13 docs tagged with "seed"

Let’s get straight to the point:

Your Bitcoin seed phrase is the key to your funds. If lost or compromised, your Bitcoin is gone forever. That’s why securing it properly is critical. While paper and digital backups can degrade, get lost, or be destroyed, metal seed storage offers a durable, fireproof, and waterproof solution.

Each of the 24 lines, consisting of 11 binary digits, must be converted to a decimal number manually on your airgapped computer or by using paper and pen. This is important because using online tools to convert binary to decimal could expose your seed phrase, which would compromise your security.

The last eight missing digits need to be calculated to create what's called a "checksum."

A derivation path determines how your private keys are derived from your seed phrase and which addresses are generated from those keys.

The Bitcoin journey starts from here, those 24 words. While most people use them, few truly understand them. Taking control of your Bitcoin means generating your own seed securely, without relying on third parties.

The extended private key is derived from the binary private key (along with an optional passphrase) using mathematical functions that most users don’t need to understand in detail.

The purpose of the extended public key (xpub) might not be immediately obvious. Looking at the bottom section of the diagram, you’ll see that possessing the extended public key allows wallet software to generate all the same Bitcoin addresses as the extended private key—in the same order. This means the wallet will look identical in terms of addresses and transaction history. But what’s the key difference?

BIP39 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 39) defines a list of 2048 words, arranged alphabetically. Each word in the list corresponds to a specific position, which is used to map a binary number to its matching word. For example, if the binary number you calculate corresponds to the number 1477, the word in that position on the list is "reward”.

A passphrase is an additional security layer. Unlike your seed phrase (which consists of predefined words from the BIP39 word list), a passphrase can be any combination of characters.

To create your own DIY seed phrase securely, you'll need the following tools:

Our goal is to generate a large, truly random binary number by rolling the dice.

Writing down a binary private key accurately is difficult for humans, and entering it correctly into a wallet is even harder. A single mistake could lead to losing Bitcoin. While a computer can detect errors using a checksum, handwritten notes cannot.