Safety ain't sexy,
but nothing matters more.
— A Fact
I wrote Five Dollar Wrench to help people keep themselves and their Bitcoin safe. I hope to do this by telling a story that makes people think about the responsibilities that come with Bitcoin ownership.
Here are a few things I wish more hodlers understood:
Social engineering attacks are real, and they're preventable. These attacks will surely become more common and more sophisticated. The easiest way to protect yourself is secrecy. A thief can't steal your Bitcoin if a thief doesn't know you own Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is on the blockchain. It's not on your phone or your computer. It's not in your hardware wallet either. And it is not in an app. Your wallet holds the keys needed to access your coins. Losing a device doesn't mean losing your Bitcoin. Losing your seed phrase does.
The words in a seed phrase are entropy. They're your unique part of the math that generates a unique Bitcoin wallet. This is why seed words are random. Being random prevents anyone from being able to guess the entropy used to generate your wallet.
You can recover your wallet on a new device by entering your seed phrase. This works because you're restoring the entropy used to create the wallet. This also means anyone who finds your seed phrase can restore your wallet too.
Your seed phrase is the backup for your wallet. A lot of Bitcoin has been lost by people who didn't write down their seed phrase, or did something foolish like write the words but split them up. When something went wrong, they couldn't recover their wallets. Don't let that happen to you. Write your seed phrase on paper, and make a metal backup in case the paper gets damaged.
Store the paper and metal backups somewhere a thief can't find them. A thief can't steal what a thief can't find. Never enter your seed phrase on your computer, phone, or any device that can connect to the internet. Never type it in an app. Never. By keeping your seed phrase 100% offline, you make your Bitcoin unhackable. By keeping your seed phrase secure, where a thief can't find it, you make your Bitcoin unstealable. By not telling people you own Bitcoin, you avoid making yourself a target for theft, which can include violence.
Don't judge the value of your Bitcoin by what it's worth today. Don't judge your security by how safe you feel today. And don't judge the future by what you know today. Think long term, hold long term if you can, and always keep learning.
Owning Bitcoin means being your own bank. This is serious stuff. I wrote Five Dollar Wrench in the hopes of encouraging you to seriously think about it.