3 ms·

Perhaps it’s not complex. Still, it’s not easy. It’s hard to know what approach to pick, or even which source to trust, especially when you’re starting. And i

by thih9 3y ago

Perhaps it’s not complex. Still, it’s not easy. It’s hard to know what approach to pick, or even which source to trust, especially when you’re starting. And it’s extra hard to continuously manage and improve your security; even moving coins to cold storage.

lxgr 3y ago
I'm pretty sure (at least I really hope) that GP was kidding. Single-shot memorizing 24 words is utterly out of the question for almost everybody.
- thih9 3y ago
  It’s doable, e.g. you could take the names of twelve months in two languages; maybe even backwards and interspersed. Still, the challenge is to live with that long term. E.g. to not write it down. Or to write it down in a sufficiently cryptic way. But not too cryptic because you still need to remember it. Also you shouldn’t reuse this system. And every now and then you should check that it continues to work as you expect. And…
  - lxgr 3y ago
    > you could take the names of twelve months in two languages For the unlikely case that you're not trolling: Don't do this. You're gonna end up on the list of people that had their very clever brainwallets drained sooner or later. Let alone that a BIP39-compliant wallet wouldn't even accept words not on the canonical word list.
    - thih9 3y ago
      Not trolling, just unfamiliar with crypto. Perhaps this proves my point that security, especially long term, is hard.
      - lxgr 3y ago
        Oh, thanks for the reply and sorry for the accusation then. Well, just to reiterate – if you need to hold crypto, and if you're doing self-custody for it (no recommendation for either), don't come up with your own recovery phrase. Use a reputable wallet (again, I won't recommend one here) and make sure you have a backup plan that works, ideally offline and in multiple locations. And to reiterate: Even doing that, people lose their funds all the time. Opsec is hard, doubly so when literal money is at stake. The human mind is quite bad at true randomness, but very good at coming up with puzzles that it perceives to be unsolvable (but that others can crack trivially).

by thih9 3y ago

lxgr 3y ago

I'm pretty sure (at least I really hope) that GP was kidding. Single-shot memorizing 24 words is utterly out of the question for almost everybody.

thih9 3y ago
It’s doable, e.g. you could take the names of twelve months in two languages; maybe even backwards and interspersed. Still, the challenge is to live with that long term. E.g. to not write it down. Or to write it down in a sufficiently cryptic way. But not too cryptic because you still need to remember it. Also you shouldn’t reuse this system. And every now and then you should check that it continues to work as you expect. And…
- lxgr 3y ago
  > you could take the names of twelve months in two languages For the unlikely case that you're not trolling: Don't do this. You're gonna end up on the list of people that had their very clever brainwallets drained sooner or later. Let alone that a BIP39-compliant wallet wouldn't even accept words not on the canonical word list.
  - thih9 3y ago
    Not trolling, just unfamiliar with crypto. Perhaps this proves my point that security, especially long term, is hard.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      Oh, thanks for the reply and sorry for the accusation then. Well, just to reiterate – if you need to hold crypto, and if you're doing self-custody for it (no recommendation for either), don't come up with your own recovery phrase. Use a reputable wallet (again, I won't recommend one here) and make sure you have a backup plan that works, ideally offline and in multiple locations. And to reiterate: Even doing that, people lose their funds all the time. Opsec is hard, doubly so when literal money is at stake. The human mind is quite bad at true randomness, but very good at coming up with puzzles that it perceives to be unsolvable (but that others can crack trivially).