Where To Store Your Seed Phrase
Learn about seed phrase storage: how and where to keep it whether indoors, outdoors, hidden, sealed, at the bank, in the nature, close to you or far from you.
Welcome back to the “Crypto Seed Phrase Playbook” article series. In this piece we discuss strategies on where to store your seed phrase.
“Location! Location! Location!”
This saying is true for property invesment… and for seed phrase storage ;)
The crypto world is very futuristic. It opens to mind boggling sci-fi like near-future possibilities that often seem totally detached from reality (hello metaverse!). Despite that, self-custody is still very much rooted in the real world. This makes a full circle to our crypto journey, from far-fetched digital dreams back to cold hard reality. I find this somehow both poetic and ironic.
How and where you store you seed phrase is crucial. Be extremely careful. Read on.
IMPORTANT: this article is specific to a use case where we split the seed — read our article about Seed Phrase Splitting. Should you decide not to split the seed, best to prepare your strategy using another method.
Articles of the series:
Where To Store Your Seed Phrase 🧭 YOU ARE HERE 📍
Got my seed backup kit? Guide For Seed Backup Kit 📙
More to follow in the coming weeks ⚡️
How To Hide Your Seed Plate’s Writing
By default, the side with the writing should NOT be viewable.
Here are a few common tactics
Attach another plate on top
Put tape around it
Put it in a plastic bag
You can go next level by using a security seal — a tamper-evident mechanism. Wax can be good for that.
It’s highly recommended to have a tamper-evident mechanism. What if a rogue employee accesses your safe? What if anyone finds your seed plate by chance? Better be safe than sorry.
Discrete Containers For Your Seed Plates
Keeping things simple, yet creative and unique is a good way to make your plate more difficult to find for others.
Should you need help, you can search for “fake products designed to hide valuables”.
Storage Location: Outdoor vs Indoor
Outdoor: yes as in any outdoor spaces such as gardens, courtyards, fields, forests, pools, ponds, hills, mountains, deserts, lakes, seas, islands, you name it.
The risk of destroying your seed phrase when storing it outdoor is not an issue if you are storing it on a very durable material like stainless steel.
As explained in my previous article on “Mediums To Safely Store Your Seed Phrase”, you can buy ready-made kits or do it yourself.
Storage Location: Private vs Public Spaces
Using private locations is recommended. If you store your seed phrase in a public location, someone could find it and put your funds at risk.
Probably NOT OK
Your Workplace
Probably OK
Property you own or rent
Bank Safe Deposit Box — a “professional” third party
A Trusted Family Member — an “emotional” third party
Controversial
Out in the open. Maybe ok it’s really far in the wild.
The Metal Detector Dude
We’ve all seen one guy like that on the beach somewhere. If you stored your seed phrase using metal as I advised, then you want to be careful where you hide it.
Whether indoors or outdoors, you could simply hide it next to something that’s also metalic. For instance a metalic beam of the building where you store it. This way the use of metal detector is totally pointless.
‘Emotional’ vs ‘Professional’ 3rd Parties
Short vocab explanation:
Emotional 3rd Party: someone close such as a family member or close friend. Typically, this person will store part of your seed phrase “for free”.
Professional 3rd Party: a company or individual you contract to provide the service of keeping part of your seed phrase. This can be a bank or a notary. Typically, you pay for this service.
When storing with “an emotional 3rd party”, you must be careful in where/how your seed phrase part is stored. It’s also important that the person understands the responsibility he/she has.
When storing with “a professional 3rd party”, you must be careful that the company is very established. Two common mentioned drawbacks of “professional 3rd party”:
Sometimes companies do shut down, should you miss that important event this could be problematic.
Confiscation scenario: companies can be legally forced to giveaway content of their customers to authorities.
How Many Copies Of The Seed Phrases Should You Make
The goal is to avoid having multiple parts simultaneously destroyed or compromised in an unexpected event like a burglary, fire or natural disaster.
Creating 2 copies of the seed phrase is reasonable for most cases. With 3 copies you are on the more conservative side.
Copy #1: near you
Copy #2: away
Copy #3: far away
Short vocab explanation:
Away = +2km of distance between copy #1 and #2.
Far away = +100km of distance between copy #1 and #3.
The copy #3 is stored +100km away in case of a natural disaster destroying copy #1 and #2.
With Seed Splitting. That’s 6 Seed Parts to Hide?
Correct. So it works like this:
Copy #1: Part 1: near you
Copy #1: Part 2: near you
Copy #2: Part 1: away
Copy #2: Part 2: away
Copy #3: Part 1: far away
Copy #3: Part 2: far away
Should you need to refresh or update your knowledge, here is my article of the series on Seed Phrase Splitting.
Avoid Co-Locating Seed Phrases Parts
Make sure each part is in a different physical location. As in, “Copy #1: Part 1” and “Copy #1: Part 2” must never be in the same house.
The same goes for “Copy #2: Part 1” and “Copy #2: Part 2”. Should you chose to have one part in a bank safe, do not put the other one in another safe in the same bank.
Closing Thoughts
As you can see, “where and how to store your seed phrase” is quite a topic in itself. It is yet again a controversial topic in the realm of self-custody. And the opinions of each person may reveal how they do it so it's typically something people would rather avoid talking about. Making converstations very productive! yay!
Should you need to relax and put things in perspective, use the same “Bicycle Thief Analogy” that I used in my first article of the series: “do it properly and you will most likely be in the top 1% who do it well, hence much more likely to keep your funds safe for a long time.”
All the articles of the series:
Where To Store Your Seed Phrase 🧭 YOU ARE HERE 📍
Got my seed backup kit? Guide For Seed Backup Kit 📙
More to follow in the coming weeks ⚡️
Follow me twitter.com/AdrienBe_