How to back up your seed phrase
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 6 min
In short
Backing up a seed phrase means writing the words by hand onto paper or a metal plate and storing them away from water, fire and other people's eyes. Avoid photographing them, storing them in the cloud, emailing them, or saving them in a password manager. The moment the phrase exists digitally, it goes with your device or account if either is breached.
Key points
- Copy the words by hand, in order, numbered
- Keep the backup offline: a waterproof sleeve for paper, a metal plate for the long term
- Do not keep it in a single place — plan for both disaster and theft
- Leave a way for family to find where it is, without exposing the phrase itself
Definition
Keeping an offline record of the word sequence that can regenerate your wallet's keys, readable even if the device fails or is lost.
Start from the premise. A seed phrase is not a kind of password; it is the key to the assets themselves. Whoever holds it can reconstruct your wallet completely on another device. Lose it, and a broken device means the funds are gone. So the backup has to satisfy two goals at once — keep it secret and never lose it — and chasing only one of them is how people fail.
Write it out by hand. Copy the words shown during setup onto paper, numbered from one. Many of the words look alike, so write legibly enough that a stranger could read each one unambiguously rather than scrawling. When you finish, check the copy word by word against the app's confirmation or re-display feature. Skip that and a single wrong word will stop you at the worst moment.
Paper is a fine starting medium, but it fails to water and fire, so put it in a waterproof sleeve somewhere dry. If you intend to hold long term, a metal plate you stamp or engrave is the practical answer. Commercial products exist, but the requirement is simply that it stays readable after a fire or a flood — the format itself does not matter.
Spread out where you keep it. A single copy at home can be lost in one fire; copies scattered everywhere widen your exposure to theft. In practice, two locations — a fire-resistant safe at home plus one other place you trust, such as a family home or a safe deposit box — is the easiest balance. Splitting the words in half across two sites is sometimes suggested, but losing either half leaves you unable to restore, so it is not for people still learning the mechanics.
Finally, plan for the case where you cannot act. If nobody knows the backup exists, the assets simply vanish. You do not have to reveal the phrase itself; leaving a letter that points to what is kept where lets your family reach a professional. 'Inheritance planning' goes into this.
Watch out for
- · Avoid photos, cloud storage, email, chat and password managers — all of them fall with your device or account
- · Any site or app that asks you to type the phrase to 'verify your backup' is fake; verification happens only inside the wallet app itself
- · Never hand the phrase to anyone offering to 'store it safely' — at that moment the assets become theirs
Frequently asked questions
Can I hide the phrase in the app after writing it down?
Most apps only re-display it behind an authentication step after the first time. Once you have checked your written copy against it, the safest habit is not to display it again. Whether and how re-display works differs by app.