Topic: You should write two copies of your seed phrase. (Read 713 times)

Remembering or memorizing your seed phrase would never be recommended, it may be easy to remember 12 words in the first few days, weeks or months, but in years and with many other things that the brain accumulates as time passes, you can easily forget some words or the sequence. With good OPSEC nobody is going to find your seed phrase written on paper, just back it up properly. The brain is fragile, and if one stores 12 words or more in their head, then with just a brain disease or injury, their BTC could be gone, it is better and safer for it to be on paper and in two different locations.

Exactly, lol. I would rather prefer to remember my seed phrase than write it down and have all my money stolen at some point in the future. Or just sit on the piece of paper, trembling that someone might see it. It's all so troublesome. Why not just remember it? Its only 12 words.

And anyone who has a bad memory could use the 12 words to enter their wallet each and every day. After doing that exercise for a while, they would reach some point where their brains store their seed phrase in their long term memory.

So is there really a 100% safe method? Not really.

is remembering 12 words that hard?

But what if, you have 1,000 Bitcoins in your wallet, and you forget one word, JUST ONE WORD, and you have no copies of your seed phrase anywhere because "remembering 12 word is not that hard". You'll definitely know the true meaning of manual brute-forcing. Hahaha.

 

OP, have both physical copies, and digital copies. Put the physical copy in a tightly sealed pack, and store it under lock+key in a safe. Encrypt the digital copy in a USB Drive and place it in nested directories, with each layer encrypted, and with different passwords.

Great job! Now the next task is to a figure out a second secure location to store your second back up. There is no point having two backs up if you store them in the same place (i.e. at home), since a single event such as a fire will wipe out both of them.

Hear me out guys.

Paper can be really fragile, and all it takes is a tear or water spill or defacing to deny you access to your BTC forever.

So, you should make a second copy of your seed phrase that is identical to the first, and store it on a different place from the first seed so that they both cannot go down together except in extreme circumstances like a natural disaster.

Great job! Now the next task is to a figure out a second secure location to store your second back up. There is no point having two backs up if you store them in the same place (i.e. at home), since a single event such as a fire will wipe out both of them.

Now after reading your post, i have two copies of my seed phrases.

Hear me out guys.

Paper can be really fragile, and all it takes is a tear or water spill or defacing to deny you access to your BTC forever.

So, you should make a second copy of your seed phrase that is identical to the first, and store it on a different place from the first seed so that they both cannot go down together except in extreme circumstances like a natural disaster.

is remembering 12 words that hard?

It sounds funny, but that doesn't have to do with the pressure, it's called a the doorway effect, that there's every tendency a person will forget half of everything they've read once they pass through the door of an examination hall, compared to when they're in their reading room. It happens to almost every student, and humans will need to relax and think to remember what is been stored in the brain.

~
All devices have the possibility of breaking down and that's a given, but it also depends on maintenance and how durable the device or USB flash drive is.

I found a few recommended USB Flash Drives that seem to have good initial security as well as resistance from extreme conditions.

Psychological pressure is enough for that, I remember that when there are remain five minutes to finish the exam, I forget all information.

Also if you watch tiktok, the chances of you remembering 12 words drops significantly (no joke).

Thank God, I have not download TikTok since it was Musical.ly.

Aluminum is a poor choice. As far as metals go, it has very low strength and durability, it is highly malleable, it has a melting point well below temperatures reached in an average house fire, and it is very prone to corrosion. It offers very little over just using paper.

You can easily pick up stainless steel at a hardware store. Use this instead.

A sheet of aluminum plate when can even be obtained at a cheap price at the building store.

Unfortunately, people not very wealthy rarely have to store amounts way bigger to what they hold on exchanges and other platforms. So storing their 2FA backup safely is usually as critical as protecting their cold wallet seed for them, and using an aluminum Stainless Stell plate is not suitable for that. For them usb drives or printed papers will always remain the only viable solution.

Don't make paper your best backup, upgrade to aluminum plate material which is safer in all conditions and will not be damaged or faded.
It will be better and recommended.

-snip-
So at some point in the future we will likely fork to some new quantum-resistant cryptography before quantum computers pose a serious risk. We don't need to make any decision regarding this for years or even decades, and indeed, making such decisions now would be a mistake given the entire field is in its infancy and any system we chose today would likely have been replaced by something else by the time it was actually relevant.

Don't forget that in such a scenario then almost all the encryption currently used across the entire internet will similarly be broken, including everything to do with the fiat banking system.

This life is an endless cycle of Problem -> Solution -> Problem -> Solution ∞

A USB flash drive is not the worst method of a backup for your seed phrase, but i will still choose paper over it. USB flash drives have a lifespan, and even if it is not too short, it can become corrupted earlier on and you would lose data stored in it, which you can only recover most times with the help of a third party service, and that is not recommended because the data stored there is your seed phrase and it can be stolen by this third party.

Make sure your USB flash drive is not connected to the internet regularly, and it must be encrypted and a strong password set up. Paper backup seems the best to me, but since you said you use 3 flash drives, i hope you have not kept all these backups in one location, if you have done so, you should consider separating it in different locations.

Two is even too small if the person can write as many as he or she can let them do it. Because the two copies can also be misplaced or lost. So having more might save the disappointment and lost of coins. I have five copies in different places. I didn't keep them in one place, I heard one in my father's house, another in my mother's house, one is in my office and two are with me.
The two I kept with me are the original but the other ones, I changed one particular figure in all which I know it in my memory. And it is on the first later for all. That is the different between the ones that are with me and the other ones.
You can also go to parenting press or print it with a HP Laptop printer 🖨️ to print it and laminate it so that the laminating paper will become a water resistant to the seed paper.

Why should you worry if you know how to preserve and appreciate it. There are many ways how we can hide or put our seed phrase keys in a safe, maybe it depends on us.

      Because I don't put them on paper to write them, all I do now is save them on my flash drive usb, well, in fact I have 3 flash drives and it's just hidden in a place that only I really know . I've been doing this for a few years now and so far so good.

If I forget, I'll ask my wife. And as I said above, I can at least look for a physical back up in places I am likely to store one. If you forget your seed phrase, then you are shit outta luck.

If in a few decades, a powerful enough quantum computer can break ECDLP, it will be a technological advance, but on the other hand, it will be quite crucial, because it doesn't take long to break or crack the ECDLP signature system.

it is kinda worrying leaving your seeds somewhere someone can find but for sure there are solutions. This is the real risk of crypto currencies.

It seems that I need to learn more about some notions of algorithms and about the ECDLP signature system.

but on the other hand, it will be quite crucial, because it doesn't take long to break or crack the ECDLP signature system.

One missing word from the seed is not too much of a problem, I think that finding even three words is feasible with today's technology in some reasonable time. As time goes on computers will become more and more powerful and some who have really messed up with their backup hope to be able to discover their treasure chest.

Of course, a lot of bad things can be avoided if we take some basic precautions, and one of the basic ones is to understand that only one backup represents a big risk, but even 2 or 3 in the same location in some cases will not help if it is about ordinary paper.

-snip-

-snip- A sufficiently powerful quantum computer (again, decades away) could easily break the ECDLP.

If I forget, I'll ask my wife. And as I said above, I can at least look for a physical back up in places I am likely to store one. If you forget your seed phrase, then you are shit outta luck.

Be frank, aren't there some long poems that you learned so well in school that you still remember them word by word?
If yes, then I hope you got my point.

what makes you confident in remembering the secret place where you stored your keys?

Only if you also have physical back ups. Relying only on your memory is very bad practice.

You are more likely to remember where you physically put something than a list of words you just repeat to yourself over and over. And if you forget the location of your back up, you can at least look for it. If you forget your memorized seed phrase, your coins are gone.

12 words will also not be fine and you should not trust your mind completely. The human brain is indeed capable of remembering anything in the long run if it is trained, but the human brain also has an age. As we get older or enter the aging period the brain's ability will decrease slightly.
Senile dementia will be a problem if you have to remember 12 words without any copies.

Quantum computers that use Grover's algorithm in the case of breaking symmetric encryption algorithms such as AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) are only able to weaken their strength or reduce all possible encryption keys to half.

But in Bitcoin using the 256-bit ECDSA digital signature system, the possibility of encryption keys that can be done effectively Brute Force from 2²⁵⁶ to 2¹²⁸.

Making more copies is risky too.

Making more copies is risky too. A burglar might steal your home copy while you are not home... You may protect yourself from a natural disaster but then there will be other risks... On the other hand having only one copy is also risky because anything can happen to it. There isn't a foolproof easy solution to this problem imo. Physical paper wallets have their own risks, memorizing the seed words is also dangerous because dementia is a bitch... computers can get broken or get hacked if they are connected to the internet. Should you make 2 copies of your priv keys? Maybe. But I know for sure, you shouldn't make more than 2.

Hear me out guys.

Paper can be really fragile, and all it takes is a tear or water spill or defacing to deny you access to your BTC forever.

So, you should make a second copy of your seed phrase that is identical to the first, and store it on a different place from the first seed so that they both cannot go down together except in extreme circumstances like a natural disaster.

Could be. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Grover's algorithm can perform a brute force search in O(√n) functions, rather than O(n) functions as a standard computer would. This means that a 2¹²⁸ string could be brute forced in only 2⁶⁴ iterations. This is all dependent on very powerful quantum computers though, which are a long way off.

I think people get too hung up on metal seed phrase storage, and it can actually lead to poor practices. Because of the expense of such devices, many people will just buy a single device and that will be their only back up. Only having one back up is a very risky situation, especially if that one back up is stored at home alongside the device(s) your wallet(s) are installed on. Two pieces of paper in separate geographical locations is safer (not to mention cheaper and easier) than a single metal back up.

Hear me out guys.

Paper can be really fragile, and all it takes is a tear or water spill or defacing to deny you access to your BTC forever.

So, you should make a second copy of your seed phrase that is identical to the first, and store it on a different place from the first seed so that they both cannot go down together except in extreme circumstances like a natural disaster.

Is the increasingly powerful computer technology related to Quantum Computers?

Or use a "Timer Capsule" which will protect any document well, is fire and water-resistant, and can withstand any condition.

-snip-
By the way, if you try to memorize 18 or 24 words, then you shouldn't trust your mind in this case because it's too much to properly remember for a long period of time. 12 words are fine!

-snip-
As time goes on computers will become more and more powerful and some who have really messed up with their backup hope to be able to discover their treasure chest.

-snip-
You are more likely to remember where you physically put something than a list of words you just repeat to yourself over and over. And if you forget the location of your back up, you can at least look for it. If you forget your memorized seed phrase, your coins are gone.

The choice of material or container used to store documents can choose Stainless material which is more sturdy and rust or corrosion-resistant.
Even on Amazon, there are those who sell "Time Capsule Stainless Steel Waterproof" specialized for storing important documents that can be an option and not be afraid that documents will be damaged for many years.

is remembering 12 words that hard?

Stroke affects short-term memory more than long-term memory.

And if you get into crash or get a heart attack, develop dementia or something terrible happens, the first question is if you survive and the second question is, if you actually remember that you have bitcoins or in best case, where you saved your seeds.

Memorizing isn't that hard or bad practice.

But what if, you have 1,000 Bitcoins in your wallet, and you forget one word, JUST ONE WORD, and you have no copies of your seed phrase anywhere because "remembering 12 word is not that hard". You'll definitely know the true meaning of manual brute-forcing. Hahaha.

It's not.. until it is. Just imagine a stroke, or a (motor)bike crash, or many other things the can happen to you.
Plus, mind is a very strange thing. In a year or two you will be certain the 5th word in your seed is "about" and in reality it was always "above".
So no. It's not difficult to keep in mind 12 words for a while. But the longer that while is, the more chances for something to go wrong.

is remembering 12 words that hard?

especially if write one of the letters wrongly.

Make 3 seed backups in steel washers (or titanium).

Beberapa bulan lalu saya membeli lembaran plat metal berjenis SS304 yang banyak dipakai untuk menyimpan 12/24 word mnemonic seed oleh beberapa perusahaan terkenal crypto.

Karena kalau beli langsung jadi itu mahal, maka juga berinisiatif membuat sendiri dengan membeli lembaran plat SS304 secara online. Murah, tidak sampai 100 ribu, dan masih bisa di potong beberapa bagian sehingga masih sisa banyak untuk nyimpan yang lain.

Dan kebetulan juga sekarang ini lagi ada kerjaan workshop dan ada alat untuk melakukan tempering logam, maka saya berinisiatif untuk melakukan pengujian sendiri terhadap ketahanan panas plat SS304 yang saya beli tempo hari. Biar nanti tidak ragu, karena plat SS304 yang saya beli tersebut bisa jadi bukan yang sebenarnya, sehingga kalau terjadi sesuatu misalnya kebakaran, meleleh atau tidak kuat menahan panas.

1. Plat saya potong sedikit (hanya sebagai spesimen), berukuran Panjang 65mm, lebar 33mm dan tebal 3mm. lalu saya stamping.



2. bersiap melakukan pemanasan atau furnace dengan menggunakan alat ber-merk Nabertherm asal jerman.
ketika sudah mencapai suhu 900° C, plat saya masukan dan menunggu 10 menit



3. Setelah itu saya keluarkan dan dengan bantuan teman untuk menyiramnya dengan air (mungkin lebih baik dibiarkan begitu saja tanpa menyiram dengan air)



4. Dan, gambar di bawah adalah penampakan setelah dipanaskan dan tempering, tampak tidak ada perubahan, tulisan masih dapat terbaca walau sedikit menghitam



5. Untuk menghilangkan kehitaman, saya berinisiatif mengamplasnya, dan tulisan sudah nampak terang terbaca



Jadi kesimpulannya, Plat SS304 (memang betul-betul SS304 asli) yang saya beli di toko online tersebut cukup kuat menahan panas di suhu 900° C selama 10 menit. Karena pada beberapa kejadian, suhu 900 tersebut adalah suhu kebakaran rumah tertinggi, dan 10 menit itu adalah waktu tercepat jika ada mobil pemadam yang menyiramnya dengan air.

Mungkin ini bisa dijadikan patokan dan dasar buat kalian untuk mulai menyimpan word mnemonic seed di logam berjenis SS304 tersebut.

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a. Dasar saya ambil suhu 900 [1].

[1]. https://www.cnnindonesia.com/nasional/20201023194626-12-562173/suhu-api-kebakaran-kejagung-capai-900-derajat-celsius

b. sebenarnya respon time pemadam kebakaran datang itu 15 menit [2]. namun karena itu terpenitng dalam hidup saya, dapat dipastikan jika memang terjadi, plat SS304 tersebut akan saya sangat perhatikan, mungkin jika (amit-amit) terjadi, itu dulu yang diselamatkan dari dalam brangkas. Jadi 10 menit itu maksimal, bisa jadi kurang karena yakin sih safenya berlapis.

[2]. https://sippn.menpan.go.id/pelayanan-publik/sulawesi-selatan/kabupaten-soppeng/layanan-response-time-penanggulangan-kejadian-kebakaran-

c. kalau ragu (misal beli online) plat misal ss304, titanium, dsb Asli,  baiknya di uji komposisi di lab, namun ya itu mahal, tidak sebanding dengan beli asli yang bersertifikat. Saya melakukan manual pengujian di atas karena memang ada kesempatan aja, kalau pun memang kepepet dan ragu, bisa diuji coba di atas kompor gas, tapi musti izin dulu sama emak.

Very hard than you can imagine. Haven't you heard of memory lose before? Brain dimentia and so on? Yes, we all know the danger of writing seed phrases on a tangible materials but cramming it is not the best way neither. Writing on a paper should be out of options completely as it is not secure at all. In my opinion, metal plate has covered me and my seed phrase already.

Look for a sizeable flat metal plate, a nail or needle and hammer to print your seed phrases on the metal by making it in form of hole. It actually takes a little bit time but it is more safer and resistant to both fire and water. Ensure to save it in a dry, clean and private place to avoid hole blockage.

Hear me out guys.

Paper can be really fragile, and all it takes is a tear or water spill or defacing to deny you access to your BTC forever.

So, you should make a second copy of your seed phrase that is identical to the first, and store it on a different place from the first seed so that they both cannot go down together except in extreme circumstances like a natural disaster.

You'd need to read it at least 20+ times before it starts to stick in your head.

Also if you watch tiktok, the chances of you remembering 12 words drops significantly (no joke).

is remembering 12 words that hard?

The problem of creating more than one wallet seed with earthquakes is in distributing them, you will be forced to keep one of them away from you or your home and perhaps your geographical area, which increases the risk that someone else will be able to know it.

Hear me out guys.

Paper can be really fragile, and all it takes is a tear or water spill or defacing to deny you access to your BTC forever.

So, you should make a second copy of your seed phrase that is identical to the first, and store it on a different place from the first seed so that they both cannot go down together except in extreme circumstances like a natural disaster.

It is especially difficult, and with the ease of using technology in everything, our dependence on our brains has become less. I do not remember my keys easily, but supposing it is easy, there are problems beyond your control. I will quote some of them from o_e_l_e_o:



- Yamane

like a natural disaster.

is remembering 12 words that hard?

Each year:

69 million traumatic brain injuries: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29701556/
12 million strokes: https://www.world-stroke.org/assets/downloads/WSO_Global_Stroke_Fact_Sheet.pdf
10 million new diagnoses of dementia: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dementia
5 million new diagnoses of epilepsy: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/epilepsy
2.5 million cases of meningitis: https://www.path.org/articles/toward-world-without-meningitis/
2 million new brain tumors: https://academic.oup.com/noa/article/3/1/vdaa178/6043315
1.5 million cases of encephalitis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163445322002110

That's each year, and that's only major conditions which directly affect the brain.

is remembering 12 words that hard?

it is kinda worrying leaving your seeds somewhere someone can find but for sure there are solutions. This is the real risk of crypto currencies.

Let me introduce you to our lord and savior: Crypto Seed backup in steel washers.

Paper can be really fragile, and all it takes is a tear or water spill or defacing to deny you access to your BTC forever.

So, you should make a second copy of your seed phrase that is identical to the first, and store it on a different place from the first seed so that they both cannot go down together except in extreme circumstances like a natural disaster.

it is kinda worrying leaving your seeds somewhere someone can find but for sure there are solutions. This is the real risk of crypto currencies.

it is kinda worrying leaving your seeds somewhere someone can find but for sure there are solutions. This is the real risk of crypto currencies.

Do not depend on your memory because memory can fail anyone at anytime. The best is to backup your seed phrase in two places. If you keep it in three different places, it makes it better.

Most people can have more than one wallet. Some people can have 2, 3 or more wallets, keeping their seed phrases offhand wouldn't be ideal.

is remembering 12 words that hard?

Paper can be really fragile, and all it takes is a tear or water spill or defacing to deny you access to your BTC forever.

So, you should make a second copy of your seed phrase that is identical to the first, and store it on a different place from the first seed so that they both cannot go down together except in extreme circumstances like a natural disaster.

is remembering 12 words that hard?