Topic: Cold wallet damage (Read 256 times)

I think you didn't yet fully understand how bitcoin (or crypto in general) works.

Your coins are not stored on your wallet. Your coins are assigned to you on the blockchain.
With the corresponding private key (which is stored in your wallet), you are then able to control them.

All you need to control the BTC are the private keys. And these private keys are derived from the mnemonic code (the 12/24 words).
Anyone with access to these keys can access your coins. There is no need to connect anything to "the blockchain".

I think a company that engraves seed words for you wouldn't have a lot of work. You said it yourself, it's a huge security risk. Would you send your seed that protects your life savings to another person? It would be similar to a Bitcoin wallet keeping a copy of your seed. Nobody would use their services.

@8m_zk
The blockchain is an address book, available to everyone. Your Ledger seed gives you access to the funds stored on your addresses. As long as you have backups of your seed, you will always be able to gain access to YOUR Bitcoin. A wallet is just a tool that gets you that access. Just like an address book is used when you want to find a listed telephone number. Nobody does this anymore, but you get my point. If you destroy or lose the address book, the phone numbers inside haven't been deleted and disabled. You just lost the tool/means to check them.
     

I really appreciate your comprehensive answer!!! Thank you, now I understand! yes, I don't have any blockchain related background so yours and other guys information is very helpful.

Really - I'm rather surprised there aren't any. While I was thinking of someone specializing in it, no doubt it may occur to folks to have a local 'trophy' or sign engraving company do it which again raises security concerns.

Same with folks using their own Maker laser engraver - some like the ones from Glowforge use cloud-based data processing AND state in their TOS that designs you use can become part of their stored IP and available for the companies to 'use as they see fit' much like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook et al do with pictures/vids uploaded to them. Not good!

As you said, best way is to get a manual vibrating pen-type engraver und do it yourself.

I'm not aware of a single crypto specific company which offers to engrave the plates on your behalf, whereas there are dozens which will sell you blank plates and engraving kits or other metal based storage devices. Note that of all the different designs, engraving on to stainless steel or titanium performs the best. Any system with moving parts (particularly inserting tiles in to a holder) performs particularly poorly.

Even better and cheaper is to just walk in to any hardware store and buy a small piece of stainless steel to do it yourself with. It's far cheaper than these bespoke products, and there is absolutely zero link between your real details and owning bitcoin, so it is easier to maintain plausible deniability.

But that raises the question of where you get the engraved plates from...
If you get a blank plate and do the engraving yourself - great! However using ANY type of 3rd party service/company to do it for you once again creates a security problem in that you must be 100% certain that the 3rd party is completely trustworthy about securing their systems and erasing ALL traces of your private keys from their systems.

From this follow-up question, i can deduct you might be missing some background information about how bitcoin actually works. I'm not trying to insult you or anything, crypto is quite complex to grasp at first, so it's perfectly fine to have some confusions when you first enter this community.

the TL;DR;, simplified answer: bitcoin is not stored in a wallet or on a device...

Your wallet holds private keys (or a master private key from which other private keys are derived). Next to this, your wallet might hold some meta-data (like labels, or some history that can be regenerated by re-parsing the blockchain). This meta-data is actually "unimportant" (at least from a technical point of view), it is not needed to spend your funds, and some of it can be recreated by parsing the blockchain...

Your wallet derives your public key(s) from these private key(s). Those public key(s) are hashed to form your address.

When somebody funds your address, he/she is basically just broadcasting a transaction to the network that uses unspent outputs from the UTXO db as an input, while creating one (or more) unspent outputs funding your address... These transactions are stored on the blockchain (the decentral ledger), NOT in your wallet... The only important thing your wallet stores is your master private key (in ledger's case... Ledger is a HD wallet witch uses a xprv, not random keys), or your randomly-generated private keys... When you restore your wallet with a seed phrase, the new wallet will contain exactly the same master private key as the original wallet, so it'll be able to sign transactions spending the same unspent outputs...

Yeah, that's what I was asking about. when the ledger is totally broken

Yeah, metal plate is more reliable. Another question what can be a safe place? I don't trust bank's vaults.

Thanks for your information! If I break my wallet and buy a new one how does my crypto transfer to a new wallet? Do I need to connect to blockchain online?

8m_zk, any device that has internet access (in this case Ledger HW), should not be considered a cold crypto wallet. If you want a real cold wallet, you will need two devices, one of which must always be offline - see how it looks in the example of Electrum.


One backup also represents a security risk, especially if it is on paper. At least two copies in different locations if possible is a much better solution, and in addition to paper the seed can be engraved in a metal plate which provides protection from fire, water or some other unfortunate circumstances.

when initialising your device, you'll be presented with a seed phrase and you'll be asked to write this phrase down.

If you ever break/lose your wallet, you can buy a new one and restore it using said seed phrase... Or if you're in a hurry, you can use electrum to restore your wallet using exactly the same seed... However, when using electrum to restore from seed you should consider your wallet to be compromised... But it's nice to know this is possible in case there's a sense of urgency.

By the way, this is exactly why you should write the seed phrase on paper, and never store it online. Also, make sure you store the paper on a safe place... In order to protect you against somebody finding your seed, you can use a passphrase:
https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005214529-Advanced-passphrase-security

Hey guys, what if my ledger wallet is damaged is there any way to recover my crypto? Any back up or something?