Topic: Coinplate Steel Seed Phrase Saver - page 2. (Read 925 times)

Sounds like you are talking about Shamir's Secret Sharing. The problem with SSS is its single point of failure. The splitting part is done on a single device and the reconstruction of the shares is also done on one device. That's the single point of failure. Jameson Lopp talks about it in detail here. A standard 2/3 multisig setup sounds like a better idea.

About PO Boxes, we currently ship to post boxes that are freely accessed by third-party delivery companies like FedEx. This mostly includes mailboxes or virtual mailboxes that are operated by some 3rd party private companies. For the moment we might be unable to deliver to some post boxes that are operated by post operators like USPS in the USA, as they don't allow other operators to access them.  If you think this is something that might be desirable by some customers, I think we can look into adding international post/mail delivery, which should be able to reach regular post boxes. For most folks, it would be not an ideal option, but maybe for PO Box delivery, it would be beneficial.


Regarding the data. I am aware that data security is an important thing. We are not that big but we do take some measures to secure the data.
Currently, we offer everyone (not just EU-based customers) to ask for full erasure of their personal data and transaction details after the return period is over. A significant % of our customers ask us to do so right in the order form. This includes all data on our servers as well as all e-mail messages.
As an EU-based company, we are obliged to follow strict GPDR law, that requires us to delete all your data on your request. Also, it allows us to request the same on behalf of our customer to third parties like payment processors and delivery companies, which we do as well. We don't keep data at 3rd parties aside from our servers. Also we purge the database manually every few months, as I don't like the idea of hoarding the customers data indefinitely.
The only data that remains at us then are obligatory tax records i.e. receipts but we move them to offline and/or paper storage periodically which is kept in a separate physical location.
 
I am looking into making this process fully automatic which will allow us to, by default, delete everyone's data after 30 days from the delivery. It involves some work so it will take some time to implement, privacy policy needs some legal work too. We'll announce when it's ready. Probably then if someone opted in for a newsletter or sth we will just keep their e-mail address but nothing else.

^{Open to all suggestions for improving the data security.}


That's right. What I might recommend is to have your seed splitted in 2/3 way, which means you can read your seed while having any 2 out of 3 copies. Yet with only one of copies you cannot get the seed as it will require you to crack 8/24 of seed which still will take at best months if not few years. This requires having 3 safe locations, possibly different physical addresses. You should have them in a place where you can check each few months if it was untouched, for total peace of mind. ^{It's easy to do, but If you need details I can give you some instructions if you PM me. I'll probably make a tutorial at our site in the future too.}



Forgot to add previously that shipping to some remote or expensive locations is $19 instead of regular $9. Edited the original reply accordingly. This includes countries like Autralia, New Zealand, islands in the middle of the sea, Switzerland, Norway, some African and Asian countries. You can get the delivery price from the product page or checkout. Still it is free for orders everywhere over $100 like you just pointed out.

Please be aware that in some countries you can get charged by local customs office import tarriffs, tax or duties at delivery. We listed info about some most popular destinations at our site, but in other cases you should check how it looks like with your local customs office. Maybe that's what the OP, Agbe meant? I believe it could add up to $50 with $270 value in some cases.


Also it might be important to some folks here, especially in US market, that all prices at our site include all sales taxes so the prices = amount paid.

The problem is that $276.00 is for 5 plates and you made it seem like you paid that amount for a single one.
And it was confirmed that shipping is FREE worldwide above $100; you can't just come up with a random figure - and say that you paid $50 on top of the $276.00, as that's impossible even if you got the 5-pack.


Sorry that I'm getting mad, I just hate misinformation.

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I just played around with the country selection, and if you get a single plate (under 100€), then shipping to some African states (haven't tested all of them) is 19€. You don't have to leak your location of course, but I just think $50 shipping for one plate is too expensive and just doesn't make sense / wouldn't be offered, if you can get e.g. a 3-pack for 189€ and have free shipping.

@foggoat
Can these units be shipped to PO boxes and how do you handle private information of your clients?
Is it deleted and wiped altogether from servers, how long is it stored, and do you self-store data or rely on a 3rd-party?

Hacking or leaking information about thousands of users who have ordered steel plates could be a valuable piece of info and a dangerous hit list of sorts. Not just from your company, but in general.   

https://getcoinplate.com/product/coinplate-alpha/

This is the price in the website. The shipping fee down to my community is high within my country and this will come from outside country. So I only add $50 for the $276.00 base in the distance though that might be wrong from the calculation.

That's some serious density and heat resistance!

While I'm still a big fan of the 'DIY washer method' (there's no metal seed phrase backup, remotely as cheap) - since a coinplate does not cost $300 USD, I may consider it in the future for a very 'heavy' (packed with good amount of coins) Bitcoin wallet.
Though if just your own house burns down (not a huge apocalyptic sized fire), you should have redundant seed phrase backups elsewhere.

Buried under the basement / in the cement sounds like a good idea.

You can read our comments on the tests in our blog post. The units that Jameson Lopp tested were shipped to him around half a year ago. Since then we improved the manufacturing a bit, so the screws are not as tightly fitted as before. It should mitigate some of those problems.

However, the important thing is that Coinplate will survive a house fire, even if it's abnormally hot. House fires burn at around 600°C/1100°F (at max can get up to 850°C/1500°F), and it survived a much higher temp of 1093°C / 2000°F in that test quite fine.


The most important thing for a backup is to survive and protect your seed phrase. If after a terrible disaster your only worry is to open your quite intact backup I think that's great.  Even if it may require using some extra force, a hammer or maybe a power tool in some worst cases.



My finger must have slipped, I meant 1.1kg. Yeah, that's how much our backups weigh. The weight of each is between 1.13-1.14 kg.
You don't have to just trust me, you can make the calculation yourself using for example this steel weight calculator. The dimensions for the whole unit are 10 x 105 x 138 mm. The material is 304 stainless steel which is stainless T-304 in this calculator. The calculator computes the weight as 1.16 kg or 2.56 lb, but there is some slight material loss during the processing (i.e. rounded corners, mounting holes, polishing). Screws fill their sockets almost entirely, though.



That's the same conclusion we have arrived at, after making some mockup designs. Glad that I helped and thanks for the interesting discussion.


Sorry for that dumb error on our site and inconsistency. As explained above, each Coinplate weighs between 1.13-1.14 kg. Thanks for pointing it out though, I'll review our site for errors.

They seem to be using different numbers on different parts of their website. The main page says it weighs 1.3kg:
https://getcoinplate.com/

But if you check each product separately, you are shown the number you mentioned.
https://getcoinplate.com/product/coinplate-punch/?attribute_pa_bundle=none
https://getcoinplate.com/product/coinplate-grid/?attribute_pa_vp=single
https://getcoinplate.com/product/coinplate-alpha/?attribute_pa_vp=single

This additional information changes everything. I can say that your products don't stand out much from competitors in terms of price, as OP originally voiced about 300$. I don't know why this erroneous figure was indicated, but now everything is clear that it was just a mistake.

A little quibble, to be meticulous. On your website, the weight is 1.14 kg.

Is the total weight of the plates really just over 1 kg? I can't imagine that plates with the indicated dimensions weigh so impressively (of course, relative to another).

It was just my idea. Probably not the best. After reflecting on your answer, I came to the conclusion that an additional layer of additional material between the plates would be unnecessary and would create the risk of breaking the plate. Silicone or rubber doesn't have the same high resistance to various media as stainless steel, which means that if exposed to adverse conditions, it will be destroyed faster than plates. This will lead to the fact that an "aggressive" substance can penetrate into the gap between the plates, which will put this storage medium at risk. This is my verdict after theoretical considerations.

Thank you for your very detailed answer and detailed explanations. This allowed to look at your product from a different perspective.

It's nice of you to chip in and share some additional information, particularly about Jameson Lopp's new tests. They seem to have performed nicely although there were problems with the heat stress tests with both the Coinplate Alpha and the Coinplate Grid. He had difficulties unscrewing the fasteners and taking the plates apart, but in the end he managed to do it.

Hello everyone, as a founder of Coinplate I would like to join this discussion to clear some things out. There were some misunderstandings about our products. If you have any further questions, I'll do my best to answer them.
There is also my separate thread about Coinplate the seed phrase storage solution, if you would like to get more details and perspective.


Some of the photos that OP - Agbe posted are actually not of our product. Some of them are from other companies. You can check our products at our site getcoinplate.com. Sorry, but I cannot post photos yet.

m2017 correctly identified our products at our site:


Actually, our products start at $65 and international shipping is quite cheap. Wordwide FedEx shipping is $9 and we ship our products literally everywhere in the world. (apart from Russia obviously)
Furthermore, You can get bundles that let you save a bit. For example, Coinplate Alpha costs $79, the 3 Pack is $189 (20% off) and 5 Pack is $276 (30% off). That's probably where this incorrect $300 price tag came from. And you get free worldwide shipping with orders over $100. €1 is now worth $1 at our site as that's how exchange rates look like right now.
EDIT: Forgot to add that shipping to some remote or expensive locations is $19 (i.e. Australia, Switzerland). Still free worldwide shipping for orders over $100, also to these locations.
 
To put the price of our products into perspective, some of the more known brands on the market are priced at $130 or more for a single backup and they don't offer that high durability in my opinion.

Coinplate is made using 2 thick stainless plates joined with solid screws that are set using threads in the plates, without a separate washer. Each Coinplate weighs 1.2kg / 2.5 pounds, so you are getting quite a heavy-duty unit. It is a stainless steel sandwich made from two plates each 5mm (3/16") thick.


Our products do not feature an extra, special space for 25th word (aka passphrase) and in all our communication we inform our customers that the passphrase should not be kept together with your seed phrase for security reasons. In every instruction manual in the box, we include some seed phrase safety tips, where we inform that a passphrase should be kept in a separate location and a backup should be made on a separate unit. Coinplate Punch has some additional spaces for memos and info, though. It is possible to make a backup of the passphrase on either Coinplate Alpha (if you use only letters of the same size) or Coinplate Punch (all symbols capable).



If anyone would rather make the backup themselves, go for it. I myself also like to DIY stuff in my house, but obviously not everything. People don't have to make themselves everything they use, there is room for both ready made stuff and DIY.

If you want something ready-made and super easy to use, you may just order something that's made like that - Coinplate Alpha, where you just press the center punch. No risk of smashed fingers. Also no other tools needed, as everything is included, so you can start right away. Anyone can do it on their office desk in just few minutes. It might be a bit more expensive than getting some thin plates from a hardware store or a set of washers, but remember that your time costs too and tools are not free either. Plus you get something of much higher quality and durability at the same time.

Also for Coinplate Punch we give an option of getting a bundle with an electric engraver, a bit more easy to use option than hammer +  stamps but it's up to you. We also ship bundles with stamps.



We did tinker with this idea actually. The thing is that when you screw the plates together, they are pretty tight themselves, so any corrosive agent has a hard time getting between the plates. Furthermore, even high-strength acids don't really affect the markings, even if the device is left open. The layout is deep engraved and the marks you make yourself are also pretty deep. You can see that it survived acid in Jameson Lopp's stress test. The gasket would itself be vulnerable either to fire, oil or acids (there are some specialized gasket materials but they are nowhere near the durability of stainless steel, we know as we make some industrial grade gasket ourselves).



Jameson Lopp have just recently stress tested our products, all of them received the top A A A rating.
Coinplate Alpha test, Coinplate Grid test, Coinplate Punch test and our blog post with a comment.



The logo on the front is just a sticker that can be easily removed if you like. After you do that, Coinplate looks basically just like a piece of scrap metal, and you can hide it pretty well if you think about it. The tamper stickers are obviously not mandatory, just an extra that's included in the box. Furthermore, the tamper stickers' material and color are almost the same as the metal itself so they blend quite nicely.

Plus you can literally get your Coinplate secured in the foundation of your house and covered by a wood floor if you wish. It has an extra set of holes so you can fix it securely with some proper anchors. It should also survive disasters, just like the safe you mentioned, if not even more. Paper kept in a safe might not survive a house fire, but your Coinplate will.


Hope I covered most of the topics mentioned here, if not, ask me anything you like.

I tend to disagree with such a broad, generalized answer. There are definitely reasons for keeping the passphrase together with your seed words.
A few examples where the passphrase is not used to make the seed backup useless when found.

• Passphrase is used for plausible deniability. When someone finds / hacks your wallet (software or hardware), they only see a small amount of funds, but you can restore the hidden wallet with your 25 words.
• Passphrase is used to protect against flawed / purposely reduced entropy of wallet's seed generation process (or malicious wallet with deterministic seed generation).
• Passphrase is used to separate wallets that are still tied to 1 seed (e.g. different 'accounts' with different purposes on a single hardware wallet)
• Passphrase is used to simply add more entropy.

I'm sure there are more use cases for the 25th / 13th word in scenarios where you assume that your seed backup is protected (just as if not using a passphrase), where it gives you a different benefit instead.

The mnemonic passphrase field shouldn't be there at all. By its existance it could spark a very bad idea into less informed users, who might think it's ok to save and store it together with the mnemonic seed words.

It's just a terrible design decission and frankly I have no words for it that this company dared to do it like they did.

But again when we think about it, how many people even know what a passphrase is and use that option - whether it's a desktop or a hardware wallet? Even if they know what a passphrase is, do they know that it is not wise to store seed and passphrase together? Therefore, I think that the majority will leave that field empty and that it is not a big problem.

However, users should be informed about the best security practices when using any crypto wallet or backup method, because regardless of how good the tool is, people show that they forget over time like that character who forgot a fairly simple screen pattern and thus locked his crypto wallets.

He might have ordered a 3-Pack or a 5-Pack, hence the price. The company sells 3 different type of products priced between €62 and €76. A 5-Pack costs €263 for the most expensive plate. But the website also says that if offers free shipping at that price. Agbe is from Nigeria I think. Not sure why he was asked to pay another $50 for shipping. Standard shipping to Nigeria is €19 for one metal steel plate.

Good point. I didn't even consider that when I wrote that post you quoted. You are absolutely right, it shouldn't be there at all!

Seed and passphrase should not be on the same backup anyway, because in my opinion the goal of protection with an additional word is to make seed completely useless in case someone finds it. In my opinion, this field is completely unnecessary and may even lead people in the wrong step.

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Most plates for backup do not offer the possibility to write the whole word anyway, but the first few letters of the word are enough, which will then be recognized when entering into any good crypto wallet. If you have ever done wallet recovery on a hardware wallet, then you could see that after entering 2-3 letters, the device offers a word - so for 24 words, it took me less than 5 minutes.

Wow; first thought: that's a lot of money for steel backup plates! People even find Passport hardware wallet too expensive and it costs less + it's an actual electronic device.
I'm still a big fan of the washer method, because it's so cheap that you can do multiples and spread them, like BlackHatCoiner suggested with paper backups.

Regarding resistance against the elements, sure there are more premium materials that withstand more (heat, acid, ...), but again it's cheaper to fight risk of destruction by means of redundancy.
Another point against using a commercial seed backup is that obviously you leave more traces; such as Google cookies which notice you browse for such products, potentially ISP knowing you're interested in this product, shipping company and maybe even customs if it has to be imported.

One positive thing I noticed, though: I have made 'plate backups' before I came across the idea of using washers, so I highly recommend to use thick plates like shown by Agbe, if you like this more compact form factor, because if they're too thin, they will bend 'towards' you when hammering. So that's a thing which is great to see on this product.

According to their website, it is from 76-276 usd
 https://getcoinplate.com/product/coinplate-alpha/

Frankly,  this is a total waste of money. You can buy a computer with that money

Just write the seed down in a piece of paper and put some plastic in it. That is the most used and the best way to store your seed.

Make some copies and check them from time to time... no need to buy this.

From your post, I didn't understand (or missed) which particular model Coinplate did you choose? Alpha, Grid or Punch?

How about putting some material (rubber, silicone or something completely different) between the two plates for additional protection (at least around the perimeter) to prevent corrosion?

p.s.
~$300 is way too expensive for a simple piece of metal, even if it's stainless steel, and with bonuses like a couple of bolts, a marker, and other stuff that's sold at any hardware store.

When I look at things like this I see them more as designer safes as opposed to an old school one that is secured in the foundation of your house and then covered by a wood floor and a rug.

Just in general in a smash and grab it's a lot more likely to be found and taken then something that is a bit more generic looking.
And yes you can secure it to the bottom of a table but then why the tamper stickers. If for some reason someone sees it they might ignore it.
Ohhhh....a tamper sticker, I wonder what is inside of it......

-Dave