, I haven't made a mistake in losing the seed or private key of Bitcoin. Does this include the wasted Bitcoin from participating in doublers and HYIP sites before? That would probably be more embarrassing to think about now.

The best way to secure Bitcoin, especially if it has a significant value, is to have a hardware wallet. Never store your seed online. What I do is I simply write down all my seeds in a notebook that only I know about.

[Charles-Tim]

What mistakes did you make, and what advice do you have for others to be careful?

I have not lost my seed phrase before. The seed phrase is the money because it is what I need to spend my coins, so I can not lose it or it would be very difficult for me to lose.

What are the best and worst ways of storing a seed in your opinion?

Storing seed phrase on phone is not good because your phone can be compromised with malware
Storing it on Google cloud, iCloud and other online cloud is not good. It can be hacked. There are real life examples.
Storing your seed online generally is bad
Storing your seed phrase where people can see it is not good

Store your seed phrase offline
Store it on paper, laminated paper, steel or titanium sheet. Do not use aluminum.
Have like two or three copies.
You can use passphrase with it but store separately in different locations. If you lose either your seed phrase or passphrase, you will lose your coins.
Think about natural disaster and if it happens, how you will not lose your seed phrase

[Die_empty]

You can use passphrase with it but store separately in different locations. If you lose either your seed phrase or passphrase, you lose your coins.
Think about natural disaster and if it happens, how you will not lose your seed phrase

When I saw the various natural disasters that happened last year, I realised the importance of storing seed phrases in waterproof and fireproof materials. Another important condition is to save the seed phrase in locations that are far from each other. The earthquake in Turkey, Syria and Morroco affected large cities, while the Libyan flood destroyed the coastal city of Derna. It might be good to store your seed phrase in different locations if possible different cities because of large-scale natural disasters.     

The best way to secure Bitcoin, especially if it has a significant value, is to have a hardware wallet. Never store your seed online. What I do is I simply write down all my seeds in a notebook that only I know about.

A notebook might not be appropriate especially if the wallet holds large funds because it can be easily destroyed. Waterproof and fireproof materials will be a better option in case of emergencies.

[KiaKia]

I have never lost access to my recovery seed before, I always write them down in a book and no single natural disasters have made me lose them, I have lost my bitcoin before but that's me importing the recovery seed into a bad/fake Bitcoin wallet and I got drained.

Writing down your recovery seed is a safe method if you can keep the book safe, but I recommend multiple recovery backup, just in case, you only have to make sure it's back up offline, you can write it down in two separate locations and keep your mouth shut about it.

Avoid taking screenshot of your recovery seed, do not store them in any online cloud storage, if possible you should get a hardware wallet, they are always safer than software wallet, make sure the bitcoin wallet you are using is fully open-source like Electrum.

[EarnOnVictor]

What mistakes did you make, and what advice do you have for others to be careful?

What are the best and worst ways of storing a seed in your opinion?

I am not just that careless person unless I do not have an interest in a thing. But I must say that I'd lost access to my wallets, not even once, but the good thing is that I do not have money in any of them, which could also be responsible for the careless handling. The first one I lost access to was the one I forgot my password and also lost the seedphrase. That was around 2014, I never took it seriously. But recently, I made a terrible mistake, still, I do not have money in my wallet, if not, it would have been disastrous. I got to know of an issue when I wanted to move money to the wallet.

As a smart person, I first uninstalled the app and reinstalled it to be sure of the seed phrases, it was then I discovered that I copied the wrong seed phrases. I later went back to the registration page of the app to find what was wrong, and that was how I discovered that the pattern was not as usual as I thought. The style was confusing, so I copied the right words but in the wrong arrangement. Thank God I've never sent money into it.

As for the best ways to keep the seed phrase, I don't think there is a better way than to write it down manually and also duplicate it. But ensure that you keep them in separate places. I also like to code one word out of the words there to make it more secure in case an uninvited eye sees it. However, I think the worst way to keep it is to save it on your gadgets.

[bluebit25]

The only ones I've ever had had my computer crash and couldn't recover the data, but luckily those were only addresses that no longer had bitcoins. Participating in this forum has helped me learn a lot of ways to protect personal assets. I have also heard about some storage services but the way I learned is to keep it in a place where only the original copies are kept you can only open.

Like many cases that I have seen, they said they wrote down the seed phrase on paper, got a tattoo,... and in the end they still got it stolen or couldn't remember where the things were kept.

[lovesmayfamilis]

Probably all the best ways to store seed phrases have already been described, starting with laminated paper with a recording of the seed phrase, a flash drive, and ending with a capsule from a Ledger with a fairly decent price.
But I want to tell one story where more than 1000 bitcoins were received as a bribe, and the owner of these bitcoins was, of course, caught because he was engaged in activities that violated the law, but the fact that he stored his seed phrase on his computer shows how foolish storage locations can be, especially for such a large amount.

https://www.cryptopolitan.com/russian-accused-of-taking-bribes-in-bitcoin/