What if I create my own seed phrase using 24 random words?

[standardnepo]

What if I randomly choose 24 words from different sources, like songs, books(library books not even mine), movies or things that have no personal connection to me and use them to create my own seed phrase? I feel like this method would be safe enough. I don’t really want to roll dice or do anything too complicated tbh.

I have a Trezor Safe 3, and my current seed phrase was generated by the device and displayed on its screen. I haven’t had any issues with my Trezor so far, but after the recent Ledger incident I’ve become increasingly concerned about security. Guys, I’m open to hearing your thoughts on my idea.

[Zaguru12]

What if I randomly choose 24 words from different sources, like songs, books(library books not even mine), movies or things that have no personal connection to me and use them to create my own seed phrase? I feel like this method would be safe enough. I don’t really want to roll dice or do anything too complicated tbh.

That’s definitely bad way because it’s not going to be that random. Before then you need to understand that you cannot just choose words like that, for wallets like Trezor the seed phrase have to be in the BIP-39 word list before they consider valid. Any random word won’t even give you a valid checksum. The last 8 bits are your checksum so for the last word 8 out of the 2048 will be what will produce a valid checksum, now check the probability of that happening it’s like 1 in 256. If it’s difficult like this then compare it to a non bip39 wordlist of 2048.

Aside that, randomly picking words doesn’t create enough randomness needed. It’s a bad choice

[DubemIfedigbo001]

What if I randomly choose 24 words from different sources, like songs, books(library books not even mine), movies or things that have no personal connection to me and use them to create my own seed phrase? I feel like this method would be safe enough. I don’t really want to roll dice or do anything too complicated tbh.

It would still work if you pick words that way, but the issue is that it would not have enough randomness compared to the one generated from that Trezor device and Trezor might not accept such seeds. If your seed phrase doesn't have enough randomness, it can be easily brute-forced and you'll lose your funds. That was the case with ColdCard, the seeds were generated without enough entropy and the hacker recreated most of it offline and swept their funds away.

[standardnepo]

Before then you need to understand that you cannot just choose words like that, for wallets like Trezor the seed phrase have to be in the BIP-39 word list before they consider valid. Any random word won’t even give you a valid checksum

I really didn’t know this. I thought we could just choose random words. Thank you very much.

[promise444c5]

Won’t work.. bip39 seed isn’t just composition of any random words, it has its own dictionary .

[Edit]
Alright so I remember Mauserna and NotATether posted something related to what you’re asking [not like random words from your Oxford dictionary.. lol].

I tried helping you look for it.. I haven’t tried it myself but you maybe interested in How to use dice and a Seedsigner to make a seed phrase..
.

[Ambatman]

Lol I have thought and tried this and despite how random since I picked most words during travels
While I noticed some bias that's why I realised why many just use random generators.
Humans tend to have bias despite how deep we try to numb them
Security isn't based on how hard a word is but the level of entropy.

[Zaguru12]

I really didn’t know this. I thought we could just choose random words. Thank you very much.

For Bip-39 supported wallets you cannot, even wallets like electrum that allow custom words still uses the same 2048 word list just that it includes version number. But the use of that BIP 39 wordlist by electrum was said to be for convenience as electrum could work with just any word list if generated correctly.

It would still work if you pick words that way, but the issue is that it would not have enough randomness compared to the one generated from that Trezor device and Trezor might not accept such seeds. If your seed phrase doesn't have enough randomness, it can be easily brute-forced and you'll lose your funds. That was the case with ColdCard, the seeds were generated without enough entropy and the hacker recreated most of it offline and swept their funds away.

Not possible with the wallet that OP is looking to use the seed phrase on, Trezor wallet just like most wallets are simply Bip-39 compatible wallets.

[PostQuantumBTC]

What if I randomly choose 24 words from different sources, like songs, books(library books not even mine), movies or things that have no personal connection to me and use them to create my own seed phrase? I feel like this method would be safe enough. I don’t really want to roll dice or do anything too complicated tbh.

That’s definitely bad way because it’s not going to be that random. Before then you need to understand that you cannot just choose words like that, for wallets like Trezor the seed phrase have to be in the BIP-39 word list before they consider valid. Any random word won’t even give you a valid checksum. The last 8 bits are your checksum so for the last word 8 out of the 2048 will be what will produce a valid checksum, now check the probability of that happening it’s like 1 in 256. If it’s difficult like this then compare it to a non bip39 wordlist of 2048.

Aside that, randomly picking words doesn’t create enough randomness needed. It’s a bad choice

Trezor is using BIP39 seed phrase, getting random 12 to 24 word as seed phrase will be invalid on Trezor. One of the ways that it can be valid is BIP39 import on Electrum. So if the OP trying to do that on Trezor, it will not even work.

@standardnepo, you know already that it may not create enough entropy and such wallet will likely be very vulnerable to hack.

[sergiorus]

I have a Trezor Safe 3, and my current seed phrase was generated by the device and displayed on its screen. I haven’t had any issues with my Trezor so far, but after the recent Ledger incident I’ve become increasingly concerned about security. Guys, I’m open to hearing your thoughts on my idea.

Concerned about what? Have you ever read what caused that Ledger mass hack?

If you purchased your Trezor directly from them - you're fine. If you purchased via a middleman - you probably want to purchase another one directly from Trezor to be on the safe side.

Instead of panicking and trying to reinvent the wheel, try to learn a bit about *why* certain hacks and exploits happened.

[Cookdata]

What if I randomly choose 24 words from different sources, like songs, books(library books not even mine), movies or things that have no personal connection to me and use them to create my own seed phrase? I feel like this method would be safe enough. I don’t really want to roll dice or do anything too complicated tbh.

You are mixing things and I think you don't know how bip39 work. By the way, humans are very bad at creating a good entropy by mere selection, using a dice is better.

First of all, you can't select a word out of bip39 word list to create a valid bip39 mnemonic, it is not going to work if you select words from songs, movies, anywhere that is not bip39.

Let's assumed you selected random words from bip39 word list, you can't generate the complete seed words to create a wallet because the last word isn't a complete entropy. It contains both entropy and checksum, you have to hash the entropy to get the checksum, without the checksum it will be invalid.

The 12 words is 128 bits has 4 bits checksum, the 4 bits is added to the entropy to give 132 bits, these bits are split into 12 groups of 11 bits, converted to decimal and then converted into seed words from the wordlist. The 24 words which is 256 bits has 8 bits checksum, it's added to the entropy to give 264 bits, these bits is split into 24 groups of 11 bits to match the wordlist.

I have a Trezor Safe 3, and my current seed phrase was generated by the device and displayed on its screen. I haven’t had any issues with my Trezor so far, but after the recent Ledger incident I’ve become increasingly concerned about security. Guys, I’m open to hearing your thoughts on my idea.

Trezor is not ledger, if you buy your Trezor directly from the Trezor company and not a distributor, you have nothing to worry. There is also not a confirmed report that hardware wallet bought directly from ledger has a problem. The affected ones are mostly from a particular distributor.

[Livingleged]

You are mixing things and I think you don't know how bip39 work. By the way, humans are very bad at creating a good entropy by mere selection, using a dice is better.

First of all, you can't select a word out of bip39 word list to create a valid bip39 mnemonic, it is not going to work if you select words from songs, movies, anywhere that is not bip39.

Let's assumed you selected random words from bip39 word list, you can't generate the complete seed words to create a wallet because the last word isn't a complete entropy. It contains both entropy and checksum, you have to hash the entropy to get the checksum, without the checksum it will be invalid.

The 12 words is 128 bits has 4 bits checksum, the 4 bits is added to the entropy to give 132 bits, these bits are split into 12 groups of 11 bits, converted to decimal and then converted into seed words from the wordlist. The 24 words which is 256 bits has 8 bits checksum, it's added to the entropy to give 264 bits, these bits is split into 24 groups of 11 bits to match the wordlist.

This is very clear to be honest. I don’t think I’ve seen someone explains this better than what you just did. I didn’t know about how the 8 bit checksum is added to the entropy to give 264 bit for the 24 word which is the 256 bit before now. I think your explanation just helped me out with that aspect. I wanted to ask what real makes a word bip39?

[OcTradism]

What if I randomly choose 24 words from different sources, like songs, books(library books not even mine), movies or things that have no personal connection to me and use them to create my own seed phrase? I feel like this method would be safe enough. I don’t really want to roll dice or do anything too complicated tbh

Words in your wallet seed phrase must be in BIP word lists, and there are different BIPs.
You can not create a list of 12 or 24 words which have words that are not in any BIPs and think you have a completed and usable wallet seed phrase.

How many Bitcoin seed phrases are only one repeated word?

Additionally, there are conditions for a combination of words in a BIP word list to make a valid wallet mnemonic seed phrase.

Why the Discrepancy in Repetitive Counts?

The difference in the number of valid repeated 12-word and 24-word Bitcoin BIP39 mnemonics stems from the structure and requirements of the BIP39 standard, which involves a combination of entropy, checksum, and the mnemonic's word count.

Entropy and Checksum:

    12-word mnemonic: Uses 128 bits of entropy and includes 4 bits of checksum. This results in 132 bits total, which are represented by 12 words.
    24-word mnemonic: Uses 256 bits of entropy and includes 8 bits of checksum. This results in 264 bits total, represented by 24 words.
    For a mnemonic to be valid, its checksum must match the calculated checksum derived from the entropy. This means that only specific combinations of words will form a valid mnemonic. But there's always more than one valid checksum!

[Somegory]

What if I randomly choose 24 words from different sources, like songs, books(library books not even mine), movies or things that have no personal connection to me and use them to create my own seed phrase? I feel like this method would be safe enough. I don’t really want to roll dice or do anything too complicated tbh.

I have a Trezor Safe 3, and my current seed phrase was generated by the device and displayed on its screen. I haven’t had any issues with my Trezor so far, but after the recent Ledger incident I’ve become increasingly concerned about security. Guys, I’m open to hearing your thoughts on my idea.

What if an AI can gather all the pieces together? Or you don't think that there is a AI already that's capable of getting and gathering words together to make recovery seeds out of them? Don't do it.

Even some crypto wallets had weak entropy and it was what lead to their compromises, now you want to do the same suing your head, it's surely not going to end well, my advice is don't do it.

You can't create a strong entropy, it's beyond your human brain, do it the right way or do some research on how to generate recovery seed using the right methods..

[Jostle]

I'd imagine that the "hack" on ledger was based on the fact that the device was physically tampered with (with eSim, and screen captured). Therefore, even if you create your own 24-word passphrase, and *if* the device is still physically tampered with - this won't help.

[Saltysugar99]

You are already concerned about the recent incident of Ledger. So you need to understand what the main security problem was in that incident. I think another thing is important here. That is if you create a 24 word seed phrase and are able to restore it to Trezor, it does not prove that it is secure. Even Bitcoin Policy does not force you to follow a specific hardware wallet or seed phrase generation method. Since this is your personal decision, you should give importance to the security of the seed phrase. How it is being stored, on which device it is being restored, on these issues. And since you have not had any problems with Trezor by generating the seed securely so far, then what kind of security advantage will you get by creating the seed yourself? I think it can increase the risk even more.

[wapwapwendy]

What if I randomly choose 24 words from different sources, like songs, books(library books not even mine), movies or things that have no personal connection to me and use them to create my own seed phrase? I feel like this method would be safe enough. I don’t really want to roll dice or do anything too complicated tbh.

I have a Trezor Safe 3, and my current seed phrase was generated by the device and displayed on its screen. I haven’t had any issues with my Trezor so far, but after the recent Ledger incident I’ve become increasingly concerned about security. Guys, I’m open to hearing your thoughts on my idea.

I wouldn't recommend making your own seed phrase that way. Even if the words come from random sources, you still need to select them in a way that provides enough entropy, and a valid wallet seed also involves a specific checksum. It's safer to let your Trezor generate the seed phrase, since it's designed for that purpose. If you're worried about security, focus on keeping your seed offline and making sure nobody else can access it. There's no need to make things more complicated if your current setup is secure.

[Antidote47k]

What if I randomly choose 24 words from different sources, like songs, books(library books not even mine), movies or things that have no personal connection to me and use them to create my own seed phrase? I feel like this method would be safe enough. I don’t really want to roll dice or do anything too complicated tbh.

I have a Trezor Safe 3, and my current seed phrase was generated by the device and displayed on its screen. I haven’t had any issues with my Trezor so far, but after the recent Ledger incident I’ve become increasingly concerned about security. Guys, I’m open to hearing your thoughts on my idea.

If you’re worried about the ledger/cryptobills incident, it has been reported to be a hardware bug which could capture sensitive information during setup, although the way they do it and how it’s done hasn’t been determined yet they won’t necessarily need to break your wallet cryptography or guess the seed which was the case with Coldcard where the seeds where generated with a lower entropy.

Both incidents shows two different ways in which a hardware wallet can fail but manually selecting words from books, songs or films which not technically possible still won’t solve either of these problems. Humans are bad source of randomness or entropy.

What you should consider like others have suggested is using proper established seed generation process which has sufficient entropy, buying from the authorized source or official store and possibly a multisig setup if you’re able to handle that, don’t overcomplicate seed generation.

[Nothingtodo]

No wallet supports a system where you can create your own wallet security seed phase and use it. BIP39 certainly doesn't, but if that were possible, everyone would create their own wallet of choice. If your chosen words are in the BIP39 list, then the wallet might support them, but if your words are not in the BIP39 vocabulary list, it will never support them and no wallet will ever approve you.

[Cryptomultiplier]

No wallet supports a system where you can create your own wallet security seed phase and use it. BIP39 certainly doesn't, but if that were possible, everyone would create their own wallet of choice. If your chosen words are in the BIP39 list, then the wallet might support them, but if your words are not in the BIP39 vocabulary list, it will never support them and no wallet will ever approve you.

Humans can be easier to predict most especially now that AI can understand human psychology from a series of personal data and that's what hackers exploit and even if it were possible to create personal seed phrases, I doubt most wallets have enabled that feature yet.

It's better to be safer and secure using the wallets hardware level cryptography and one of the best practice is to ensure verification of device's authenticity while keeping seed phrases offline either on paper or scribbled on metal plate backup.