Topic: Try to evaluate your way of securing your bitcoin. - page 2. (Read 699 times)

It is pitiful, grandma is probably too weak to run and find where she's placed her assets keys. This is a total disaster and we don't want this to happen to anyone.

To be honest, that's what everyone is feeling right now.

Being anxious of unexpected events that we'll never know that's coming. So being prepared is what we have to do and that's right with OP, we have to evaluate on how we keep our Bitcoins secured.

The passphrases or private keys, how we keep them relies on how wise we are. The suggestions are all over the place and we have to pick what will work best for us.

It's a disaster that can't be predicted beforehand but that doesn't mean we have to feel anxious about it because even though there is a possibility of unexpected events happening but we just hope that something like that never happens to us.

Talking about the security of seeds or phrases in the end it comes back to each of us personally.
Losing your phrasebook is a problem but eventually we'll realize that it's still the best way to go about securing our phrases.

When talking about backup it is optional because if you need it then do it but when you don't feel this is needed then it doesn't matter as long as they know the risks that will occur and even in some cases we also often see discussions about memorizing seeds or phrases. I personally still do that where I write at least a copy to keep in a safe place, even though some people think it might not be necessary but I still feel that it is important and this is just to make me more comfortable so that when my seed or phrase is lost or damaged then I still have a backup for it.

I have come across some thread on this forum that talked about ways to secure your wallet seed phrase in case of situations like  wildfire out break, earthquake, flood and any  natural disasters that could cause a big damage. This kind of situations are predicted to happen and people living in region with these kinds of natural disasters should always be prepared to keep their phrase safe against this kind of situations. 

This incident will profit so many investors who has made similar mistakes of storing there private key on a piece of paper without thinking of having a backup.when talking of backup it should just be one, we should always have this mindset, what if something happens to were am storing my private key how are my going to get it back. Life is full of unpredictable events so in whatever we are doing we should always be extremely careful to avoid unexpected stories. 

That's a huge lost for her I could imagine how she feels right now, this is why storing our seed phrase in a shirt of paper is not always advisable because sometimes water can even splash on it and the ink start fading away, even if she choose to store it in a shirt of paper but at least she's supposed  to have a backup, or maybe she never have the thought of backing it up in a different place.  maybe she has this strong feeling that nothing is going to happen, now this is it. Of course she never believed such thing will happen but the only blame she has is not having a backup because had it been she back it up in somewhere else she wouldn't have go through this mess.

I feel sad for the older lady, I saw the fire incident in the news, it was so traumatizing and heartbroken but the other crypto firm, what's exactly do they do as a firm because I'm not sure if they store their private keys on a piece of paper like the older woman and they stored it in a hardware wallet that got burnt? There is something not right about this news. Why not back up the seed phrase on the metallic surface that came with the wallet, the metal back up are atleast hard to some degrees that ordinary fire out break can't melt them.

If they store the coins on a piece of paper, such company doesn't deserve to be called firm, they are just garbage and if they lost coins to ledger and couldn't protect the ledger with huge amount of money, then they know nothing about management. If they didn't back up the wallet, I will advise anyone that has crypto with them to sue their ass. It's even possible they might be lying to the public. Just trying to see if they can run away with the Bitcoin.

I have been trying to know what causes the wildfire in LA and till now I have not gotten the information on the caused of the FIRE accident in LA. Fire accident is better than flood. In flood after the period of the flood, if it was not a natural one, you can come back to the house but fire would burn the house down and right now building materials are very much cost that one can't just build a house like that again.
As for the seed phrase, since she is at LA, she would have bought stainless steel to backup her seed phrase or better be still, she would have used more than one backup paper wallets for the seed phrase in different locations.

You can store your bitcoin and its backup in multiple formats and methods, physical like paper, metal sheet, or digital like USB stick, hard drive, hardware wallets, whatever.

The important reminder is you must do it with multiple methods and backups, to make sure if an accident occurs, you won't lose all your wallet files and backups at the same time. It means if you are alive, you will be able to access or recover your wallet, and access your bitcoin.

If it is digital storage, it must be encrypted as much as possible.

How to backup a seed phrase?

Ouch, that is very unfortunate news. I know we're supposed to store our seeds on paper, but for various reasons I don't do that and store it digitally, despite the risks. For one, I'm concerned that a piece of paper is something I might accidentally throw away, forget where I put it, or it might be found by someone else (say, a guest visiting my home) and draw unnecessary attention. Moreover, I like in a country that is currently going through war. Russian air strikes of my city are very common, almost daily, so there's always a risk that at some point, it might be my house that gets damaged. Something as fragile as a piece of paper is likely to perish under such circumstances.
I'm not recommending digital storage to anyone, I realize it's dangerous in its own ways. But that's just the way I do it.

Diversification should not be forgotten. Not only of financial assets, but also of risk diversification. That is, having backups in different locations.

I am not sure that even storing the seed phrase NOT on paper, but, say, on a piece of metal, would allow the lost bitcoins to be returned (in this case after a fire). The metal plate would probably survive, but would it be possible to find it? Can you imagine a 70-year-old woman looking under a pile of burnt garbage? Although this contradicts BTC-freedom, it seems to me that in the future, providing your seed phrase to 3rd-party companies for storage (like storing money in a bank) will be a common and usual thing. I will not say that I like this prospect (a service with storing pharse with 3rd-party service providers), but such stories with fires and grandmothers, phrase storing service providers will undoubtedly be exploited. Not storing crypto in exchangers, but a service for storing seed-phrase (most likely in encrypted form).

Ok. But where should grandma store her bitcoins, if this house was her only one, and she had no relatives? Backups are, of course, good, but the question arises, where to store them? Under a tree on someone else's property?

When it comes to the issues of fire, i know how disastrous it could be and then also, i expect such to have been within the woods or wild and thick bush and not where can be close to human aboard, however, we cant predict the end result of anything like this until we saw where it landed.

Secondly, i strongly advice that we should always learn to have alternatives to how we are saving our keys, we should not only be left with a single choice, what if there is a sudden issue with that one and only means of storage.

When you are in this situation, your life is most important and if you could not take your wallet backup with you, it was burried in ground, ashes, it will be very difficult to find it later when fire gone. Hope is so small and I don't know how you can find it under a collapse house and with other things around it.

Prevention is better, and when you could not have it, hope for rescuing your wallet or wallet backup after the wildfire is very small.

My advice makes sense for urgencies if you value your bitcoin and its backup as one of most important things.

Well, that could be the best solution so far. However, that should be done in multiple secured locations so that if one location becomes inaccessible, at least the other locations remained safe and accessible. I’ll just hope this LA wildfire reminds everyone, and all crypto holders to secure their seed phrases at a maximum level. Otherwise, they will be the next target to lose their bitcoin assets when an unexpected disaster suddenly happens.

Every suggested method is a good one, but in the case of what happened to the woman, which the OP shared, I think the last part could have been her best option, considering her age, saving in different secured locations and not just within her home, probably in other cities if that's possible. 
 
Because you could use any of the other methods, the backup will become safe from water or the fire outbreak, but with what happens in LA, many activities to clean up the place will be going on, and the backup could either easily get exposed to the third eye or misplaced unknowingly.

It is truly painful for anyone who experienced catastrophe like this mass wildfire, but I can have an advice for everyone who live anywhere with their Bitcoin storage and Bitcoin wallet backups.

Be well organized, and be neat with your practice so you are disciplined with where you store your bitcoin, wallets, backups. It will be very helpful for you when such accident appears, you will not waste your limited precious time like some seconds, minutes to take it, go out and run.

If you have to think where you store it, run around your home to find it and spend a lot of time for finding it, you will have big risk to lose it and even lose your life.

Losing a home is already painful, but losing your private key to access your Bitcoin hurts more, especially since it could’ve been saved if the owner had taken proper measures to safeguard it. That Bitcoin might have been used to rebuild the house, even if insurance covered some of the loss. Life after such an event is still tough, and with Bitcoin’s current price, it would’ve been ideal to cash out during times of need but now it’s gone.

Let’s hope this never happens to us in the future. So let's ensure our private keys are protected.

If storing them at home isn’t safe, engraving them and keeping them in a vault, or even distributing copies of the seed phrase to different cities, can be a solution. Just make sure it’s secure and can’t be stolen, because losing access to your funds is just as painful.

I don't know if I can say that in person to those affected by the wildfire and if they have lost their entire lifesaving in Bitcoin. But you're right, someone should take it as a mantra and belief in life. We have to keep on living and how we deal with today and tomorrow varies on how we perceive that better days are coming, the recovery might take in process but people that are struggling in life that have went through devastation will never stay at that situation forever unless they let themselves stuck into it and can't move on. I know it's hard to move on but time will come and it will help them eventually.

This is absolutely devastating. Unfortunately, natural disasters are events that occur unexpectedly or mostly when we're not prepared and the outcomes are usually heartbreaking and at different levels. This is the reason why it is very important for us to prepare against it at any point and not to play with methods in which we can safeguard our investments.

Although every community has historically one or two different types of natural disasters their prone to, however, events can change and sometimes new disasters erupt. But to be at a safer side, it is best to adopt multiple strategies towards backing up our seed phrase physically and one of it is through stainless steel wallets. Since these wallets are harder conditions such as fire, water or corrosion.

For instance, if grandma had backed up her private key using hard stainless steel wallet, the wildfire that engulfed her home would have left the private key unarmed, likewise if she had stored it in multiple locations such as her residential home and her hometown.


As you made reference to what happened in Libya, I also reflected what happened in the city of Dubai last year. I can still remember vividly how an heavy rainfall almost washed away the larger part of Dubai city and some areas within the United Arab Emirates in April last year and reports had it that it was the heaviest rainfall to have been experienced by the city since the last 75 years ago. This flooding disaster was caused by drastic change in the climate but I don't think the magnitude of the rainfall was expected to be so massive as experienced by the people.

Imagine having only two different locations within the city and your private keys were stored there but despite that, the flooding still went ahead and washed away the backups. The truth of the matter is even if you got stainless seeds, although your chances of recovering them after the disaster is high, it does not stop the fact that they could be watched into the ocean.

In this case, can I also suggest that you could store your seeds or private keys on high-end encryption and stored digitally. For example, aside from your physical backups which must have been stored in multiple locations, having your private key stored using offline encrypted storage such as Veracrypt could be another helpful alternative or better still by using the SSS strategy via the Shamirs Secret Sharing scheme.

In this case, you will split up your private key into multiple parts and stored using tools like Shamirs Backup. When that's done, no one can combine it into a usable complete private key without your consent. You make it a bit more puzzling to arrange but with your conceived format of arrangements.

Such incidents are truly heartbreaking. Several people have lost their lives in the wildfires in Los Angeles. Many people have also lost their homes. Where their homes have been completely destroyed, they have also lost their belongings. One of the reasons for storing Bitcoin is to provide financial security to people, but when someone loses access to that Bitcoin, there is no guarantee of getting financial security. I really feel bad for that old woman. If she had access to her Bitcoin at this time, she could have used it in this disastrous moment. There are no words to comfort her, but this is a lesson for those who are new. Those who are storing private keys on paper can correct their mistakes from this incident. Try to keep safe any important information in multiple places so that everything is not lost in a moment or any disaster.

It was a 70 year old woman.


According to the report, it was just the private key that got destroyed, so it was probably written on paper.

This is why engraving it is the best solution. Even in the event of a fire, the seed phrase will still be intact. I think this is a crucial lesson for everyone holding crypto, they should consider engraving their seed phrases to ensure their security, learning from this unfortunate experience of the old woman.