Topic: Beirut explosion - Lesson to learn from this. (Read 684 times)

In addition, virtual wallets are prone to scams and have a high risk of being attacked by computer viruses. Also, somebody else is storing your BTC, not you.

Protective measures can never be enough even in real life situations. But at least it's safer to put in place as many measures as possible.

That is so true. Since you can never be sure how safe your BTC are, you're better off when you store them in various places, including desktop wallets, hardware wallets, paper wallets, and having physical coins. Other security precautions include backing up your digital wallets, keeping your software up-to-date, and having multiple signatures.

Well, I can't deny that this unvoidable the fact that we never knew when and where this random phenomenon will happen. If you think there are still some flaws whether we store it online or in hardware. What I am trying to say is that when you store it on hardware there's a possibility that it might damage or destroy due to some random events while on the other hand storing it on an online wallet there's a chance that it might be hacked. Hence, the only solution I can think of is that try to diverse your funds into multiple wallets, keep them on both online and on hardware.

Yeah! their economy is no longer safe and their currency is also at risk. at this point, they need to think well and invest some of their wealth on some cryptocurrencies. before that explosion, their economy is no longer flourishing because of their corrupt officials and when that explosion happened, people are so helpless they are in need of help. I think they will become the next Venezuela if they cannot recover from their economical problems.



https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53390108

Well, various disasters happened in the past, and they will happen in the future. So, you need to think at this moment how to keep your asset safe. The safe in the Bank might be one of options, or to leave a sealed note with your lawyer or somebody you trust.

who knows when there will be disasters, explosions, floods, earthquakes, fires and so on that cannot be predicted,
and of course copying private keys to a piece of paper and keeping them safe or telling the kids and wife can be the safest way when disaster hits us, and copying several, not just one, is kept separately.

I think the disaster on the virus is a sudden incident and the explosion cannot be foreseen. If it's not an explosion but a tsunami or a long flood, we will print our wallets and where to keep them safe. We cannot know in advance. I think that if I want my assets to be safe, I need to have different and creative backup plans.

The important lesson from that is that we can prepare everything that we think is important to be saved from now on, so when the bad thing happens, we are not too worried because we already have a backup or already save it in the hidden and safe place. We never know what will happen in the future, and if we are not ready, we will have difficulty solving the problem in the future. So while we can do something from now, and it is better to think about what is necessary to be done.

Not just be careful or alert but to spread your private keys too and don't ever ever forget where you put it .

Bitcoins can be stored in any ways but all of them have flaws. You put it in a storage where no one can get instead of you, there is a chance that you can forget it. Any securities that can be applied with the private keys always has holes.

What I did in my part is I wrote it in a sticky note, took a photo on it too and sent the image to an address where I don't really use (that email has been used specifically for the storage of my private keys). Maybe the fact that people around me doesn't know anything related to crypto helped me to secure my private keys too because they don't know what are these words .

For me, the lesson that this tragedy has brought to me is that never ever let anyone suffer. I donated some amount to Lebanon authorities because I believe that a simple help will matter to them the most. If you have some spare amount of money, don't hesitate to give them because they are really affected by this unfortunate events, pandemic and this tragedy.

I learned here that the sense of money will become useless when you don't use it in a correct way. No matter what coin you're holding if you don't put it into a place where someone will benefit, it will become valueless. So as you are holding cryptocurrency, if you are earning profits, donate some on Beirut.

I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of cryptocurrency investors who are also affected. We can grow our assets but they can't easily recover from all of the damages that this tragedy brought them.

When you make a cold wallet, by writing 12 words in a paper with your own hands, i have mentioned many times that you should make a copy (again with your own hands, no electricity) so that you have two papers with the same 12 words you store securely at two physically separate locations.

Please stop the talk about private key because while the seed words internally recreate it, you are not directly handling a private key, nor should you ever do it due to the security implications. Never handle private keys directly, stick to the 12 words, and protect them well.

As for the Beirut case, sadly it is yet another case of State bureaucracy. Apparently these hazardous materials have been stored for many years and across at least 4 administrations. Of course, some official designated that specific area for all flammable materials, so it was all conveniently places together (fireworks, nitrate ammonia, etc). All it took was one lousy wielding or spark igniting some fume or who knows.

You'd be surprised at how common this is in many countries: State bureaucracy plus less than stellar practices. You people in the "first" world wouldn't even know how often we gamble our lives everyday just by getting born in the wrong place. I'm sure most people in Lebanon didn't even know such dangerous things were concentrated there.

So it happens they had this port for everything related to agriculture, all that grain stored, and no doubt this nitrate was meant for fertilizing purposes. Ironically this country has had plenty to worry about with its neighbor having the largest military power of the region plus insurgency stirring things all the time.

It is not the same as in 'different location' though.

When I left the keys there, I left them this DVD with the private keys printed as a cover. I also left them this album and behind the photos are the private keys. They are jumbled and I am the only one who knows that. If that is all lost, the keys are jumbled on my uncle's wall and here in our house, in my working space and my girlfriend's phone but it is just like a diary. Only me can encode that.

Its true! So devastating indeed. And it actually taught us some lessons about securing our wealth, assets and especially our bitcoins. But somehow, I think that we can't really avoid this kind of incident. For some reasons, if it will happen then it will took place and we have no guts to control nor predict the possible chaos to occur...maybe, the best thing to do is to be just careful and alert. The kind of being wise that our wealth and stored bitcoins will be spared from this kind of terrifying incident.

That should always be the case. @Janation said there are children there so there is a chance that it might be destroyed by the children when they played with it or maybe as @finaleshot has said, there might something that would happen. There are other ways for us to take care of it and I think since this explosion some people might overthink how would they take care of their Private keys.

True, it's better if we have those always in us or common places we went to, a huge amount of assets when gone will definitely be huge losses in your life.

Therefore, we shouldn't be putting it in some places that aren't common places for you and is very vulnerable to anything that can lose or destroy it. I really don't prefer leaving valuable things attended, as much as possible I bring them with me or in the drawer of my personal desk.

I wonder why safe isn't really safe to story and physical things at all? I mean, if there's an explosion, it will definitely act as a safe right? enlighten me.
I guess, it's better if you put those on a place where you always visit, like your home or your rest house, so you can check it and there are no worries.

It might be safe because it is separate but what do you think will happen if there's a phenomenon occur in the area where those separated pieces are located? It could still have a risk of losing it.

Yeah, that's definitely right, and also consider not investing in one cryptocurrency fill your bag with different Altcoin that you think may provide you with great profit, It's just the same like that investing all of your funds in a single coin and when the price dumps, your funds and asset will also be like Beirut explosion, worst case scenario you will lose all of your funds or maybe recover the half of it, so make sure to fill your bag with a one or two or more coins that has potential, and also don't use a single password to different accounts and secure your email that you use on exchanges.

Uhmm. I already did this in separate locations.

Half of the keys are in my house right now and the other on my aunts and uncle's house. I thought it is an ingenious way of doing it but I guess there are a lot of people here thinking the same. I thought of this a year ago but I am also scared since they have children in their house so that might be gone when I come back.

It was really due to the negligence of their government.
The ship was stopped at Beirut on year 2014.
There were plenty of request to the government saying that they need to get the ship out there, but the government neglected it.

I can't think of other ways of storing keys very safe compared to hardware and paper wallets.
It seems like the only way s to store it online with the usage of the tightest security.

and what if you got 3 places of storage your wallets etc and in all 3 places will happen situation like this? You can`t be sure man, that is outstanding. Can you imagine like 2k20 and people still can`t carry the work with chemicals   Or if it is act of terrorism - why they are not spying for country-enemies? They are well known, and rumours were spreaded that `this is the terrorism`, at least they could go for spying in whatsapp which is popular nowadays, you can read here https://www.techgenyz.com/2020/11/04/ways-to-spy-on-whatsapp-messages/ what people can do if they got access to whatsapp of another man

Guys and Gals, you are too focused on a scenario where you are at the primary location where this accident happened. Let's take this accident as a example.. They report that over 250 000 people lost their homes, but just over 100+ lost their lives. (4000+ injured)

What if you are one of the injured people or if you were not at home when it happened. If this happened at night, there would have been more people at home and probably a lot more people might have lost their lives. The facts are that 250 000+ did not die and their houses are gone... How many of them had bitcoins/Private keys stored in their houses?

Also, let's say this is your Private key : L4hVMF5PXJ pyy9w2r3k NvyPiDhaPcbd P5uh2Bp G63cmgp647PZnL   - You can store the section in Bold in different locations without people having access to the sections that are not in Bold, so they can do nothing with those sections. (Only you know how to put the puzzle together when all sections are together)

Keep one copy with the whole thing somewhere safe, if you are paranoid that you would forget how to put it together or if you lose one location.  

No, storing crypto in exchanges is not really a good idea even if it is a reputable exchanges because these exchanges are subject for hacking for this is where crypto exchange will going to happen and it can be the best place for the hackers to get more bitcoins and other crypto.

There are many ways to secured crypto funds and its crypto wallets and that involve using back up copiesnof private keys and walley address of your wallet. One can use USB, MICRSO SD and other small saving device. Offline wallets also may do? Maybe..

Agree, I don't really agree with the OP saying we have to store our paper wallets and cold wallets from different locations. Isn't it dangerous too? Especially if you don't regularly visit the places you keep it. And I also agree that this is an accident. We are all surprise by it. But well if this strat works for him, then its good. However, it is still not safe from other circumstances too.

I think there's really no safe strat for us, all we need to do is do everything we can to safely store it, whether to our most trusted people, or to our most secured accounts in the internet. Find the best strat that will work for you.

What I did already is that I've wrote my private keys in a notepad and created 3 copies each and then scattered it. I also sent all my private keys to my couple for emergency purposes. Yes this isn't the best idea to make as there is no perfect strategy to hide your private keys but I trust her so I gave it to her so that when accidents like this will happen (hope it will not happen) then she can still access it and get the Bitcoins.

My best strategy so far that helped me to hide my private keys is that I'm not telling it to anybody crypto-related. What I mean is that in my place, I'm the only one who knows anything related to crypto so they have no idea what this words are and take note that it will not work for everybody . It only works for me

Storing your assets online is acceptable but storing any sensitive information such as private keys is not recommendable in any cloud storage. If you haven't read what are the risk of storing something in a cloud storage you better do your own research first.

Beirut explosion might be a wake-up call but it just happened that the city has been storing ammonium nitrate near the port used for fertilizer for over 6 years as what I have read in the news. Anything can happen in this world there's no 100% safety in this world no matter how safe you think you hide something. It's better to keep the private keys from you and from your trusted friend(s) around the globe.

Im sure one of those 300,000 houses the owner uses private keys or paper wallet, that's why its best practice to not store it physically but digtally but with in a safe place that no one knows.
There are instances that disaster like this could take place and even governments wants to confiscate your Crypto's due to regulations. So its better to be prepared than to regret it in the future.

Beirut explosion is a warning for all of us, bad things can happen anytime and anywhere. Therefore cloud storage or online wallets
are a good choice to save our assets from disaster such as in Beirut. Imagine if we kept all valuable assets at home was lost by the
tragedy that occurred in Beirut. Then the distribution of our wealth must be partly online to anticipate if a disaster like the one
in Beirut happened.

The probability that one of the exchanges that you keep your money on gets hacked is far greater than the probability of your house blowing up, you can trust me on that.

You aren't safer holding money on centralized exchanges! It's the other way round.

I'd like to know how glacier protocol performs in such cases.

So, as i am keeping half of my bitcoin in exchanges, i should be good. Naturally they can be hacked but apparently there is a possibility of a huge explosion as well so i rather trust experts to keep my coins safe. Not to mention that i think they (big exchanges) have insurance to cover an attack.

Well, the probability of such an event is probably low. Perhaps lower than someone finding a passphrase which is stored in more than one location. So while making these decisions, it's important to take everything into consideration. I, for one, store my stuff essentially online. I know it's not safe and everything, but I don't trust myself with not forgetting where I put something or not accidentally throwing away the piece of paper with crucial data on it. What IS good is at least to store money digitally rather than have cash/gold/diamonds at home. And the Beirut tragedy is a good reminder of that.

Then wouldn't it be better if we wouldn't store it in paper wallets at all? Cold wallets are much better than paperwallets of course. But still, using cloud as your storage for your crypto-holdings and private keys must be the better alternative and not such data being scattered in many geographical location. What if the user/holder only has one place to live? Would he dig the soil and plant his wallets to the garden nearby him just for the sake of 'safety'?

Still, wake up call here is that you must learn to be secured online. Use cloud as you storage or even any online wallets. Then that would be enough.

Indeed, I agree that this should be a wake up call to everyone. Disasters come without notice and we'll be surely surprise for the damage and loss it will costs us.
We must safe keep every important files and properties of ours, in that case our money, on more secure place than a physical safe.
Although, crypto users and diligent people would think of this, I think that most people are fond of having their money beside them if not putting it into the bank.

It would be really good for us to secure our private keys or any important documents in a place where we think it's going to be safe. Because no one knows what will happen or what kind of tragedy can strikes us, but let us still think that human life is the most important and must come first in this world.

currently the cloud storage system is safe enough and also easily accessible. So I think everyone is taking precautionary measures, by saving all their wallet backup data to the cloud. so even if their house is destroyed with nothing left they won't lose their data.
maybe only stupid people who only store their wallet data in one place.

I don't mention about friends. If I have my wife and my children, I should disclose it to my wife. Even now she does not interests in and have knowledge on bitcoin, I would tell her what to do if I suddenly pass away. My children is too young now so I skip it but if they are older enough to remember what I say, I would say them what to do too.

I agree with you about unnecessary of encryption, that is a way to over complicate everything. Key is enough, just store them secretly and safely.

Despite the care you have, if you're dead it doesn't matter.

I know that we also wanted to take care of our Bitcoins; to protect it from the hackers and prove that it is ours with private keys on our side. But the problem here is that this huge explosion is an accident, or the carelessness of the people with that tons of amonia stored there.

We can protect our Bitcoins and other altcoins from hackers, from scammers, but we can't always protect ourselves from what will happen.

No.

I would prefer a BIP38 encrypted paper wallet if I have to store it in different locations. I don't really dare do it (and certainly won't recommend it), but even if you post the encrypted private key, it's quite safe with a decent password.

Yes even the online wallets could also been wipe out by that explosion. It gets worst when money is really needed and one can't access into it for emergency purposes. I had been a replying posts like this of how could cryptocurrency be accessible especially in case of emergency. It is very difficult and I think there should be another way to make an ease on accessong crypto funds for emergency. I just wonder how could it be done but I need to read more replies here to get enlighten.

That is a really bad analogy in my opinion. The thing about the Beirut explosion is that there was a mismanagement, and with regards to wallet, why would you become complacent when it involves finances. The tragedy was a result of lack of proper containment and mismanagement and I hope that these things won't happen again. If your house gets in the way of disaster then that would mean that you already know what to do, you know that finances and important papers should be placed altogether and I think most of the household knows that this is their priority.

To answer both, at Hiroshima the count is between 50 000 and 100 000 from the initial blast, the explosion in Lebanon pales in comparison, but although powerful enough it was "detonated" at ground level so starting from the blast area the force started to lose power far faster because of multiple buildings, in Hiroshima the blast was in the air at 500(!?) meters the wave was direct to almost everything in its range.
In this case, as far as I can see from Google maps although the area is heavily populated along with the port still the buildings are around 200-300 meters from it, enough for the blast to become less deadly, although the damage looks like a ww2 bombardment the severity seen on buildings doesn't always translate in human deaths, fortunately. The same happened in Oklahoma where only 4 out of ~160 were from outside the targeted building.


I have a feeling that the chances of the person you "trust' to steal those keys from you are growing proportionally with the value of your coins, and I've heard of enough family dramas to think that there are higher chances for a friend to rob you than for all your house to go up in flames.
Having multiple back-ups is clearly a solution but I wouldn't really deal with riddles when "encrypting" it, one baseball ball in the head and none of your riddles won't make sense anymore.

You should check for you anxiety if these events triggers your fear. Larger and smaller calamities takes place frequently around the world. You just need to be a bit concerned about the security of your coins but the security issue should not haunt your life. What's the use of your coins if you lost your own life and maybe the life of your loved ones.

It is a precious lesson for all. From HSE (Heath Safety Environment) staffs to bitcoin and crypto enthusiasts.

Don't delay important and vital things for too long. Don't blame on anyone else because of any level of delays like the director of the Beirut sea port.

For bitcoin and crypto enthusiasts, having multiple backups in multiple formats (paper, USB, steel, ...) and in different geolocations like you advised.

Furthermore, share the backups and ways to retrieve coins from backups to at least one person who you love and trust the most is key. Accidents (maybe death) can happen to everyone so don't keep all things for yourself alone, then if something bad happens, your coins will be lost forever.

Have you ever considered purchasing several hardware wallets (e.g. a Ledger S), initializing them with the same seed and storing them in different places (parents, a bank safe deposit box, ...)?

I would have no problem if the ledger should fall into the hands of someone else, I think it is impossible to guess the pin. Furthermore, to my knowledge there is technically no possibility to get the seed out of the ledger in that case. I am currently considering a similar scenario, whereby I currently like the storage of a backup ledger in a safe deposit box best. 

this is a good and sad warning to us.  in a disaster, something can be snatched away suddenly ... our wallets are important, but there is something even more important to safeguard, namely ourselves and all our loved ones ... we can still raise more money, but there won't be any  which can replace our love for someone

lets pray for our brothers and sisters affected by the incident

Also that can make them uncomfortable to think that their assets are in a different places where they can't handle it safely. Although it is safe, but still the anxiousness that can strike whenever you think that your paper wallets are not store by your side. It is really a wrong decision to store it in your house. But still, people have their own will on where they will store their money. This is a good example on why you should not be confident on storing your paper wallets, tragedies are unavoidable because it can hit or strike you whenever it comes. Tragedies are unpredictable so it is much safer for you to store your coins on the place that you are confident or guaranteed about.

I was thinking the same thing. I watched that footage from various angles and it was horrifying. Imagine if I were the one recorded that video, I would have instantly suffered severe anxiety and panic attack while running away for life.

Which is why having them stored in one place isn't ideal. I have a notebook where I stored all of my private keys, mnemonic phrases, and other details, etc., but it seems that I need to store them in more than one source (I did store some in my Google Drive and USB drive just in case).

It could happen where your home was caught up in an explosion/fire while you're somewhere else unaffected, and you lose access to your funds if your only backups are in your home alone.

While yes, the explosion sure doesn't have anything related to Bitcoin, OP sure has a point.

Yeah, I definitely agree with you as we will not know when it will happen to our place as everything can happen in an instant therefore being prepared is the best action to do.

It will be best if we can store our private keys in different locations but still safe locations so we can always access our wallet if there are happenings like this in our area.
Especially if we are storing a huge amount of money in our bitcoin wallets or crypto wallet as losing our private keys is like losing that money also.

Since bitcoin has a lot of users now, if everyone of us donates our one day income to that incident we can help them to recover easily. If an activity like this happens, Bitcoin will be having a big reputation on that country and might end up making Bitcoin a legalized coin on their country. It will also help the Bitcoin to occur the mass adaptation that all of us is waiting for. We can also help our co-users from that country because they are also helping us to have a good value of Bitcoin.

but if you have lots of BTCs in your wallet, i guess you will be worried also. but in any case, the first thing that you will worry about this situation is, if your family is safe and alive. then all the other things, can come secondary. because as long as you are alive, you have the chance to recover all those material things that you possess.
 these trending topics are somehow making this forum relevant to the outside world. so sometimes these people will just connect crypto life to whatever is happening in our environment. if nothing else, just to have discussions here and who knows, such topics like this will really be helpful to others out there?

I really think people have more to worry about than simply lose their cryptocurrency if they get caught up in an explosion of this scale.

I don't get the need to draw parallels between every trending topic and Bitcoin....

I feel sorry for what happened in Beirut, of course this is a valuable lesson for us all. Storing valuables in one location is
bad idea and very risky. If there is a big explosion like the one in Beirut we don't do much. Therefore if we are have paper
money, important document and private keys stored in several places, at least if it happens it will not lose everything.

Numbers are still growing and same as yours i dont really believe that it do only killed 100 but basing of on wounded which is nearly 6000 and still counting.When i saw some feed in facebook on such explosion
i though it was just an another movie or some sort but actually its real which i cant believe to happen in times like these(pandemic situation).
Going back into topic about storage of your keys via HW,Paper or other ways then its really hard to recover this up once you lost these things in possession.It might not really be ideal
to store up your PK's in cloud but i actually save up some pk in my email but in a scattered manner so no one will able to know if someone do have access on it but to think
it would be hard to bypass unless google itself will fucked you up.

^ Definitely right, no one can definitely predict what will happen and the worst disaster like what happened in Lebanon was unexpected.
Probably it is good if you have a metal vault locker at home and instead of paper wallets, just put it into metal, engraved metal as your paper wallet will probably a safe place for any disaster will come, it should not be burned and wet. Nevertheless, there is no really safe place, that is luck and your fate.

Not applicable for holders who don't have another place to store it. It's a good idea and wake-up call as you analyze what happened but it's not just everyone have the other place to store their private keys or can ask someone to do that.

You can reinvent or think of it how you can quickly bring it if some disaster comes. We have our natural instinct how we will protect ourselves and as well as our assets that's in the safety box or any storage you have placed your private keys, paper wallets, etc.

These are good points in general for sure.  It's also a good and very sad reminder that we are all not immortal.  We are all going to die someday so make sure you've got a Will established with precise directions on how to pass along your bitcoin/cryptocurrency to your heirs. You never know when tragedy might strike. 

What if you are at work and not at home when it happens? You will return to a home that would be flattened to the ground and all your possessions destroyed. (TV / Fridge / Beds / Clothing / Jewelry and personal items)

A lot of people do not even have insurance, so they will need to use those bitcoins to buy back some of those thing. You cannot say that natural disasters will not happen, if you live in a area that are not prone to natural disasters. Floods & Fires can happen very quickly and both can destroy your house and everything in it. (My neighbors house burnt down to the ground in a matter of minutes)

Just prepare for the worst and if it does happen... then your hard work will not have been for nothing. 

Yeah, maybe you shouldn't store all your bitcoin in one single place, but the explosion that happened was a rare case. We don't see everyday areas blowing up, houses getting destroyed or everything wiping out. But, I get what you want to say. Why take the chances? But, wouldn't it be harder to keep track of all your coins if you store it in different places.
And if my house blew up and people died, I wouldn't care about my bitcoins. I would be more concerned about the people who got hurt.

I wouldn't overreact if I were you.

If you live in a small town and somewhere in an area not known for natural disasters the chance of something happening to you and your wallet are very small.

If there's an explosion like that next to my house I won't need my bitcoins anymore.

The blast, as I saw on FB was a devastation of the kind of Hiroshima. Quite pathetic that so many lives are lost.

On the matter of security of wallet keys, it is better imagined than experienced. There are so many disasters that could cause same devastating loss; flood, fire, earth quakes etc.

I recall my teacher giving an example of a firm that never thought the twin towers of World Trade Center (WTC) will come down the same day, so he rented offices in both buildings. One of the offices in one of the building was used purely as a safe keep for important documents. As it is today, that proved to be a faulty safe. Cloud storage is the best. Use any of the cloud storage. Use a passworded  word document.

Not if you know what you are doing.    I store my "Private Keys" in a way that only myself would reconstruct it.. if needed. I left instructions and also directions to the locations of my stash for the people I leave behind. (The people I trusted with handing over the instructions, cannot do anything with it, because only my love ones knows how to decipher it from clues I left behind.)

Even someone finding it, will not know how to use it... because it is not recognizable as Private keys.    There are ways to implement this that are safe and secure and it makes it possible to store it in several different locations without uninformed people capable of knowing what it is.  

I'm really saddened by what happened and while mistakes can happen I can't justify such a horrible mistake as having such a huge amount of explosive material next to a populated area. I am also sad that there are people that do not care at all about events as these and are just being cynical and care only for their own fortune.
I would have expected to point out how these people need help right now and how they've seen half their city devastated and perhaps thousands of lives lost.

About your Bitcoin keys and how your only reaction on this matter is that our keys are not safe in our home, I don't have much to say. There is no reason for an event similar to a nuclear assault to happen to make you understand how to safely store them. There can be thousands of events that can destroy your keys and backups are a solution.

Of course, you never store your backup in the same spot. Another solution that was already mentioned but not in the weird custodial service that was promoted, is a multi-sig wallet which can let you use two out of three, two out of four or any combination of private keys.

You do not need to pay for multi-sig wallets and I do not recommend custodial services.

I think this also proves that whatever you wanted to do, you can't actually take care of something at 100%. There will always be a percentages of it that would make you lose anything including your bitcoins. Taking care is something but accidents are unexpected.

And those who died, they also lose their lives, it's  a tragedy that cause by a mistake hiding a high explosive device in the very heart

of populated city. It's sadden the fact that people around that place have no ideas in whatever hits them.


The wise thing to do. If you have different properties, you can hide your  paper wallet inside a safe box or place from your both your
places, making sure that you'll be able to keep it in case there's accidents like this or more al like.

If the respective person is alive he'll look for the paper pieces. With such disasters we need to learn much about life than keeping things for tomorrow. My personal opinion is to store the records on a digital vault. Maybe the vault service is third party, but we don't have any other choice looking upon the situation in Beirut.

the problem with a disaster of this magnitude and severity is that it wipes the person alongside their paper wallets! so there would not be anybody left to claim the coins from that paper wallet anyways assuming it is following the security recommendations and encrypting the paper wallet. otherwise without encryption the risk of having such a secondary backup in another location is higher in my opinion than not having it at all.

It's part of the risk I guess, you wouldn't really think there will be an explosion to where you hide your paperwallet.  It's a double tragedy, you lose your coins and lose a home.

Lucky for those who own lots of properties like having a place in the city and having a copy of your paperwallet hidden on your hometown address Assuming you hide it well without someone identifying it contains a private key.

It is also the bad thing that I see with crypto, with decentralization it's only you who make the transfer of money, anything that could happen wrong will be your responsibility. Same with owning a pretty safe, hardware wallet or any cold storage you can never be too comfortable with your surrounding coz any thing  can happen at any time just like what we have seen in Lebanon. No one expect that to happen, no one was really prepared for that to happen, and we can't get back the lives of the people that died to the incident.

Probably because of the community quarantine, they limit the personnel on that area besides it was in the pier so I guess there's only a few people there but the blast has a wide circumference, luckily the casualty is still small, thanks God.

Everything you say is true but there is no perfect solution for this, the more backups you have of your data the bigger the chances someone finds out about your holdings and they get stolen, and even if you were to encrypt the file with your seed words or private keys now the point of failure becomes the device where you are storing the necessary software to decrypt those keys.

You could choose to commit your seed words to memory, something that sounds harder than it is, but even that is not a perfect solution as obviously you can forget them naturally or suffer an accident that makes your coins impossible to recover as well.

So in my opinion people should take enough measures to protect their coins from the most common occurrences and accept the fact that they could lose their coins to a one in a million event like this explosion.

I believe hiding it beneath the ground will suffice. We must make sure that it is waterproofed, sealed, or laminated to prevent it from decay.  I also agree that we should keep parts of our private key in different places and should have several digital backed up stored in safe places.

Storing your crypto in multiple locations increases the risk of someone else gaining access to it. From what I've seen, the number of people who lost their crypto to theft is many times larger than the people who lost their crypto to large disasters.

It's always a trade off between the risk of losing access yourself, and someone else gaining access. I've never found a solution that fully satisfies me.

It's so sad what happened to the people of Beirut but I have always had it in mind to store backups of my files in other places especially in my relative's house...just that they will not be in plain words but they would have some form of coding where i am going to be the only one to understand it.

Don't you believe that having soft wallet or virtual wallet will be better on the following grounds;
1. Mobility
2. Readily Availability
3. Portability

Due to the above, you don't have to worry of disaster such as explosion of this kind. I think the only challenge is hackers, that is why we use wallets that are proven to be secured.

well, this is my own opinion. I think this is a way forward and one of the approach to avoid a total loss of ones digital assets.

There are always risks. On such degree of explosion, a safely kept paper might survive but a human won't. If the sum is large enough or is a corporate holding, it would be wise to let multiple people have the access to the wallet just in case. For personal holdings, it would be okay to let your wife and children know about it.

There's never going to be 100% safety when storing your private keys, or with anything else for that matter.  I saw the video of the Beirut blast, and you'd have to have your HW wallet or flash drive or piece of paper with your seed words on it buried pretty deep if you were storing any of those things near the blast zone--and even then, what's to keep rescue workers or the cleanup crews from stumbling across your stash before you do?

This is definitely one of the disadvantages of crypto, that you truly own your own money.  There's not a bank that's insuring it, and it's not stored on some corporation's server like stocks and other digital investments are.  If your private keys get blown up or lost or stolen, you're screwed. 

As an aside, I can't believe there were only around 100 casualties in that blast.  It looked like it would have killed a lot more people than that, though I don't know how dense the population was in that particular area at the time.  Scary stuff.

I actually like Casa's multisig[1] solution for this. It's just so simple but yet so good in my opinion. If anyone here can afford the monthly payment for their service, I suggest taking a look at it. I've been ignoring it a lot in the past even if Jameson Lopp was promoting it kinda frequently, but I recently just said screw it and took a look at it.

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[1] https://docs.keys.casa/wealth-security-protocol/

According to the information, the explosion in Beirut was due to a violation of fire safety during welding in a place where 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate had been stored for years, and firecrackers were still laid on top, which caught fire during this work until all this detonated. Of course, such cases of negligence can still occur.
Yes, unfortunately, this once again confirms how fragile the world of high technology is. Now, perhaps, many will think that the protective measures they have taken to safeguard data on wallets with cryptocurrency are clearly not enough.

This is the reality, such events cannot be prepared for and as such one would have to have a contingency plan. When setting up locations such as these which isn't your primary place of residence, security has to be a priority as while a disaster could lead to the loss of your funds, some other sort could expose your assets to theft.
To prevent this, you could set up a modified seed phrase on the paper wallet stored in the other locations so the bulk of your funds would only be accessible by you.

In my opinion, one of the safest, easiest, cheapest, solid DIY method to store in different locations is almost free, but people will probably not like it because it not that cool. The best things tend to be free and widely available but look too ordinary/common... so people go for the cool, complicated, hard-to-make, not-so-secure ones, and they really trust and like them.

People can quickly become complacent to think that their single location storage of their Bitcoin hoard would be enough. We all saw how 300 000 people have lost their houses in as little as a few seconds.

The Beirut explosion should be a wake-up call to all of us, to store your Paper wallets and cold wallets in more than one geographical location. A national disaster or a accident like this might wipe out your house and if you used that as your primary hiding place, you would lose more than your house.

After a disaster like this, bulldozers are brought in and only the foundations might be left after they are done. (So hiding it in a safe or a wall or the roof is a bad idea.)

Make sure you have several copies of your Paper wallets/Private keys and store them in separate locations. You might not even be at home when a disaster like this happens and when you return, the authorities might stop you from entering the devastated area. (due to instability of structures or chemical/gas leaks.) So you will not have a opportunity to retrieve your stash. 

Wake up and act now... before it is too late.