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

[angrybirdy]

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?

One of the things I'll never forget about my journey to crypto, was when there was a system issue and all my seed phrases were saved there on the computer. I was a newbie to crypto and I was making money because of signature campaigns and white paper translations. My computer was suddenly reformatted and all the files were lost. I was so complacent that time, that I had to hide all the seed phrases of my accounts in 1 device only, I didn't have any back up copy and that time I didn't have hard wallet so what happened was that everything I worked on was gone.

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[Ultegra134]

I've lost quite a few; it's still unknown if any of them had any significant balance, but you get my point. I used to write them in text documents and scatter them on my computer. The majority were lost due to the poor organizational skills of that time. Don't use text documents, and if you write them on paper, don't lose them. I also recall writing on pieces of paper, which were never to be found. However, I did manage to recover a few of them, some of which were empty, and another one had a few mBTC in it. I don't know if this counts as well, but I can confidently say that I've also lost a few wallets, which I remember had some kind of balance on online wallets and services, most of which either shut down or were unable to recover my accounts.

Now that we're talking, I still haven't fully learned my lesson because I'm yet to secure my seed as safe as I'd want it to be. At least, I'm no longer using online wallets.

[CODE200]

I lost my seed phrase because I just kind of forgotten that I've got a wallet and that I need to take care of it and the lesson that I want to impart on you about this is that you should have a purpose when it comes to why you're creating that wallet so you've a reason to keep it and at the same time make yourself comfortable about why you're keeping that wallet and the seed phrase, don't want to end up like me being a loser when it comes to wallets and also if you can and you've got a lot of wallets for different purposes because you're on different sites that require you different wallets, it's a good idea to tabulate them, get some spreadsheet going on with the wallets with their purposes, the seed phrase and where they're being used and connected.

[0t3p0t]

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

I never made any mistakes on losing even a single key for my wallets because I keep them offline, I wrote it on a piece of paper then hid it in a safe place.

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

Storing your seed online and on any devices you are using is risky. Though storing my key phrase in a piece of paper is risky as well beacause it can be damaged by fire and water or moist but that is what I used from 2017 up until now even though we are hit by super typhoons it's still safe with ziplock and a plastic container.

[Davidvictorson]

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

I haven't lost my seed phrase. And I have backups for my backups incase of any eventualities. I have heard of someone who hid his seed phrase. After some time, he had an accident that cause head trauma. IHe went into a coma for sometime. When he woke, he was suffering from amnesia. The accident affected his devices where he had his wallets. Because of his amnesia, he couldn't remember where he kept his seed phrase.

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

In the case above, one of the best ways of securing your seed phrase is to tell at least one trusted person of its location because life may come at you very fast. Not having a trusted person tell about the location of your seedphrase in my estimation is one of the worsts ways or mistakes someone make.

[m2017]

and what advice do you have for others to be careful?

Probably make backups.
 

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

There is no best way to store seed phrases. Which method is suitable should be selected individually. A phrase written on a piece of metal should be one of the reliable storage methods.

Worst way? This is probably plain paper or storing seed phrases on a text file on your PC.

I have never lost my coins or my seed phrase.

For sure, because you haven’t been in the cryptoindustry for very long.

[fuguebtc]

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

I haven't lost my seed phrase. And I have backups for my backups incase of any eventualities. I have heard of someone who hid his seed phrase. After some time, he had an accident that cause head trauma. IHe went into a coma for sometime. When he woke, he was suffering from amnesia. The accident affected his devices where he had his wallets. Because of his amnesia, he couldn't remember where he kept his seed phrase.

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

In the case above, one of the best ways of securing your seed phrase is to tell at least one trusted person of its location because life may come at you very fast. Not having a trusted person tell about the location of your seedphrase in my estimation is one of the worsts ways or mistakes someone make.

This is why I always support the idea that we need to share the seed phrase secret with those close to us . Just in case we encounter an unexpected problem where even we cannot remember our bitcoins like the example you mentioned . But I find it very strange that on this forum there are some people who are so conservative that they have no one to trust, not even their parents . Not only do they not trust anyone, but they also seem to value bitcoin more than the relatives who raised them, their parents . I wonder how people who are doubting their parents will feel if their children also value bitcoin or something more than their lives in the future ?

[Helena Yu]

I have never lost my coins or my seed phrase.

For sure, because you haven’t been in the cryptoindustry for very long.

4 years, indeed not very long, but it still quite long.

This is why I always support the idea that we need to share the seed phrase secret with those close to us . Just in case we encounter an unexpected problem where even we cannot remember our bitcoins like the example you mentioned . But I find it very strange that on this forum there are some people who are so conservative that they have no one to trust, not even their parents . Not only do they not trust anyone, but they also seem to value bitcoin more than the relatives who raised them, their parents . I wonder how people who are doubting their parents will feel if their children also value bitcoin or something more than their lives in the future ?

How it can be wrong? that's relate to someone else life decision, there's no good or bad.

If someone think it's better to lost the coins to make it scarce than pass it to other people, you can't argue with his decision.

You can be grateful if your parents understand with you, what if they didn't care with you and publicize if you're a Bitcoin holder to their friends? many parents want to get validation and to make them proud.

[DaNNy001]

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 lost my seed phrase before and I think this forum here is responsible for that because my time here has let me know how vital keeping your seed phrase is. Imagine having millions of dollars on your wallet and then you woke up one morning and you lost the device to which the wallet is located and you want to get access to that account, I could only imagine the frustration that one would face and I pray I never experienced such situation in my life.

[thiagothx1370]

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?

The best way of storing safely your seed is write it on steel paper after that concrete it in a place where only you knows where it is. You must have a passphrase configurated on your hard wallet, it'll help you a lot if you hard wallet is stolen.

[KingsDen]

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

It is mainly early adopters of bitcoin that lost their seed phrase and maybe there was no seed then. It used to be a private key comprising of overly lengthy combination of words and numbers. There was no much awareness of how to secure ones bitcoin then. So, many of them relied on whatever means they thought is best to secure their bitcoin. It was during this period that the majority of bitcoin lost in history, either to scammers, Ponzi schemers or personal lost. People are wiser now and are able to secure their bitcoin.

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

One of the worse ways could be memorising your seed phrase while one of the best is saving offline in more than one location.

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.

I don't have to disbelief this story. But my question is how much bitcoin was in the computer that you could not fix the screen to retrieve your seed phrase. Well, I consider this as one of the thousands made of stories to complete post quota

[Franctoshi]

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 lost access to my Ether wallet for a long now and have tried several times to gain access to it but no way because I didn't copy my private keys correctly and the reason Is that I failed to verify the phrases after that I wrote it down, so this is a possible mistake anyone can do and boom your funds are gone forever, and you would no longer have access to your Bitcoin again, Therefore while writing your keys down somewhere and for some people that would want to write theirs down, ensure you verify the keys back to back, that is ensuring you can gain access/login to your wallet with what you have written down.

[glendall]

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

I made a mistake in the past, by losing several of my wallet phrases, where at that time I was still relatively new to crypto, and was still confused about the many types of wallets, if I'm not mistaken, the wallet I lost was an EOS wallet, TONwallet, this mistake was because I cleaned it. The computer without saving data on the drive, my fashdisk
  From that incident, I was more careful in storing my seeds in 3 places that I thought were quite safe, and I used a hard wallet from SFP to store my assets without publishing my wallet.

[LogitechMouse]

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?

Most of the people here who posted on your thread didn't lose their seed. It's because they already knew what they would do to keep their seeds safe.
Same for me. I didn't lose any of my seed phrases. I created many accounts in different wallets (Metamask, Electrum, Keplr, Trust Wallet, Daedalus, etc.), and I never, ever lost any of my seed phrases.

I guess it's because I always keep it safe, and when I say safe, it's stored in a place where there's not only 1 lock on it but 3 locks. The only problem with that I guess is our house will catch on fire, I will be having a hard time pulling out the seed phrases but I think my seed phrases are safe (at least for me). Having another copy of that seed phrase would be helpful as well.

[AicecreaME]

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 made such a mistake like this and I can't imagine losing my seed phrase.

Best advice would be, make a lot of back ups of your private keys, I recommend writing it down on a piece of paper and hide it somewhere safe where you're the only one who knows it (make sure of that). You could also store it in a data storage like a hard drive but make sure again that that drive is for your seed phrase only. Don't use it regularly to avoid being corrupted or getting a virus.

[decodx]

I haven't been unlucky enough for that misfortune yet, but I've heard the horror stories.  Folks tend to make a couple big mistakes.  For one thing, it's way too easy to tuck that piece of paper away somewhere safe and then just straight up forget where you put it.  Outta sight, outta mind ya know? Especially if you dont use that wallet too often.  Such a silly thing to do and  that's why they say to make a bunch copies to store other places - give one to your family member, maybe get a safe deposit box, or even engrave it on metal if you're super paranoid. 

Here's another dumb mistake: saving your seed phrase on a computer or your phone or something.  I know it seems convenient and all, but thats asking for trouble if you get hacked.  Then some thief could swoop in and yoink all your funds just like that! No bueno.  Gotta go old school with paper copies all over the place.

[bittraffic]

It was just private ky during that time, seed wasn't introduced yet when I lost my access to one of my old BTC wallets.

I wrote the private key in a text file on my laptop. I kept the laptop under my table for a longtime. I barely couldn't remember which folder I hid that text file anymore. Too paranoid that someone would access it so I hid the file somewhere that I myself can't remember. And worse the password as well. It's not huge anyway.

[kentrolla]

I have some Bitcoin in my blockchain wallet which were not huge back in 2016 but now it's worth a lot and I have forgotten my password and can't remember though I have tried every possible password.

I had saved the seed phrase in my laptops notepad and forgot to remove it from charging overnight and since it was in sofa the laptop along with a later of sofa was burnt and i couldn't recover the phrase till date.

[Kelward]

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 lost a seed phrase before but I however can't import my Bitcoin into a new wallet, I had Bitcoin in a coinomi wallet, when I downloaded another coinomi wallet, and i tried to import by putting the seed phrase, the wallet keeps telling me that I missed a spelling. I'm sure that I had the right words in the correct order, and I've even tried using different similar word combinations still no success, the Bitcoin is still there but I can't access the wallet till date. I've nareted my experience in couple of related topics as this one, asking if any members has had this experience with coinomi wallet, because I'm sure that I copied the correct seed phrase when I opened the original wallet. I've reached their customer support on telegram, but the response wasn't helpful. That's my bitter experience.

[Bitstar_coin]

Mostly because the seeds aren't stored properly is the reason why many people lost their seed or keys.
I have also lost my wallet seeds, more than one wallet all because I was not careful enough to keep them safe. But good thing was the wallets don't have much funds but they are old wallets I would have wanted to keep.
Storing seed phrase looks easy but any mistake can be costly. The moment you forget where the seeds are kept that is the end to having access to wallet.