Topic: [LIST] Bitcoin Seed Backup Tools (Read 1095 times)

Just because I was watching Air Disasters https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/air-disasters and saw them X-Rays and a few other things to look for damage that is not visible to the eye inside of parts. Has anyone tried to look through seed plates to see what can be seen without actually opening them?

Kind of James Bond / Mission Impossible thing where they get your seed plate, scan it, and then put it back without you knowing but I was just wondering if that is even a possibility.

Not a big worry and I'm going with probably not, but you never know.

-Dave

i would like to add the 'recovery seed BTC plate' from user willi9974 to your list.
this stainless steel plate is available in a 6mm thickness (weight of 450 grams) or a 4mm thickness (weight 310 grams).
there is also the possibility to use this plate on both sides (with a 24 seed). the whole seed matrix is very detailed lasered on the plate.
a complete stress test was done by Jameson Lopp with the plate. in the following link you can see the results and some pictures: https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/reviews/willi-recovery-seed-plate/

the whole plate is made of a v2a stainless steel. it is an acid resistant 18/10 chrome nickel steel, which due to its low carbon content after welding is intercrystalline resistant for plate thicknesses up to 5 mm even without subsequent heat treatment.

original german thread: Edle Edelstahl "Recovery Seed BTC Plate"
english thread: Stainless steel Bitcoin Recovery Seed Plate

Not hard at all. But, lets be blunt it was, as have been most that I have seen, a cheap made in China piece of crap.
I'm sure there are some seed plates makers that do not give you an automatic one give better manual ones.

But the last few generic ebay / amazon ones have really sucked.

It is what it is, when you are getting something like this shipped to your door for under $15 you don't expect quality or durability of the plate or the tools. But it's still better then paper.

-Dave

It deserves an update as well

- Some of them have outdated links and prices.
+ Coinplate - a new, ultra durable Seed Phrase Backup solution

• ^{I do know there are more, but this is the only one that I could find with an announcement thread in here.}

I hope nothing happened to both of your eyes and hands ^{[this is the first time that I'm reading something like this]}, but how hard did you hit the punch tool?

Side comment, but lets leave it as Dave knows for some reason....

With the seed plates that use a punch tool, be very carful as to the strength & quality of the tool and the force you are hitting it with as you are holding it.
And perhaps a bit of eye protection in case the punch tool shatters into about 73 billion pieces. 

Just saying I'm an out of shape computer nerd so someone a bit stronger may have some experience with this too....

-Dave

I think this topic deserves a little bump

Check out the Haven app, for android. It uses any android phone and it's sensors. Most phones have cameras (for light) and acceler---xxx the GPS thingy and a magneto-compass thingy. Whatever it's called, it can detect light or if the phone is moved.

Problem is battery life. Even if you attach a large power bank, it will eventually die.

Can probably use the cheapest Samsung J6 or something $100 phone, put it in ultra-low-power mode ... safety deposit boxes are usually dark, you can probably place it in some other location that has a window for sunlight and use a solar charger. Charges the phone during the day, runs on battery at night ... if it's within range of cell tower you can have it on the lowest prepaid plan and you'll maybe get an alert if something moves.


I've moved quite a bit away from there, it's not a secret where I am, but rather not make it public, OpSec and all that. There are local exchanges and almost like El Salvador some merchants accept bitcoins, (some accept altcoins / shitcoins / erc20 tokens) ... I don't have access to my imaginary bunker, but something I'd like to personally build where ever I end up living.

I do keep a house in that country since it was cheap to buy and maintain. It does not have a basement, but it has a small back yard, so I can bury something there. Actually, it would make more sense to just keep whatever backup seed metal plates inside that house. ... hmmm... 3rd world problems eh..

BTW, don't bring too much cash, just enough, the rest you can bring as bitcoin and exchange that once you are in the country. Actually, you can probably bring in $10k USD cash no issues and then use local money changer or banks to convert to local fiat money. If you're staying longer than 90 days, you may need a visa or something. Otherwise, tourist visa on arrival is good for about that long.

Well, it depends. Perhaps you have enough budget to buy all the security measures you want. Perhaps your back up plan is to stamp your seed phrase on a piece of metal, and then screw that metal (face down) on to the concrete foundations of your house under your floor boards or in your basement, in which case there is nothing else to spend your budget on. Perhaps someone can source some scrap titanium for a very reasonable price, or even have some left over from one of their own projects. But yes, as I said above (and as has been shown by Jameson Lopp's stress tests), stamping or engraving on stainless steel will be more than enough for almost every situation.

When considering the cost of tamper evident bags or seals, these can be bought for less than 5 bucks, which is not enough to make a meaningful difference to the quality of a safe, the grade of metal you are using, a remote alert device, etc.

I think you are making a strong argument against titanium.

There are very few scenarios in which a titanium seed backup will survive when a stainless steel backup plate will not.

You control the location of where the backup plate will be stored, so you can simply keep your backup in a location in which for all intents and purposes, the backup is not going to be subject to conditions that would cause the plates to be unreadable. Sure, there might be a situation in which you are incarcerated for an extended period, the conditions of the subject location change in a way that results in a fire melting a stainless steel plate that would not melt a titanium plate, but the odds of all of these happening are really effectively zero.

I would also repeat my argument that budgets are finite. If you can "afford" titanium, you should buy stainless steel and use the difference in cost to invest in additional/other security measures.

I was thinking something along the lines of storing your backup in a safety deposit box that contains a device that detects light that has the ability to alert you if light is detected. The device could have a long battery life and may be attached to the back of the container inside the safety deposit box.
I understand you live in a very different part of the world than where I live. I think it would be interesting to one day visit your country as a private citizen in possession of a modest amount of cash. I also understand you are in a unique position for people in your country and might be able to protect private keys better than most other people in your country because of your unique situation.

I think it's best bang for your buck. 304 stainless is better in this regard. 316 or 316L for saltwater, but if you are concerned about that I would just use 304 and put that in plastic container. Then bury it where it can't get burned. You can throw in some oxygen absorbers or fill the container with dry ice (co2) or argon gas. I would just wrap the whole thing with bubble wrap, then bury it somewhere, then pour concrete over it.

Now if it's in a tall building, that's gonna be a problem.

It's a trade off between durability and cost. Stainless steel isn't quite as good as titanium, but it is more than enough for almost everything we care about and it is significantly cheaper. All common alloys of stainless steel have melting points >1400 Celsius, while titanium is around 1650 Celsius. Building fires are generally in the range of around 800-1100 Celsius, so both will hold up fine. Titanium is only a couple of places below 304 stainless steel on the galvanic scale (the lower it is the less reactive it is), so in terms of corrosion although Titanium is slightly better the difference will again be negligible for our purposes. The difference in yield strength equates to something like 13 tons of pressure per square inch for stainless steel and 16 tons of pressure per square inch for titanium, both which will withstand almost all building collapses or similar.

So yeah, if you can afford titanium then go for it, but you'll also be fine using a thick enough piece of stainless steel.

Probably due to cost. Titanium solutions do exist, like: https://cryptotag.io/products/zeus-starter-kit/. It costs 130€.
I am not sure if engraving holds up as well as punching in extreme conditions simply due to 'modifying' the material less, if that makes sense.
Engraving a word is like a very, very shallow stamp of it, so I prefer stamping. Lopp didn't comment on it much, but I found visually, that the stamped letters held up better.

I have to say, engraving looks often quite bad (it's not as easy to hold such a thing steady as when using a pen ) and stamping isn't much better. The letters are always equal, but can come out crooked, too high / low etc.
While you might think it's irrelevant, I think it's very important for seed backups to remain legible after a long time and maybe extreme conditions as well.

So I like the idea of just punching holes, like in binary format or like in the CryptoTag Zeus which uses 'BIP39 numbers' (indexes: https://cryptotag.io/bip39-list/) instead of BIP39 words: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt

Continuing OT, if someone steals then from him, he is going to get them back.

Seriously, was thinking while driving home. Why was using stainless steel even a thought for the engraved plates, instead of, as o_e_l_e_o said and using titanium or other stronger metals.
For the punched ones, I get it.
But you are never really going to get enough heat to melt titanium or have an impact strong enough to really damage it. Just wondering if it is a case of, "that's what it is" or if there was another reason.

-Dave

You're right, it's indeed the cheapest one but I'm not so sure if it's the best one. I wish he ^{[@econoalchemist]} would've included the temperature at peak ^{[he had a thermometer]} and the exact time when it reached that level ^{[the video appeared to be on x3, so it was probably less than 3 minutes at around "800 - 900°C"]}.

But if there was a way to not include the seed numbers, it would've been a lot better.
^{- Sorry for nitpicking [I do know it's needed to not mess up the order].}

For just a few more minutes, I think we would still be able to read the letters but anything beyond 30 minutes ^{[assuming that the temperature rises gradually]} would probably result in those flat washers melting fast ^{[Stainless steel melting points]}.

If your backup is exposed to that kind of temperature for much longer in a real life situation, you have other problems that might need more attention. Normally, with stuff like this, they should be stored inside some waterproof bag, bottle, ziplock or something and that whole thing is buried somewhere it is unlikely to be subject to intense heat.

OT: John Wick stores his gold coins in the basement under concrete.

They survived both tests quite well. I wonder what would have happened if he continued with the heat test for a few more minutes. Some of the flat washers suffered visible damages. #8 and #16, for example. It should be mentioned that both of those flat washers got some of their clarity back after being soaked in salt water.

I would add that probably best and cheapest way is to make your own DIY backup seed phrase, you just need to purchase stainless steel flat washers and screw with nut that all cost just few dollars.
You would also need to 3dprint or buy plastic Jig, and you need to have metal stamping tool with letters and numbers, but result is amazing very durable backup, and people probably won't suspect what you are using this for.
It may take some time to create this but you can customize, and it's cheaper than all  other listed methods.


https://www.econoalchemist.com/post/backup

As @dkbit98 multisig is probably the best. Setup a 2 of 3 wallet. Have all three seeds in different locations, sealed in different tamper evident ways.
Check on them often. Someone would have to compromise 2 locations, 2 different ways without you noticing before getting to your BTC.
For more fun, add a 4th location with a seed that has nothing to do with anything.

-Dave

Can't disagree with that. You know these doomsday preppers with hidden bunkers have CCTV or cameras... So they know if anyone has been in the area or tried to get in (or actually got in.) You could have something solar powered that pings you all the time and if it either losses power or the door to your little container has been opened you'll know within a minute. (your device would need to have mobile data or internet or something maybe, or at least ability to send some sort of message.)

My ideal location with be some bunker with a relatively long corridor that they must go through and you have something watching that path. You're also making some assumptions that nothing is going to dig in from the sides or from underneath it, but you can probably have sensors for that too.

Everyone has a finale budget for security. I think it would be better to invest whatever you would spend on the tamper evident bags on a more secure/better safe, or other equipment that will prevent an adversary from accessing your seed.

If an adversary is able to access one location storing a portion of your seed, they will likely make a serious attempt to access your other locations. I think it is probably reasonable to expect them to do so within half the interval that you would normally access your off site location.

If you insist on having something in place that alerts you of a potential compromise, I would suggest something that alerts you right away. I think a tamper evident bag is really not much more than a false sense of security. Given enough time, an adversary may even be able to replace the bag, making it appear there was no compromise.