It is crucial to use hardware wallets and metal backups for the ultimate security of your cryptocurrency holdings. No matter if holding Bitcoins, Ethereum or Dogecoins, you are the only person responsible for the safety of your funds. It is no accident that in the crypto sphere, we say “Be your own bank”, so you have to act like it and protect your funds well. Metal wallets for your seed phrases are one of the best ways possible to protect your funds.
Proper backups are essential to keep your Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies safe. Both software and hardware wallets need a form of backup, which is usually a recovery phrase (seed phrase). You have to keep a copy of it safe to not lose your funds, and it is best to mark it on some durable metal, like stainless steel. This is why metal crypto wallets are so important to any crypto holder.
In this article, we will explore why you need a solid recovery phrase backup and what are the best metal crypto wallets on the market.
Contents:
- Why do you need a metal cryptocurrency wallet?
- Metal crypto wallet – how it protects your backup
- What is the best metal crypto wallet?
- Extra tips from our team on keeping your wallet recovery phrase safe
Why do you need a metal crypto wallet?
Both hardware and software wallets require you to write down a backup password (a seed phrase). Which you will use to restore the wallet and your accounts if the wallet is broken or damaged. Every user of hardware or software wallet is strongly encouraged to make a backup of their seed words and keep it safe. This is good advice as you will need this wallet backup if you put your pin wrong a few times and the wallet erases itself, or it simply breaks down one day.
Most users just write down their hardware wallet backup – a seed phrase – on a piece of paper and are done. But you have to understand, that this backup is essential to owning your coins.
If the paper backup is destroyed or lost, you can lose access to your funds forever, and paper can be damaged or misplaced easily. This is why it is so important to have this backup made on something more durable.
Metal cryptocurrency wallets are made from ultra-thick stainless steel plates and are super easy to use. With the best metal crypto wallets like Coinplate Alpha, you can make an ultra-durable backup in just a few minutes on your kitchen table.
Steel crypto wallets are essential to keeping your hardware or software wallet backup safe. We have to say it again, you have to keep your wallet backup phrase safe, or you can lose all your funds. Crypto steel backups are the best way to protect your wallet’s recovery phrase against any possible disasters.
Metal crypto wallet – how it protects your backup
From our own experience, we can say that you should protect your wallet recovery phrase against the most common accidents and disasters. You never know what the future will bring, but you can be much more secure by simply using a proper recovery phrase backup. This way you will avoid almost all risks for your hardware wallet and let you sleep well for years. You can focus on watching your portfolio grow and not worrying about where you put this weird paper slip in a few years.
Seed phrase misplacing risk – can cost you millions but it’s easily preventable
For most people, the biggest risk is simply misplacing the backup. There are countless stories of people throwing away a piece of paper with their wallet’s backup as it was stored with other documents. Cleaning your office desk, and clearing your attic or garage can result in throwing out your paper backup. However, it will be much easier to notice a heavy metal object like a metal crypto wallet, than a piece of paper stuck in other documents.
Especially as most people will hide their precious backup in the big pile of other papers just so it will not be found to be a burglar. In reality, they usually forget where it was hidden after some time, not to mention their parents or spouses. Quite often this backup will be simply thrown away by your family member as it doesn’t look like something important at all.
The best metal cryptocurrency wallets like Coinplate have special mounting holes. This means you can secure them to a wall, attic beam or your house foundation thanks with ease. In the box, you will even find some wood screws for that, so you can put it in a secure location right away.
Fire and heat damage – ink and paper stand no chance, better use a fireproof metal wallet
Your standard paper seed phrase backup will stand no chance against house fires. Your backup could be destroyed, even if not burned directly because heat makes ink fade. To keep things even worse, when the fire brigade arrives, they will spray gigantic amounts of water all over your house, apartment or block of flats.
Even if the fire was in your neighbour’s flat, they will probably totally soak your place just to contain the fire. The water will definitely destroy your paper backup along with all paper photos and other documents.
Furthermore, ink on paper could fade while being exposed to heat much earlier than you expect. Standard pen or printer ink should resist fading for at least 5 years. But if you keep your paper backup next to a radiator, computer or sunny windows, it could make your paper backup worthless much sooner.
This is much different with a proper crypto steel wallet. Stainless steel metal wallets can withstand temperatures of up to 1.400°C/2.500°F. While house fires reach up to 850°C/1.500°F, but usually are less than that. Thanks to their strong build, the best metal wallets will survive also a rapid cool down from generous soaking by firemen, without risk of cracks. Water will also not be a problem at all. Because you will literally mark your phrase in stainless steel, it will be not vulnerable to any heat sources. Unless you throw it into a blast furnace.
Water and moisture damage – your recovery phrase backup has to survive that
When it comes to paper, nothing will destroy your paper wallet backups faster than water and moisture. This is a reason, why libraries and archives spend millions on keeping their storage facilities dry.
Direct contact with water will probably be enough to make your paper copy of the recovery phrase unreadable. In the best scenario, it will make it difficult to read. If you are able to spread the paper and dry it out, you might save the paper itself but the ink will be probably gone or smudged.
Water damage can result from different things. Water sprinklers activated by the fire alarm in your office or even your upstairs neighbour’s faulty pipes can destroy your stuff. Even in your own house, the dishwasher or washing machine can flood your place and you might not be able to notice before it soaks the room below.
Furthermore, paper documents happen to be destroyed quite often by moisture and mold. Keeping your paper backup in an attic, garage, tools shed or self-storage room can make it vulnerable to moisture and mold damage.
With metal, it is no issue, especially if you use stainless steel crypto wallet that could be literally kept in water for years, without a problem. Good grades of stainless steel are corrosion-resistant and can even withstand exposure to salt water. So you will have literally nothing to worry about. Furthermore, a well-made metal crypto backup will also survive freezing and thawing without a problem.
Burglary or theft risk
Most people keep their paper backups where the burglars always look: their books, in the safe, with other important documents. They do that because these are the places where your paper backup will be not exposed to fire or water. Some people even keep their seed phrase backup together with the hardware wallet, which should be avoided. More creative and better hiding spots are usually more susceptible to moisture or weather in general. This means that burglars can find it while searching around your apartment and turn everything upside down.
With a durable metal crypto wallet, however, you can hide it anywhere, knowing that no weather, water or anything else could destroy it. Want to hide it in your dog’s house? How about putting it inside drywall? Maybe you will like to bury it in the ground, grandpa style?
With a good quality stainless steel crypto wallet like Coinplate, you can do that and sleep well at night. You can get creative and come up with some really good hiding spots that will not be found by burglars or nosy family members. Furthermore, the best metal crypto backups have removable branding and don’t look interesting to anyone, even if found. For example, Coinplate metal wallets have a very simple look and resemble a slab of steel or a piece of scrap metal.
We already mentioned it earlier but solid seed phrase storage solutions should have a way to securely mount it with screws. If needed, you can fix it to the attic beam, inside of your dog’s house or even somewhere in your kids’ tree house. This gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to finding a perfect hiding spot.
House collapse and other disasters
This is something that anyone doesn’t want to experience in their lifetime. But your house or apartment building could be damaged or destroyed by natural or man-made disasters. Houses all around the world are destroyed by fire and flooding. Mining or fracking operations, and disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes also happen. If that happens to you, your paper backup with all your portfolio will be gone. Remember that even if it’s worth now $20k, it could be worth 10x in a few years and you will much regret not taking care of your backup.
Getting a good metal crypto wallet will let you fix it with screws to your house foundations or basement. You could also just bury it in the ground, where it should survive even major disasters like tornadoes and house fires. The metal backups like Coinplate should also survive the house collapsing thanks to their durable build.
Time deterioration and ink fading
When it comes to ink from your printer, even if it’s a laser one, time will make your documents fade away. The same with ink from your pen. Depending on the quality of the ink, the writing could start to fade even after just five years and make the document unreadable. This will happen even faster when exposed to heat, humidity or sun. This is why paper backups of your software or hardware wallets are not a great idea. Especially when most cryptocurrency owners tend to hold their coins for a long time.
Furthermore, there are critters around that just happen to like eating paper. Various rodents and insects love eating your books and other documents. The worst part is that they usually eat the inner parts of your paper stack or book, so you might not be able to notice it for a long time.
Some people try to increase the durability of their paper backup by wrapping it in a ziplock or laminating it. However, this doesn’t change the fact that ink can fade and paper in plastic can get moldy with no air circulation.
Metal crypto wallets where you physically mark your seed phrase with indentation will last for decades. Plus, no rodent or insect can eat that, even if they want to. Time will also not be an issue when the material itself is rust-resistant. You could probably pass your Coinplate backup to your grandchildren and it will still be like new.
What is the best metal crypto wallet?
We discussed some risks that your paper backup is susceptible to. Good crypto metal wallets should be able to withstand all of that without being vulnerable to other possible risks.
To sum up, the best metal crypto wallet should be:
- Fireproof to withstand house fires
- Waterproof to survive rain, soaking by firemen and high air-humidity
- Rust-resistant & corrosion-resistant to survive decades even in a humid environment
- Easy to overlook (simple looks and no logos) to not draw attention
- Easy to hide (mounting holes, compactly built) so you can find a great hiding spot
- Ultra durable (solid build) to survive disasters like a house collapsing
- Offline and hackerproof to completely avoid being exposed to hackers
- Easy to use and read, so you will not make a mistake while making your precious backup or reading it in a few years.
With this in mind, it is advisable to use stainless steel crypto wallet for your seed phrase storage or try to make it yourself.
Coinplate Alpha – ultra durable crypto wallet.
The best metal crypto wallets available on the market like Coinplate Alpha, are exceptionally durable plus easy to use and read. We made Coinplate Alpha with all the above qualities in mind, right from the design phase. You can be sure it will not disappoint you so you can sleep well at night. At the same time, it’s easy thanks to the innovative layout, and the automatic center punch is included in the box, so you can start right away.
Coinplate crypto wallets are made from thick stainless steel plates, connected with solid bolts. The layout itself is deeply engraved with high-powered lasers. You can also use mounting holes to fix it in some creative hiding spot. You don’t have to trust our own words though. Coinplate backups were stress tested by 3rd party and performed great. You can see the stress test results and check how they survived being heated up with a blow-torch, acid bath and crushed with a hydraulic press.
Coinplate Alpha
Value Pack: Single set
Thanks to removable logo stickers, you can make it look just like a slab of steel, so Coinplates are easy to hide. Coinplate comes with a full set of accessories. This includes tamper-evident stickers and an automatic punch tool. So you can start right away and make your backup in a few minutes, no extra tools needed.
Remember that you always can make some kind of DIY metal backup. But keep in mind it might be harder than it looks and the tools required are not that cheap. You can also check our review of other popular options on the market.
Extra tips from our team on keeping your wallet recovery phrase safe:
- The order of words in your seed phrase is important. Don’t ever change the order of the words in the seed phrase, it will make your seed phrase unusable.
- Don’t take photos of your backup and avoid even reading it aloud to avoid intercepting it by malware or hackers.
- Don’t input your seed phrase (or even parts of it) into a computer or other electronic devices apart from hardware wallets.
- You should only use seed phrases generated randomly, preferably by the wallet.
- Always double or triple-check if you marked your seed correctly. You may use a recovery check feature of your wallet to do that.
- Use tamper-evident stickers to protect your seed backup or hardware wallet and be sure no one used them when you weren’t watching.
- You should avoid encrypting or making your seed phrase hard to read if you are not sure you will be able to decipher it back in 5-10 years. It will be better to just use a passphrase (25th word) and make a solid backup of it separately from the seed.
- Use extra passphrase or seed phrase splitting if you are worried that someone might access your seed phrase or force you to show it. Please be aware that these are some advanced techniques that require prior research.