Topic: [100 dots] seed phrase backup (Read 730 times)

How is it “who's going to notice”? Now I’m definitely going to look more closely at family photos with fences.

This method has a small flaw: a family photo. Surely it will be on paper. And as you all already know, the photo is applied to paper, which is very sensitive to the effects of fire and water, and here we come to the same problem that arises when saving a paper wallet.

Solution: Engrave (artistic or laser engraving) a "some family pictures in the garden" on metal?

It seems that we are overcomplicating the system and returning to the same original starting point (or dot).


Encrypt data not with a fence, but with patterns on a metal miniature.

I think the most problem will be in  the choice of the quantity of planks in you fence. If you choose it  exactly 256 it would be too bad. To disguise the real thing you should attach to the meaningful part of it  the fake "prefix"  consisting of N planks  and fake "suffix"  of M planks and use on them the same mix of screws as sensitive section holds.

There is actually a good argument for being able to remember a passphrase if you use a hardware wallet.

Most hardware wallets will let you apply a passphrase to the seed phrase which is already stored within the device, without having to re-enter the seed phrase. So if you have your hardware wallet with you, then if you remember (one or more of) your passphrase(s), then you can access your hidden wallets. Even if you are just using your hardware wallet at home, it means you don't have to go and dig out your back up.

I'm a big proponent of not relying on your memory for anything, and you should definitely have your passphrase backed up on paper separate to your seed phrase in at least two locations. However, I have more than one passphrase which I have entered in to various hardware wallets often enough that I can remember it, despite it being long and complicated. The same holds true for a number of different decryption keys, since all my devices use full disk encryption. Although all of these are backed up on paper, it would be a real pain to have to go and retrieve a back up every time I turned on my computer.

Not bad, not bad at all Slotted is 1, Allen is 0.

On second thought: doesn't that stand out much more than a slightly uneven fence? I mean: I've seen thousands of uneven fences, but I've never seen different screws in all planks. Then again, I never look that close either

The beauty is in simplicity.  Instead of using different planks you could simply use them all of equal length, say 200 cm but fixed at different height, say 190 cm to represent 0 and 191 to serve as 1. One more method - all planks are equal in length, all of them are fixed at same  level  but with screws differing with head style or drive types needed. The choice is virtually unlimited to represent both 0 and 1. Slotted looks natural for 1 while Socked - for 0.

I do! 

However I will not remember them in the future. And I will not remember my passphrase in the future. I back it up so I don't need to remember it.

Anyway, it's not the best discussion since I agree with both of you and I find it difficult to argue on behalf of other people  :-p

I'll throw in a counter argument: what's the point of remembering the passphrase, if you don't remember the seed words it belongs to?

Yeap that's what I thought and why I asked. Thanks


Everyone will agree with what you say. However, without talking about my passphrase, one would argue that it's better to have a "long" passphrase (including lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols) but that is also "easier" to remember. Isn't it true? I mean, going for something like "29$_918jHlahq2)814nd000qhh<>ajL" is perfect, but you must back it up perfectly and forget any chances to "remember" it. You will ask, why remember it when you can just note it down twice? Correct! But it's good to have also have a chance of remembering it if needed.

I wouldn't trust a site that gives such a terrible estimate.

For password strength, it helps a lot to have many rounds of encryption. Keepass back in the days allowed to manually set the number of rounds. If it takes 1 second to unlock your data, it also takes 1 second for each try. Brute-force resistance is one of the great things of BIP38 encryption. I'd love to see a similar standard for encrypting seed phrases.

So on examination, it seems all that site is doing is making sets of "lowercase", "uppercase", "numbers", "symbols", and then calculating a strength based on number of characters and number of different sets you use. So any string of 9 characters including lowercase letters and symbols will be given the exact same strength. For example, this string "~gm$r!)zf" is also given 1 month and 6 hours, despite being significantly more secure than "stay away". So yeah, a poor way of calculating password strength.

I've never really used password strength sites like this, but a quick search found another one which does take in to account dictionary words - https://www.passwordmonster.com/
For "stay away" it gives 114 seconds, and correctly identifies two dictionary words.
For "~gm$r!)zf" it gives 931 years.

However, this also seems very inaccurate to me. With 26 lowercase letters and 33 symbols in the standard ASCII set, then that second password has 59⁹ combinations, which is around 53 bits. There is no way it would take almost 1,000 years to crack a 53 bit password.

The best passwords, and the most accurate way of calculating strength, are those which are completely random and draw from lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols, without any patterns. Then you can simply do 95^x, where x is the length of your password. A 20 character password of this format gives you >128 bits of security, which is what you should be aiming for. As soon as you replace a string of those characters with a dictionary word, then how much this decreases your security is unpredictable.

Having seen that, I don't want to create a separate topic for this (unless Loyce wants me to), but I want to define what a strong passphrase means and add a question. I will not discover the wheel, but I will add some examples.

Personally, I currently have a wallet and I have set a passphrase which is longer than 20 characters and it includes all types of characters (small, capital, numbers, symbols). I think this is a super strong passphrase and of course I keep double backup (separate from the seed).

I believe this website gives a good estimation of how long it would take to crack a passphrase: https://random-ize.com/how-long-to-hack-pass/ , but I also want your opinion. I didn't put my passphrase and I didn't try anything similar or close to my passphrase.

Let me give examples.

1. "stayaway" - 1 min 13 sec
2. "StAyAwaY" - 5 hrs 13 min
3. "stay away" - 1 month 6 hrs
4. "StAy AwaY" - 2 years 4 months
5. "St4y Aw4Y" - 6 years 5 months
6. "stayawayfromme" - 730 years 6 months
7. "Stay Aw4y Fr0m Me" - 39555681645472620 years

Now my question is: This website doesn't seem to take into account dictionary attacks. Is there a website that can do both? I mean password number 3 (and perhaps more than this one) could be found much easier than brute-forcing.

Instead of wasting planks (and needing a bigger garden), you could simply use 2 different planks: 201 cm long means 1, 199 cm long means 0. The top and bottom will be uneven, and you don't need to follow any pattern. Recovering your seed phrase is as easy as measuring the length of 256 planks. You can plant nettles to discourage curious seed thiefs. Let's say you need it nettle seeds.
You'll need to maintain your fence though, once the planks start rotting your bits become inaccurate.

I'll allow it

I knew there's a catch and it will not please @apogio. 



To avoid ever so slightly but of course noticably rising planks when you have a sequence of consecutive 1s you could waste planks and always use two planks for one bit. A binary 1 is: shorter plank followed by longer plank; a binary 0 is: longer plank followed by shorter plank. That avoids unpleasant rising or falling staircase sequences. Who said it needs to be efficient encoding?


Some shades of pink will give you wiggle room for some more efficient and sophisticated encoding schemes.



That sounds like a neat idea actually and innocent looking picture backups are still possible, too. OK, we're now on to something...
 

Couldn't resist a slight detour from the main topic...

Only 128 planks? I was thinking of 256 (+1). But you can of course use the bottom for data storage too.

Here, people manage to sell their lack of craftsmanship as a style, so the totally uneven fence doesn't have to have small differences. It can be huge gaps.

The problem is that my wife will want to decide on the colors, and it's not going to be random. And if I let my daughter have her way, we'll end up with a pink house.

Ahh, now that's more interesting, although I can't think of anything worse than having to cut 128 boards all of slightly different but very specific lengths. And given that in any random 128 bit number you are highly likely to have at least seven 0s or seven 1s in a row, then you are going to end up with a highly uneven fence which would just annoy me every time I saw it.

Another suggestion would be different colors of tiles on your floor, bathroom or kitchen walls, etc. Bonus is that they are not going to be at far less risk of damage, and they can't be viewed by anyone walking or driving past your house.

I thought I covered that when I mentioned backups:
Or just duplicate the exact same fence pattern elsewhere. You now need a vacation home too.

You're assuming I'm using the existing fence as a source of randomness. I was thinking of creating the random string first, and then using a new fence to store the bits.

While you're at it, you can do a similar thing with bricks in your wall

I'm certain Loyce is joking, but if we're being this critical then the main flaw is that it's not actually random. Given that all your boards are going to vary around a mean height, then whenever you move in one direction the next step is statistically more likely to move in the opposite direction. Not just because if you've gone up you are therefore more likely to come back down, but also because you don't move in even steps and could have gone up to the highest board and therefore must come back down.

And so you are statistically more likely to have a 1 after a 0 than you are to have two 0s in a row. And if you do get two 0s in a row, then you are much more statistically likely to get a 1 than you are to get a third 0. And so on and vice versa.

Likely nobody, but can you be absolutely sure? My first impuls was: that's hiding a secret in plain sight with a pinch of security by obscurity. Anyway, I had a good laugh and I'll come to a severe flaw later in my post.



LOL, you definitely have a point here.


Now to the flaw of LoyceV's proposed storage method. There's a not so small risk that some idiot in a car or other vehicle runs into your fence and destroys a good portion of it. Some jerks could break some of your planks just for the fun of it (there are mad people out there, sometimes). You can continue to imagine all sorts of dangers to your fence. Did you implement some error correction planks that can cope with real life? I'm obviously not very serious.

"If you wish to make an apple pie seed phrase from scratch, you must first invent the universe buy a house with a garden."

- Carl Sagan LoyceV

Haha, so now I need to buy a house with a garden. And I thought bitcoin was easy.

I think you'll find my workmanship is perfect and all my fence posts are exactly equal in height.

While watching old episodes of Home Improvement, I got another (even crazier) idea: store bits in your garden fence:

You need 256 bits, so you'll need 257 planks. Starting from the left, going up is 1 and going down is 0. The above image would read 11110000 Unless you're Wilson, in that case it reads 00001111.

You can easily create a backup by taking some family pictures in the garden.
Who's going to notice? And who's going to look for patters that could be seed phrases everywhere now?

For more security Distribute the seed over several plates:
Here's Sam00's idea, here you spread your seed over 3 plates and hide each one separately, and if one is found by an unauthorized person, everything is still safe since you need two out of three plates.

Plate 1: words 1-8 and 17-24
Plate 2: Words 9-15 and 17-24
Plate 3: Words 1-8 and 9-15


Or better use a BIP 39 cryped seed

For information: BIP39 supports an additional passphrase. If you use this feature, lost seed lists are not a big problem. Nice side effect is "Plausible Deniability". Nobody can prove to you whether it is an empty HD Wallet or not. Different passphrases or even no passphrase simply result in a different wallet. You can theoretically store a small amount of money on another wallet instance with the same seed words, while the correct balance can only be accessed with the correct passphrase.

PS: my plate is also tested by Jameson —> https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/reviews/willi-recovery-seed-plate/

People who know about bitcoin and seed phrase backup solution probably know about similar system like this.
This is not the first time I see stainless seed plates that use combination of letters and number that combine to seed words, but I never like it.
I don't think this is bad in any way but I think it's inferior compared to Steel Washer backup, maybe because you need to have the full list of seed words.
Positive side is that it's probably easier do stamp dots on stainless seed plate (or paper).

One bitcointalk member willi9974 is selling similar product Willi's Recovery Seed Plate:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/stainless-steel-bitcoin-recovery-seed-plate-5323755

OneKey is selling similar plates made from aircraft-grade titanium:
https://onekey.so/products/onekey-keytag/

All Metal Bitcoin Seed Storage Reviewed by Jameson Lopp contain several plates like this:
https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/

Perfect. Personally I don't want to bother with laminating paper etc. So I follow this approach: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62910792. It is also kind of waterproof because of all the packaging. However it's not fireproof. But as we said, I am not afraid of the fire since I have 2 backups in separate places. And the chances of both those places burning up at the same time is tiny to non-existent.

I'm also a bit doubtful about my method. But I will try to make some backup and put it on another safebox in my home.

I just tried laminated paper and I poured 1 bucket of water, it does not seep and there is no splash in the paper. but of course, that method does not work for fire, because of that I keep it a fireproof safe box.

Are you serious? At least you can say Fireproof and Water Resistant A4 paper is easy to tear, burns quickly, and I don't think a wipe will be enough to be able to read the words well.

Try it Then test restoring the seed before funding it.

The tricky part is finding the exact dimensions back 10 years later, if you don't have a printed table anymore. It may take some trial and error to print the exact format again for recovery. And you should probably not keep it in the same safe

I just imagine printing that method on A4 paper without using a metal seed.

That A4 paper I laminate and save it in a metal safe box with fireproof.

What do you think?,
I think it's pretty safe. I made it just to trick if there were thieves force come into my house.
The thieves will be confused seeing that 100 dot and don't know what it is.
So if I made it on metal, maybe he would have stolen it, and thought it's quite valuable dropped it in steel.

If you would include the rest of my quote, then you absolutely can. There is no scenario where a given temperature will melt stainless steel, but aluminum would survive. There is no need to use multiple different metals for different scenarios, because for the things we are interested in stainless steel will always outperform aluminum.

Well, it depends. "Better" is subjective.

Yes, stainless steel will always survive any incident better than paper. But then it depends on your threat model and your individual circumstances. You can hide a tiny slip of paper in far more places than you can hide a metal plate. You don't need to worry about things like metal detectors. What if there is a hurricane, or a flood, or a fire, or an explosion? Perhaps I want my back up to be destroyed so it doesn't wash up on a street somewhere for someone else to find, or for someone else to find in the rubble. And what's more likely - I spend days or even weeks manually sifting through rubble or exploring the wreckage looking for my metal back up, or I simply go and retrieve my second back up from a different location?

I use black ink and thick paper (300gsm) and I put it in card sleeves (like these https://www.amazon.com/s?k=card+sleeves&crid=QHQWRBIWB1WW&sprefix=card+sleeves%2Caps%2C196&ref=nb_sb_noss_1). I used to have a lot of these cause I used to play trading card games. Then I put the sleeves in zip plastic bags (like these https://www.amazon.com/Reclosable-Resealable-888-Display-USA/dp/B07V5R9CV2/ref=sr_1_2?crid=24D690NZRCAGX&keywords=small+zip+plastic+bag&qid=1695835517&sprefix=small+zip+plastic+bag%2Caps%2C176&sr=8-2). Finally, I put them in bubble mailers (like these https://www.amazon.com/Quality-Park-Envelopes-Redi-Strip-QUA85755/dp/B08QZCY3KY/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=K04CYNKFIIX8&keywords=post+bag&qid=1695835568&sprefix=post+bag%2Caps%2C184&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1). Then I put them in secret places  I revisit them twice a year to make sure they are ok and once a year I rewrite them.

If you 've ever thought you knew what insanity is, please reconsider 

I meant the use of power tools (electric engraver), instead of hand tools (hammer and engravers). Ultra-efficient electrical equipment is not needed. You can limit yourself to cheap and simple Dremel analogues. To make dots on a metal plate instead of using a hammer. You can limit yourself to not completely drilling a through hole, but you can drill right through. This is optional.

A completely reasonable solution that can be applied. In principle, sometimes, a paper storage medium may be sufficient if we talk about short-term backup and the presence of long-term backup. Only it would be better to cover the paper with a protective layer, such as lamination. Better yet, use cardboard instead of paper. But this is all a matter of "taste".


You can never predict what will be needed and what will not.

How about having 2 metal plate backups in different locations? This will be better than the same thing made from paper, right.

This is why I back them up. I was born in 1994. If my passphrase was 1994, why would I bother backing it up? I mean I can safely assume that I will remember it. As a software engineer, but more importantly as a rational person, I can state that on the internet there is no such thing as "100% security" or "100% privacy". We can only try to diminish single points of failure and avoid silly mistakes. We can educate ourselves to think calmly and rationally. If I have a single backup (in the strongest material of the world), if I lose it, I am done... At the same time, if I have two backups at the same geographical place, it's stupid. I know these things are trivial and super simple to realise but I come across people that don't understand them. A friend of mine told me the other day that he had two backups of his seed phrase, in the same drawer. He said "two is better than one". I felt I had to explain the simplest thing, but apparently I had to do it. He also had his passphrase backed up in the same drawer all together. The back up was something like "my birth year". Anyone who stole this paper could just try all the years from 1923 to 2023 (assuming he is not older than 100yo and not younger than 1yo ). Just observe how many mistakes were made by my friend, that have nothing to do with Bitcoin, but it's just common sense.

But, at this point, I would like to merit you personally, because you have helped me a lot in this journey. And LoyceV too. As I have stated in other threads, I also have a multisig vault. The backing-up idea of the XPUBs in a cyclical manner along with the seeds wasn't so obvious to me at first, but it is a great idea after all.

What I try to say with these two paragraphs is, we must think rationally. Establish the proper precaution measures, that are trivial to everyone. Then, take small steps to ameliorate things even more.

Provided your passphrases are strong enough. You strike me as someone who does indeed use long and complex passphrases, but as we know many people use weak passwords, use names or dates, reuse passwords across multiple accounts, and so on, and the same applies to wallet passphrases as well.

It would also be the last thing I worry about, not because I use metal but because I know I have other back ups off site. Should your house burn down, are you going to sit and sift through the debris looking for your steel plate back up? Will it be safe to do so? Will the fire service or similar even allow you to do that? What about if you live in an area prone to flooding or hurricanes, and your steel plate back up ends up a few kilometers away? How are you ever going to find it? An off site back up is significantly more important than using metal over paper.

In fact, I have lost money before. I have opened a relevant thread. It didn't matter how well I had backed up my wallet. I made more severe mistakes.

Having two backups is vital. We don't discuss about this actually. The only wallet for which I have no dual backup is my multisig vault where I have the necessary redundancy with 3 cosigners backed up once.

Finally, I also have two backups of my passphrase. I don't trust my memory at all. So I have 2 wallets (2 seeds + 2 passphrases). I have backed them up as follows:

Place 1: Seed A + Passphrase B
Place 2: Seed B + Passphrase A
Place 3: Seed A + Seed B
Place 4: Passphrase A + Passphrase B

Losing 1 packet, I have no problem. If an attacker steals 1 packet they cannot take my funds from any wallet.

Even losing 2 packets, I have a small chance of not losing all my money.


It is the last thing I will worry about. It must be devastating, seeing your house on fire.

This is unnecessary.

For all the qualities of the metal we are interested in for our purposes here - durability, strength, malleability, reactivity, melting point - then titanium is better than stainless steel, which is better than copper, which is better than aluminum. If a piece of aluminum will survive certain conditions, you can be certain the same sized piece of stainless steel would also survive those conditions and more.

I've said this before, but I think people who use these metal options generally worry about the wrong things. Far more important than having one super durable metal back up, is having two back ups. I'd much rather have two paper back ups in separate locations than one metal back up stored in the same place as my wallets themselves (i.e. at home), which in reality is no back up at all.

House fires hit around 1000 Celsius, so you are quite safe with either stainless steel or titanium.

Yes, that's what I saw too.

I think when it comes to corossion resistance, then Grade 5 is the winner.

When it comes to heat, I saw this on the internet:

Metal	Melting point (C)
Aluminum	660
Copper	1084
Stainless Steel	1510
Titanium	1670

I guess that according to titanium grade you can only go higher than 1670 Celcius.

Anyway, according to Wikipedia there are 38 grades for Titanium alloys, so.........

From what I understand, Grade 5, also known as Ti-6Al-4V or TC4 (titanium-aluminum-vanadium alloy), is the most commonly available commercially and generally provides better characteristics compared to pure titanium (Grades 1-4). The price is only slightly higher than that of pure titanium plates.

Yeah and depending on the application you can choose your desired grade. Take a look at this page: https://www.titaniumprocessingcenter.com/tips-choose-right-titanium-grade/

I found 25x25 cm at 1 mm thickness for 22 euro. It turns out there are different grades of titanium, I guess they're different alloys with different characteristics.

Very helpful post, thanks. No I wasn't gonna do it manually, but I don't have super efficient hardware as well. I only have the basic tools (hammer etc).

To be absolutely honest with you, I personally choose paper (for fast back-up) and metal for durable back-up. So I back up my wallets twice (paper & metal).

There is only one way out - to combine solutions for different conditions. That is, select the metal that will be most resistant to the conditions you expect. If you are afraid of a fire that could harm your plate, then it is better to choose a stainless steel type that has the best fire resistance. If there is no threat of ignition, then you can limit yourself to aluminum, but you should take into account the fact that aluminum is susceptible to alkalis, which dissolve the oxide (protective) film on the surface of the aluminum. For example, alkali may be present in the soil and therefore, it is a bad place to store an aluminum plate. Or you will have to think about a way to protect this metal with additional means (paint or other protective coating).

And even better - diversification: several plates from different types of metal. Paranoid people (who believe that the more backups there are, the higher the chances that one of them will be found by strangers.) can hide them all in one place.


The density of copper is 2.5-3 units on the Mohs scale, and stainless steel is 4.5, and here you are right in saying that stainless steel is more difficult to process. But you weren’t going to do this manually, right? Now it is not a problem to find a power tool for these purposes that will allow you to easily interact even with titanium.

LoyceV, yeah it will look nice, but considering o_e_l_e_o's comment, I will stick with my stainless steel. Btw, I have edited the picture to look nicer  But still I only paid 20 euros for this whole setup.

Better than aluminum, worse than stainless steel. Copper's melting point, reactivity, and durability, all lie between the relevant numbers for aluminum and stainless steel.

Here's a copper product which Lopp tested: https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/reviews/safe-seed/

As you can see, it does show far more damage than a stainless steel product, but the data was still readable. Although that might not be the case depending on how you stamp/engrave/whatever your data, though.

I just did a quick eBay search and found a 10cm x 10cm x 4mm titanium plate for $20. That's even cheaper than I imagined. I'm sure you can probably find similar.

This is what I love about this forum. Get useful knowledge freely as long as I am willing to read one post after another like the one in this thread.
I don't have enough memory for all the knowledge you have.
You always care about security and other things that are important to discuss by providing great discussions.

For me, discussions about wallet security and securing seed transactions are more important than other confusing discussions.

If my post is annoying and ruins your great discussion, please delete it.

I didn't know I can just order titanium sheets online

See Securing Your Seed Phrase with Washers, and CTRL-F "copper". I can imagine it looks quite nice to have 100 dots in copper.

You can find plenty of titanium nowadays. Just buy an iPhone and get the titanium for your seed backup. It's going to give the iPhones a reason to exist.  (Feel free to NOT comment, I just don't like iPhones a lot)

Do you guys have any idea in regards to copper? I found some washers made of copper and I thought, why not give it a try? It is more easy to carve than stainless steel.

Aluminum is a very poor choice, and I wouldn't recommend ever using it for this purpose. It is weak and highly malleable, meaning it is easily deformed, bent, or broken. It has a low melting point, well below temperatures reached in an average domestic fire. It is highly reactive and very prone to corrosion.

Have a look at how aluminum based devices fared with Lopp's stress tests: https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/reviews/ellipal-mnemonic-metal/

Good quality stainless steel is the best trade off between price and durability. If price is no object, then go for titanium.

What about local blacksmiths' or metalworkers' workshops or artisans? They typically have a stash of scrap metal in their stockpiles, which could be perfect for this project.
Aluminum is a good choice due to its ease of processing, but, of course, stainless steel is a much better solution in case of a disaster. Most aluminum plates would likely be completely destroyed in a typical house fire, although they're still a much better choice than paper, wood, or plastic by a long shot.

You're not alone. It's not something you find at the local Home Depot here. I could order aluminium online, in any size I want, but haven't tried it. Next best would be an old oven plate (impossible to clean) or the side of the washing machine. Both are bad for my marriage

That just means you have to use a bigger hammer

Well it's not so easy here. But thanks. I was mainly just expressing a difficulty I have, rather than actually asking. But I appreciate the answer!

In regards to Jlopp's reviews, I have been thinking about buying this one: https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/reviews/cryptonumeris-plate-s/ since I have the metal letters already.

For the time being, I have created a custom backup with the washers (I 've seen it a lot in this forum). Looks good, but kind of difficult to read.

Any decent hardware store should either have something in stock, or be able to order/cut something to your specifications. I prefer to use a local store, but even the generic big brand stores here will have something suitable: https://www.lowes.com/search?searchTerm=metal+plate

Don't know where you live, but I would assume most people would have a store somewhere in their local area which could provide a suitably sized piece of stainless steel. And if not, then I guess you could order one of the proprietary devices: https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/

Is it only me that find it extremely difficult to find a nice, clean, proper-sized cut piece of metal?

I want to test this idea, as my secondary backup method for my single sig wallet.

If this works properly, I would also try to generate a similar pattern for my passphrase. Only problem is that I would need to add symbols, numbers and both capital and small letters. I will think about it and I will let you know.

As I have mentioned in my first message  one can project the light that has passed trough holes on the surface of  CCD matrix, then assign coordinates of that matrix to   letters that correspond to the certain holes . This way you eliminate the need to use a printed template.

And don't worry about the luminous intensity needed for this. The plates with drilled holes are used to map the  long-distance galaxies of Universe  by exactly  the same technique I have suggested.  

https://jlopp.github.io give it a good review  https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/reviews/attenuo/ with Crush, Corrosion, Heat Tests You must be careful in choosing the thickness so that the hammer can make a clear impact and at the same time be very deep to appear in case of shocks like this.


My eyesight is not good so I like the Steel Washer. It takes up less space, can be easily hidden, and gets the job done.

The disadvantage being your plate no longer has a blank rear side, so cannot be bolted on to something "face down" to make it appear like any other metal bracket or joint.

I'm also not convinced that trying to line up your plate with a printed template and line up a powerful enough light with each hole to get a clear point projected on the template in the right place is going to be any easier than just doing as Loyce has suggested.

It is not a problem if you have a mini drill press (I have such machine, acquired for  less than $100 on Amazon) and  the drilling bits made from the hardened steel. One - two bits would be enough to make one hundred holes. Sure, it would take some time to make 100 holes but the advantages of them over depressions on the plate surface are obvious for all  potential cases when such encrypted plate could be used.

In my experience, I'd break too many 1 mm drill bits doing this.

I appreciate your solution on the given  matter.

In my view,  it can be even advanced and instead of applying  punches to relevant places one could drill the small holes there. Then, at decoding, one can illumine the face site of the plate and get the optical   signals from reverse side, head those signals to CCD matrix and get the restored SEED. Sure, some extra decoding soft would be needed to perform the final operation but to develop it is not a matter at all.

Depends on your tools, I suppose. Lopp managed it: https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/reviews/bitplate/

Buy 20 such plates. Use one to stamp your seed phrase. Then use all 20 in a building project, such as to join two pieces of wood together, with the seed phrase obviously pointing inwards so it appears no different to any of the others. Or go in to your roof/cellar/foundations/crawl space/floorboards/whatever and just screw it (face down) on to some beam/joist/rafter/truss/whatever. No thief is going to stumble across that by mistake, and will only know to look for it if your opsec has completely failed.

My old PC has a metal only top lid.

Programmable machines are a tad too expensive to burn after using them

The size of the holes doesn't really matter, but since the force required increases with the square of the diameter, I expect them to be quite similar. Or get an automatic center punch.

Lol, totally agree.  Even after using number and letter stamps to encode my seed phrases onto those stainless steel credit cards, I still keep old-fashioned paper copies in my gun safe.  The fear of losing the spreadsheet, or forgetting how I encoded the seeds, or croaking before I can teach my kids how to decode my seeds would keep me up at night for sure.


Lol, one of my first jobs out of college was programming CNC machines including a Trumpf laser cuter.  Have you priced those precision punches and laser engravers?  A bit over-kill I think.

You mean the enclosure of a PC case to punch the holes in? That won't work, because the composition includes plastics in addition to metals.

Sheet metal strips are dirt cheap, especially those in smaller dimensions.

Also there are punching machines which can be programmed to punch holes in a certain pattern (google: "TRUMPF"), but these are designed for long slabs of sheet metal and are expensive. Are you sure a hammer can make the small holes regularly sized?

With such a small surface it is an almost impossible task or at least for me to have accurate 100 dots.

I can see a few other ideas to keep our seeds private from community members in the last couple of days but I am asking myself how many people are going to take this risk with their primary wallet seeds? Even with multiple backups, the secret innovative storage of keys or seeds seems risky to me.

I'm now thinking it can be the furniture. The 100 dots can be in the side of a fridge or washing machine. It may not be sturdy enough to hammer though. Maybe an old PC will do, at least I can take the sheet metal off and place it on an anvil.

That's what I like most about this forum: by sharing our experiences and opinions, knowledge and ideas, we can combine it and use it to create something new and better. The strength of the BTC-community lies precisely in this, in interaction. I'm glad to see that my useless post inspired (partially) the generation of this idea.

Who, you ask? Now every man after your post will try to see the plate with dotes.

How do you plan to store this piece of metal? Hide or fit into interior and decorative elements, furniture or other elements in the house or garage?

In my opinion, it is best to put it somewhere where it will not stand out, but will blend in with the surrounding objects. For example, a box on a desktop or cabinet in the garage along with other pieces of metal, blanks and other metal junk. I hope I haven't revealed anyone's storage secret.

Just don’t throw it away by accident like James Howells (or your relative or husband / wife), so you don’t have to tinker with the landfill.

You can experiment with a test amount of money to tickle your nerves (when money is at stake, this experiment will be the closest to real conditions). Create the 100 dots backup and place it in a place where it will not be intrusively visible. See how others (friends and random guests) will react to this and how quickly the money will disappear from this wallet how successfully the process of restoring access will go using the 100 dots backup. I think we should try it to identify possible bugs.

When a dilemma arises: to be or not to be to try or not to try, then it is better to choose the second. Until you try, you won't know.

Excellent suggestions in theory, but a hammer and a punch aren't the most precise implements, and from experience I can tell you that attempting to punch centering holes in close proximity to one another is nearly impossible without making a mess of things.  Especially if you're starting with a small substrate, like credit-card sized ones I used for my seeds.

There's not much to sell that way. The etched ones are good looking, the benefit from bare steel is that the seller has no idea you own Bitcoin.

I like it If it's not too close together: 3 dots in one square and 2 dots in the next square can get confusing.

So there are lots of companies which already produce metal plates with this hole punch design, but I'm not sure if I've seen one without the template etched on to the metal.

You can easily reduce the size of the plate and/or increase the size of each box by overlaying words 13-24 on top of words 1-12. For example, one dot in a box for words 1-12, two dots for words 13-24, or three dots if the letters overlap. Or a vertical line, horizontal line, and a cross. Or any other such arrangement. Or even do the same with 1-6 overlaid with 7-12, since 12 word seeds are perfectly adequate.

Editing my text from more than a year ago failed slightly. It's fixed now.

My other seed backup is burried at +34° 59′ 20″, -106° 36′ 52″.

Transparent sheet is necessary? Why not a white sheet?

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Definitely possible for anyone to try this if they want to secure seeds in a secret way but hope when someone finds the metal plate will not see this thread.

Anyone who is going to try this method needs to work on their accuracy in hammering skills ( I am too bad at that).

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Seems like the idea is inspired by the famous series 'Breaking Bad' - Hector Salamanca's Communication Method.

After reading n0nce's Steel Washer Backup jig (customisable), Securing Your Seed Phrase with Washers, Stainless steel Bitcoin Recovery Seed Plate, m2017's post and ColorSEED Or how to simply hide your seed phrase, I think it's time to post an idea I've had for a while. I came up with a combination that doesn't require a 3D-printer or laser engraving. Just a normal printer is enough.

For security:

Printing on paper and transparent sheets
You may need to adjust the printer setting. There are 2 types of transparent sheets, either for laser printers or for ink jets.

Template

Tape the paper sheet on a metal plate, get your center punch, and hammer the first 4 characters of each seed word with one dot per character. Then hammer 4 more dots in the red "oo" for alignment.
Remove and burn the paper sheet.
The size isn't perfect, it might be too small, but I don't want 24 seed words to take up a very large sheet of metal either. Maybe someone with better graphics skills than me can improve this.
Using exact 5 mm squares should make it possible to decipher the dots using only a ruler and a pencil, without printing on a transparent sheet. But that would make the required metal sheet size at least 13x24 cm for just 12 words. With accurate measuring, it should still be possible to decipher the dots without printing again.

100 dots
For 24 seed words, you'll end up with exactly 100 dots.

50 dots
For 12 seed words, use only "o" instead of "oo" just because 52 dots sounds less nice

Deciphering
Tape the transparent sheet at the right location, and read back the seed words.
With accurate measuring, it should be possible to decipher the dots without transparent sheet.

Hiding in plain sight
Who's going to suspect a metal plate with "random" holes to hold your money?

Do I dare use it?
I haven't tested this yet (due to the lack of clean sheet metal), and wouldn't use it as the only backup for real funds.

No spam
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