The Private Key
To this day, millions of dollars in Bitcoin are lost on computers across the world. If you receive an old computer, don’t erase it, check it for old Bitcoin private keys found in plain text files. Lost Bitcoin is a worldwide scavenger hunt. “Not your keys, not your Bitcoin”
An example of what you can do to secure your Bitcoin.
When writing down your phrase be sure to have no webcams, phone cameras pointed at what you’re writing down. Make sure the windows are closed with curtains drawn and no one else is in the room. Do not tell anyone you bought a metal wallet. Once written down, copy them to your metalwallet. Using the metalwallet, generate your private key in a hardwallet to ensure you copied it correctly. Once confirmed, destroy the paper versions. Ensure you have a safe location for your metalwallet to be stored.
Modern wallets generate a private key as a 24-word phrase that restores the private key. The 24-word(seed) phrase is a human-friendly format for storing a private key. In the early days of Bitcoin private keys were long strings of text and numbers kept in plain text files. They are also hard to remember in that form. BIP-39 also known as the 24-word mnemonic phrase was presented as a solution.
This 24-word phrase is an algorithmically generated sentence that can restore a private key. Meaning you can generate one within a hardwallet entirely off the internet. Better still, if your hardwallet is stolen, lost, or destroyed it's okay. Using your saved 24-word phrase you can restore your private key in a new hardwallet. You must understand. If you lose this 24-word phrase, there is nothing anybody can do for you. You’ve become a bank of the future that no government or taxpayer will bailout.
There is no other backup if you lose it.
My experience with recovery phrase insecurity
I had written a mistake with my recovery phrase and didn’t find out for an entire year. It starts one night on a whim I did a recovery check of my mnemonic phrase on a blank Ledger.
When it didn’t work my heart rate intensified. I knew immediately the original hardwallet was the only copy of my old private key. Using the blank ledger, I generated a new 24-word phrase that I carefully wrote down. To check, I erased the blank ledger then used the phrase to restore the new private key.
With the confidence of doing a successful recovery, I quickly moved my Bitcoin to my new address. Since then I’ve obtained a metalwallet, copied my 24-word phrase to it then varified it by generating my private key on a spare hardwallet. To this day, I always double-check everything I do with crypto.
You can use your 24-word phrase to generate your private key on multiple wallets simultaneously. This allows you to use multiple hardwallets for the same address. You need to be cautious if you used one hardwallet to generate a 24-word phrase and want to use it in a hardwallet of another vendor. It behooves you to do more research on this topic.
Keep the software up to date on your hardwallet, failing to do so may result in needing to erase the hardwallet to install the latest version of software to function. This isn’t an issue if you properly back up your 24-word phrase, it only can be time-consuming.