A Seed Phrase (or Recovery Phrase) is a set of generated words in exact order, which are used to recover your crypto wallet.
Each wallet will generate a different recovery phrase. And each recovery phrase is pulled from a list of 2,048 words.
As seed phrases are either 12 or 24 words in length it makes at least 2048^12 possible unique combinations. So as you can tell, seed phrases are quite a reliable protection.
However, the human brain is not good at preserving information, your brain is not a computer.
Therefore, keeping all the seed phrases from all the wallets only in your brain would be at least risky.
Because anyone who knows your seed phrase gains access to your coins.
Which would be quite unfortunate, as you might be holding thousands of dollars in there.
That’s why you need the best way to store your seed phrases.
In this article, you will learn about the best places where to store your seed phrase! Let’s dive in!
What makes the best Seed Phrase Storage
Although it is nice to tell you our opinion on where to store seed phrases safely it would be far more efficient to first tell you what makes good storage the best seed phrase storage.
Everyone that knows your seed phrase can do whatever they want with your cryptocurrency. As simple as that. Also, the seed phrase is tied to your wallet and there is no way of just generating a new one, without completely changing your wallet.
Therefore, the best prevention is in the form of properly stored seed phrases.
The best seed phrase storage should be able to withstand different situations and disasters, that can happen to any of us. You don’t want your seed phrase to be tossed away with rubbish by your family member, or destroyed in a house fire.
Let’s take a look at a little checklist of the things that make good storage the best seed phrase storage.
Seed Phrase storage should be durable
Let’s cross paper out of your options right away. It’s unsuitable in every way.
First of all, the paper will not survive a fire or a flooded house.
You probably can keep the paper in a fire-resistant metal box, but the ink does not stay on the paper forever. It will soon dissolve and the text will be unreadable.
Also, it should be resistant to physical damage. An argument may escalate and some papers may be torn up or crumbled.
And you don’t want to be gluing pieces of paper together to put your seed phrase into one piece again.
The recovery Phrase should be stored offline
This is not always a requirement. In some cases, even a seed phrase stored online can be kind of secure. We will show you one such example later.
However, if you are using Hardware Wallet, like SecuX or Trezor, the main point of it is to stay offline. When you are using your computer or mobile phone to store your seed phrase it is vulnerable to malware or hacker attacks.
But even with Hot Wallets, like MetaMask or Trust Wallet if you have the opportunity to safely store your keys offline, do it.
Easily accessible by you, not by others
You should store your seed phrase in a safe location, where nobody else can find it.
When we were researching this article we were discussing it with our team. One of the editors mentioned that when he started with cryptocurrencies, he kept his seed phrases in the glove box of his car.
And that’s exactly what you shouldn’t do. First of all, someone can rob your car without knowing that you have a seed phrase. That would be just a nice bonus for the thief.
That broke also the first point – Seed Phrase storage should be durable. Especially in a car, the humidity can increase overnight and accelerate the illegibility of the paper.
The best place to hide your seed phrase would be somewhere, where it isn’t unwanted attention. Hide it in your wall, inside your fish tank, or in unused household appliances, like an old oven. The imagination is the only thing holding you back.
But you definitely shouldn’t hide it in public places. While burying a lockbox containing your seed phrase in a park sounds like a good idea, you never know who will get to it.
The best way to store seed phrases
As we already disclosed, the best way to store your seed phrase would be on something, that can withstand extreme situations, like housefire or floods. It should be stored in the offline environment, somewhere where not everyone can get to it but you.
What is also important is that you also remember how you saved it and how to use your seed phrase.
Steel Seed Phrase Backup
There are plenty of brands on the market that sell stainless steel plates that you can carve your seed phrase into.
This is absolutely the most perfect solution.
These steel plates allow you to physically store your seed phrase on durable material. These plates are designed to withstand extreme heat and water.
No ink or marker is used, so it won’t wash off.
A steel plate like the one in the picture can be bought from various manufacturers. But we especially like the selection from SecuX. Their XSEED line includes 3 different price categories, from $39 to $90.
But if you use our link, you will get an additional 15% discount. The discount also applies to their Hardware Wallets and nearly every product on their site.
You can also use steel capsules. These work in a slightly different way.
Steel Capsules contain steel rings, that have individual letters of the alphabet engraved on them. You then assemble the individual letters into words, separated by different-shaped rings.
A strong thread is then run through the entire capsule to hold the words and capsule core together.
It depends on your preferences what would you choose. The capsule can hold more characters than the steel plate, but it is less convenient.
This one in the picture is from Ledger, you can check it out on their website.
Seed Phrase Splitting
Storing your seed phrase on a steel plate is a great way. But you still have the seed phrase in one place.
Seed Splitting, or Cryptographic Splitting, involves dividing your seed phrase into multiple parts and storing each sector separately.
This method comes in many different shapes. For instance, one of your really close relatives gets part of your phrase. And someone else who doesn’t know the others gets a different part of your key. In order for someone to assemble your seed phrase, they would have to have all the parts.
Seed Splitting is usually combined with other methods. Because it’s good to have a back door in case your friend gets angry.
Or you can also split your seed phrase yourself, into multiple steel plates and store them in multiple locations.
The best seed phrase storage out of an Encrypted Hard Drive
A hard drive is a versatile piece of technology. You can carry your school presentations in there, family photos, or even make it into a crypto wallet.
We admit. A hard drive is not an ideal hiding spot, but if you do it right it can be really reliable. We use a similar method to this. Here is how to make the best seed phrase storage out of a normal USB hard drive.
Prepare two USB sticks
Buy at least two USB sticks, ideally from different manufacturers. These will serve as storage for our seed phrases.
If you have some USB drives at home, you can use those too, but don’t forget to format them before.
Install VeraCrypt
We will use VeraCrypt to encrypt our files. Download the application from the website and install it on your desktop computer.
Don’t delete the installer file – we will use it later again.
Create a Folder
On whatever place in your computer create a folder. You can name the folder “Crypto Seed Phrase”.
Everything inside will be encrypted. No need to worry. But if you want to hide your intentions, you are free to do it.
Come up with a really strong password
You will need a password manager for this step. The human mind has no chance of remembering a long and unsystematic password.
Ideally, the password should be at least 25 characters long, including upper case letters, numbers, and special characters.
It is not advisable to store your seed phrase directly on the password manager. The password manager is protected by only one password.
Whereas in ours, your password manager is password protected, and your encrypted folder is password protected. Also, this folder will only exist offline on a USB drive.
Create an encrypted folder
Now launch the VeraCrypto application.
In the top bar select “Create New Volume” under “Volumes”. This will open a VeraCrypt Volume Creation Wizard.
Now. And listen closely, these are important steps.
- Choose “Create an encrypted file container”. That’s the default option.
- Create a “standard VeraCrypt volume” That’s the default option.
- Now you will be asked for Volume Location. Choose your created folder.
- Pick a name for your encrypted folder.
- Leave “Encryption Options” as they are.
- For “Volume Size” a few megabytes will be enough because we will store only text documents here. But just to be sure choose 1GB.
- As “Volume Password” enter your generated, really strong password.
- Do not tick any options here.
- Leave “Volume Format” as FAT and tap “Format” on the bottom.
If using complex methods, write yourself a HOW TO.
This is really important too. Since we are using complex encryption, you want to at least put your VeraCrypto installer into the unencrypted folder, that contains your encrypted folder.
If you don’t think this will be enough help, write a HOWTO or README document.
Copy the folder to each USB drive
Copy your folders, including both HOWTO and your encrypted folder, to each USB drive.
It is better to create the .txt including your seed phrase directly into your thumb drive.
Now copy your seed phrases to your encrypted folders. To be extra safe make sure you are using a good enough antivirus software. Also, windows can make a temporary file of your text documents.
So after you finish editing your documents I recommend restarting your computer. to delete those.
Conclusion
In this article, we have focused more on a practical demonstration of how to store your seed phrase.
However, we would like to point out that there is no need to exaggerate.
Many of us were such that. We were always upgrading our security. But if you don’t have millions in your crypto wallet, there’s little chance you’ll be the target of an attack.
You don’t always need to be searching for the best seed phrase storage. You just have to be careful. Even using a strong password would probably be just enough.
P.S. Don’t forget the 15% discount link for SecuX products.