Can You Memorize Your Recovery Phrase?

[Z-tight]

So in short, the best method to keep your seed phrase safe is to bury it in your mind, so you are the only one who knows that and could have access to it.

You are wrong, that is one of the worst ways to store your seed phrase and a fast way to lose your coins or lock yourself out of your funds. There is no way you can remember the words for a longer period of time, you're surely going to forget some words or wrongly arrange them, you may also suffer injury or disease that could affect your memory.

The best method is to have a physical backup and store it in a very safe location, adding extra layers of security is also recommended. If you want to commit your seed phrase to memory, it should be after you have done all this, you can now count what you have memorized as an additional backup.

[2Pizza410000BTC]

Just remembered that I have written the recovery seed phrase of my Electrum on a piece of paper somewhere in my place. I'm wondering what could go wrong since my place isn't too secured.  How about trying to memorize it? Is it possible?

Would you try?
What are the benefits? ... and the setbacks.

You are definitely at risk if you write down your Electrum Wallet passphrase on paper but the place is not very secure or secure. But first of all choose a very safe place otherwise you will be in a lot of risk. Although it is possible to memorize the wallet phrase, there is also a risk because if you forget it a few days after memorizing it, you can lose everything. I write down my wallet seed phrase in a notebook but I keep it in a very safe place where no one but me can access it. You can do as I did by keeping it in a place where no one else can access your wallet password.

[Darker45]

I definitely can. But it's one thing to memorize it and quite another to keep it in your memory for a very long time. Especially when you don't recite it or make use of it every once in a while, it's just a matter of time before you will forget it. So for your security it's best to just write it down in several copies and keep it in different locations.

The benefit from memorizing your recovery phrase is that nobody can steal if from you. The setback is that it is risky. It's very possible you'll forget it not only because memories fade over time but also because you could develop health conditions that weaken your memory perhaps because of accident or old age. Another setback is that your coins would die with you. Your family can't inherit it from you.

[Mia Chloe]

A lot of persons , just like a majority of users here have said, will say things like the human head cannot be trusted and things like an accident or something may lead to some sort of neural disorder that could lead to the person losing memory which is true, however other practical factors are also present such as retentive ability. Cramming or memorizing your seed phrase is something I think is quite unsafe based on the fact that forgetting such random words is something very prone to happen.

Let's also not forget the fact that with such number of words can be easily misplaced if memorized by an individual. Like I often say, there is no 100% guarantee for any method of storing ones seed phrase or private keys. The fact is everyone is just looking for a safer option that would also be easy to access.

[boyptc]

I'm too old for it and probably won't be taking that risk to memorize without having a back up.

@OP, how not secure is the place where you're putting that keys of your wallet? Don't do that, put it somewhere safe that no one is going to suspect that it's something valuable to you.

If the place you're keeping it is exposed, you're going to regret that later on. Please put it somewhere safer in your house and I know that each house has that kind of place.

[AirtelBuzz]

Just remembered that I have written the recovery seed phrase of my Electrum on a piece of paper somewhere in my place. I'm wondering what could go wrong since my place isn't too secured.  How about trying to memorize it? Is it possible?

I think it's too risky to even memorize the seed phrase because if you forget any of the words in the seed phrase of that wallet you won't have access to that wallet.
It would be advisable to write down the wallet seed phrase instead of memorizing it and store it in a safe place. Remember if the face of the wallet is not secure with us then the funds in our wallet are not secure either. I have seen many members on this forum who regret losing their wallet seed phrase. I don't want to suffer from regrets like them and I don't want other members to have the same problem.

Would you try?

I never want to try it.Because my memory is so weak I can't remember anything for very long so I can sometimes forget it if I try to memorize my seed phrase. I have stored it safely away from taking risks.

[OcTradism]

What are the benefits? ... and the setbacks.

Setbacks are more than benefits and you should never use your brain to back up your wallet seed phrase. Your brain can have sudden unexpected damage and memory can be lost forever, consequently your fund will be lost forever too.

How to back up a seed phrase

What about memorizing your backups?

Well, I can only think of one situation in which I'd ever consider that - if I'm fleeing from some calamity without much time to prepare and I'm worried about physical attackers accosting me during the journey or at border crossings. That is to say - I only think memorization is a good strategy for temporary emergency use. As a long term storage strategy it creates single points of failure:


You may forget the seed phrase.
You could be injured and unable to recall it.
You could die and your heirs would be unable to access it.
You could have seed phrase coerced out of you.

Benefits : No one can access it

Negative: Even you can forget it and if you don't have backup then you lost your wallet forever.

Even the owner can lose access to his bitcoins if memory was lost by whatsoever reasons.

[Cantsay]

Would you try?
What are the benefits? ... and the setbacks.

Other forum members gave already given you the answer that you’re looking for I.e the setbacks that is expected to occur when you memorize your secret phrase - but still I couldn’t just pass the thread without dropping this quote I read in a thread I created recently.

The faintest pen is sharper than the sharpest memory,
::/::

The quote above says all there is to know about why writing down your secret phrase is far better than just memorizing it.

[Plaguedeath]

I'm not sure if I can memorize my seed phrase, but let's try.

So my seed phrase is: fuck, pussy, gay, homophobic, vagina, penis, trans, asshole, dickhead, bitch, shit, slut. Wow I remembered all of my words, so definitely it's possible to memorize seed phrase.

If the place you're keeping it is exposed, you're going to regret that later on. Please put it somewhere safer in your house and I know that each house has that kind of place.

If he live in Gaza, there are no safe place.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

I'm not sure if I can memorize my seed phrase, but let's try.

If he live in Gaza, there are no safe place.

Depends on living conditions, people have to make choices of their wallet backups but they need to have different methods for backups. Use multiple backup methods is very good practice that if one is broken, they will have at least one or two more backups in one or two more methods to use.

Use memory to backup wallet seed is good if living conditions are very tough like in Gaza but it should never be the only choice for backups. This method is helpful and practical if you have only one or two wallets but if you have different wallets, it will be more challenging to remember many wallet seed words.

Depends on conditions of living, memory backup method can be the main or alternative backup methods and if it is an alternative backup method, to support other methods, it's good.

[boyptc]

If the place you're keeping it is exposed, you're going to regret that later on. Please put it somewhere safer in your house and I know that each house has that kind of place.

If he live in Gaza, there are no safe place.

Sad but truth and I pray for the peace of everyone in Gaza.

But I guess that since OP is able to post in here and for sure that he's in a safer place. So, that's possible that he's got a safe place in his house or apartment or wherever he is living right now.

He better find one for his own safekeeping.

[Deddyhoku]

I will never try to remember 24 words that can contain all my wealth

[Ishicryptic]

I probably could do but I don’t trust myself enough to destroy all copies that I have incase I forget one or two words. I have enough copies of my seed hidden in multiple locations not to worry about losing it. I don’t think it’s a good idea to only have your seed in your memory, it’s too risky.

I know that the shortest pencil is sharper than the biggest brain and as human beings we tend to forget things, especially if it is something like seed phrase that is supposed to be kept for many years. The pressures of everyday activities and challenges can make us to forget some minor details and in the case of seed phrase, if a person forgets one word of it, then it has ruined the rest that you remember, so it is better to have more than one copy and hide them in different safe locations where you can easily access them. Although it is not a bad idea to memorize seed phrase, but it will be a very bad idea to rely solely on memorizing it without having physical copies Incase you forget, so a person that wants to memorize from where they wrote the phrase periodically is a good idea too.

[wxa7115]

Just remembered that I have written the recovery seed phrase of my Electrum on a piece of paper somewhere in my place. I'm wondering what could go wrong since my place isn't too secured.  How about trying to memorize it? Is it possible?

Would you try?
What are the benefits? ... and the setbacks.

It is possible, but you are taking a massive risk by not writing your seed words, since even if you could remember most of your seed phrase, as long as you forgot a few of those words it could become incredibly challenging to ever recover your coins.

However there are some benefits to try to do this, so if for example you were moving through a place which you thought could put your coins at risk of being stolen, you could remember your seed words and not carry anything with you at the time, and once you were out of it you could write them out, still the risk of forgetting your seed words still exist, so this is something that you do only if the circumstances really forced you to do so.

[retreat]

Just remembered that I have written the recovery seed phrase of my Electrum on a piece of paper somewhere in my place. I'm wondering what could go wrong since my place isn't too secured.  How about trying to memorize it? Is it possible?

Would you try?
What are the benefits? ... and the setbacks.

It's possible to memorize a 12-letter seed phrase, but memorizing a 24-letter seed phrase might be very difficult, since the letters are random and you need to memorize them in the right order. However, if you succeed in memorizing it, of course the advantage is that you no longer need to copy-paste or look at the paper where you wrote down the seed phrase - because you can write it directly from your head. But since the human brain is fallible, there is a possibility that the seed phrases you memorized are not in the correct sequence or you forgot some of them, that is the problem.

[Kristiyana]

Just remembered that I have written the recovery seed phrase of my Electrum on a piece of paper somewhere in my place. I'm wondering what could go wrong since my place isn't too secured.  How about trying to memorize it? Is it possible?

Would you try?
What are the benefits? ... and the setbacks.

Is very possible to memorize it because there are those who there brain is strong enough to memorize as many words as they want and there are also people too who doesn't have a good memory in terms of remembering things so it depends on the person if you feel there is need to memorize your key phrase but however no matter how retentive your brain is don't forget to always back up your key phrases because you will lose access immediately you forget it.

[Uhwuchukwu53]

Its very risky and not advisible to memorize your seed as the human memory might fail and you may end up losing your access to your fund. It's better to write it down and store in a safe places then if you so wish to use a brain wallet, then you just do it for the fun of it.

I concur to this memorizing such important life investment security like I do called it is very dangerous the best one can do is to right it down and keep in place where it will not be misplaced or been take by another person.
Then one also need to know the least five words or figure from the starting and also the five ending figure or work as that can help so easily in remembering the key or pass phrase.

[Rikafip]

That's why I said it has no drawbacks as long as you have a physical copy of that private key!

Ah yeah, you are right, I completely missed that part of your post. I blame the sun as I spent almost the whole day yesterday on the beach and came home exhausted and with the massive headache.

Besides, if we talk about brain injury, depending on how serious a memory loss is you might even forget where you hid your private key or that bitcoin is all together!

True, and that's why its important to have contingency plan set in case of death/injury/illness (which I have), but somehow I think many don't.

[Stable090]

Just remembered that I have written the recovery seed phrase of my Electrum on a piece of paper somewhere in my place. I'm wondering what could go wrong since my place isn't too secured.  How about trying to memorize it? Is it possible?

Writing your recovery phrase on a piece of paper is not really the best option, and trying to memorize your recovery phrase is even worse. If you are storing your recovery phrase, it’s better if you carve it on a small piece of iron steel, then you can store it in a different location. Iron steel is always difficult to damage, so if there is a fire accident or if water touches it, then it’s not going to get damaged compared to if it’s written on paper. If you decide to memorize your recovery phrase, if anything happens and you forget some of it, then that means you already lost access to the wallet. We can’t be too confident about our brains, if you memorize your recovery phrase, you might remember everything at the early stage, but with time you might start forgetting some, so it’s totally wrong to memorize your recovery phrase as your only backup plan.

[legendbtc]

Just remembered that I have written the recovery seed phrase of my Electrum on a piece of paper somewhere in my place. I'm wondering what could go wrong since my place isn't too secured.  How about trying to memorize it? Is it possible?

Would you try?
What are the benefits? ... and the setbacks.

When it comes to storing seed phrases, I'm pretty sure everyone will have more than 1 backup copy stored in different secure places just in case one gets lost and we still have other options to restore your assets. So memorizing the seed phrase is too risky without a backup. Have you ever thought of a situation where for some reason you can't remember the exact seed phrase and what you do next after that? If you're confident in your memory, you can memorize the phrase, but you must have a backup plan.

You need to remember that every method will have advantages and disadvantages, no method is 100% absolutely safe. So always have a backup plan when you use any method to store seed phrases.