Where Is Your Seed Phrase

HodlX Guest Post  Submit Your Post

The phrase ‘MetaMask lost seed phrase‘ is consistently present in search engines throughout the year. Clearly, despite multiple disclaimers and warnings, the issue is faced by many.

So, before we begin, answer this question – do you remember where your seed phrase is?

What we know about seed phrases

Every new owner of a cryptocurrency wallet goes through the process of recording a combination of words – a seed phrase. This phrase serves as the key to restoring access to the wallet if you ever fail to log in.

A seed phrase is never a logical sentence or a quote – it’s a string of 12 to 24 random words. They are selected out of a 2,048-word dictionary, and each one corresponds to a number.

The seed phrase is used to generate public-private key pairs with BIP32 or BIP44 algorithms, and these pairs are stored in your device’s memory.

During registration, you always see a reminder that the seed phrase should be written down and kept somewhere safe.

If anything happens, this is the only way to restore your wallet and regain access to your funds.

I’m ready to keep it safe

The cautionary tale of Stefan Thomas only reminds us about the worst possible outcome.

The former CTO of Ripple made headlines when he was left with two remaining attempts to enter the correct password to his IronKey-encrypted flash drive.

According to different sources, the drive contained from $220 million to $240 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC).

If this story didn’t make you want to revisit your seed phrase, it’s hard to imagine something else would.

But forgetting your wallet password is only one common reason to look for your seed phrase.

The others include losing or misplacing the device that holds the wallet or having a malfunctioning one.

If you encounter one of these issues, you are guaranteed to have to look for the seed phrase, and let’s agree that knowing where and how to locate it is much safer than frantically searching high and low.

There are two ways to store a seed phrase – digital and physical. While neither one is perfect, we will tell you about the best practices.

Digital storage

Low security – writing it in a document

Just writing down your seed phrase is dangerous. Not only will anyone in the vicinity of your computer would be able to access it – but it could be accessed by hackers or accidentally deleted.

Medium security – writing it in a document and encrypting it

If you choose to store…