Importing Sparrow Wallet into a Cold Wallet

[Charles-Tim]

I've created a new seed on my cold wallet and transferred the coins to the new one. Now, the biggest question is where to safely store/hide the seed.

If you are doubting the locations your seed phrase are kept not to be secure enough, or you are not having rest of mind about it, why not generate a new seed phrase and extend it with passphrase. You can make the passphrase to be a strong by adding different characters and make it long up to 10 or more characters.

But it is worth knowing that if you lose the passphrase, you will lose the your coins, just as also if you lose the seed phrase. Make sure you backup your passphrase in different locations and not together with your seed phrase. The seed phrase and the passphrase backup should be in different locations and separately.

[Pmalek]

Now, the biggest question is where to safely store/hide the seed.

Use your imagination for this. Look around your house or place of living and ask yourself, where could I put this where no one would look? Make sure it doesn't get wet or is close to a source of fire or heat that could destroy it. Having multiple copies in different geo locations is a good idea. Perhaps you have parents living somewhere else. Or a brother or sister. If you trust them enough, you could store a copy somewhere at their place. That way, even if your home were to go up in flames or be flooded, you could recover your coins from your other backups.

[hawer357]

Obviously I need to invest more thoughts into it. On one hand you want to have it close to you, than on the other hand it should be stored safe against disasters. Than, if you have multiple copies on several places the risk of having it compromised is higher.

Evaluating and making a good decision is obviously crucial. Thank you very much to all of you, I see that I'm not the only one with this problem.

[Pmalek]

Obviously I need to invest more thoughts into it. On one hand you want to have it close to you, than on the other hand it should be stored safe against disasters. Than, if you have multiple copies on several places the risk of having it compromised is higher.

You don't need to have the seed close to you at all times. You don't need to enter it every time you receive bitcoin or to generate a new address. You can even export the master public key which would allow you to generate addresses from your wallet on a second device. The master public keys wouldn't allow you to send transactions because you need the private (signing) keys for that. Thus, they don't reduce the security of your wallet but they do reduce your privacy.

[SFR10]

Than, if you have multiple copies on several places the risk of having it compromised is higher.

You have a point but alternatively, you can use the "seed XOR" feature of your Coldcard device to split your existing seed phrase into multiple parts ^{[unfortunately, the only way to reconstruct your original seed phrase is by having access to all of its parts]}!

[hawer357]

Than, if you have multiple copies on several places the risk of having it compromised is higher.

You have a point but alternatively, you can use the "seed XOR" feature of your Coldcard device to split your existing seed phrase into multiple parts ^{[unfortunately, the only way to reconstruct your original seed phrase is by having access to all of its parts]}!

Ohh, I didn't know that feature. Thank you very much. I'll check that. That opens new possibilities.

[Pmalek]

You have a point but alternatively, you can use the "seed XOR" feature of your Coldcard device to split your existing seed phrase into multiple parts ^{[unfortunately, the only way to reconstruct your original seed phrase is by having access to all of its parts]}!

It's one solution, but not the best one. You mentioned the reason why yourself. The only way to reconstruct the seed is by putting it together using all of the shards. Losing one equals to losing everything. A multisig setup would require making backups of more keys but OP would only need 2/3, 3/4, or whatever other model he sets up to recover his wallet.

[dkbit98]

On one hand you want to have it close to you, than on the other hand it should be stored safe against disasters. Than, if you have multiple copies on several places the risk of having it compromised is higher.

You can also use Trezor devices with new SLIP39 system that can split seed words in multiple parts and still solve the issue with single point of failure.
Another simple solution to increase safety of your seed words is to add decoy wallets and passphrases, that would make it harder for someone to steal your coins even with seed words exposed.
Alternative option is to use encryption for your seed words, that is easy to do with Satochip SeedKeeper cards.

[SFR10]

A multisig setup would require making backups of more keys but OP would only need 2/3, 3/4, or whatever other model he sets up to recover his wallet.

You're right... Multisig is better in most cases, but it's also the most complicated route ^{[I've noticed even some users who aren't completely new to this field find it confusing]}.

Ohh, I didn't know that feature. Thank you very much. I'll check that. That opens new possibilities.

You're very welcome... If you're interested in what Pmalek mentioned earlier, you can start from "here" and "here", but make sure to "watch this video first" to see if it makes sense to you.