Hide a seed in the house

Most seed phrases are hidden somewhere in a house, and most of them are hidden against the wrong person. The hiding place is chosen with a burglar in mind: someone who kicks in the door, grabs what sells, and leaves. That person is real, and the research on them is useful. But a burglar is not who finds seed phrases. Seed phrases are found by people who know they exist.

What a burglar does

In 2012 researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte surveyed 422 convicted burglars in three state prison systems. The results are the best public picture of how a break-in goes. About 41 percent said their burglaries were spur of the moment; 12 percent planned in advance. The top motives were drugs (51 percent) and money (37 percent). Most entered through an open or forced door or window; about one in eight picked a lock or used a key. Alarms worked: 60 percent said they would pick another house if they found one, and half would leave if they discovered an alarm mid-job.

The picture is of someone in a hurry, looking for cash, jewellery, electronics and prescriptions, and taking what is visible or in the obvious drawers. A sheet of paper with twelve words on it is worth nothing to this person, and a steel plate with letters stamped in it is a curiosity. Against the burglar, almost any hiding place works, and the honest danger is the opposite one: that the burglar takes the box the plate is in because the box looks valuable.

So: don't put the seed in a jewellery box, a safe that can be carried, a laptop bag, or a drawer with cash in it. Put it with things nobody steals.

What the second person does

The second person is the one the whole site is about: a relative who has heard you talk about bitcoin, a contractor who saw a hardware wallet on the desk, a guest who noticed the book on the shelf, an ex, an officer with a warrant, a thief who was told. This person is not in a hurry, knows the words exist, and knows what they look like. Against them, the picture frame and the spice jar are the first places they look, because those are the places the internet tells everyone to use.

Against the second person a hiding place needs three properties:

1. It is not on the list. Search "where to hide a seed phrase" and don't use anything on the first page of results. Frame backs, hollow books, false-bottom drawers, freezer bags, the toilet tank and the spice rack are on the list.
2. It does not look like a hiding place when opened. A hollowed book is a hiding place the moment someone picks it up. A real book with a number pencilled in a margin on page 112 is a book.
3. It is not findable by a search for the thing. A metal plate reads as a seed backup from across the room. A page of numbers in a notebook of numbers does not.

The third property is where the ciphers come in. Twelve words are a seed phrase to anyone who has seen one. Twelve numbers in a list of part prices are a list of part prices. Turn the words into numbers first, with the cipher method on the home page, and then hide something that doesn't need hiding.

Places that pass

Not a list to copy. A set of shapes to adapt, because the point is that yours is different.

• The margin. A number written in pencil in the margin of a reference book you own, next to a figure that is already a number: a torque spec, a recipe weight, a page reference. Twelve numbers across twelve pages, or one per chapter. Nothing about the book changes.
• The record. A maintenance log, a mileage log, a fishing diary, a knitting pattern, a seed catalogue order. Numbers belong there. Yours go in among them with the same pen and the same handwriting as the entries around them.
• The receipt. The form on the home page: prices on a hardware receipt stapled into the file where receipts go. A thief does not steal receipts and a searcher does not read them.
• The object with a number on it. Serial numbers, part numbers, a date scratched into a tool handle. One number per object across the workshop is slow to write and slow to lose.

Each of these holds numbers, not words, which is why they pass. Each also needs the cipher name to decode, which you carry in your head and nowhere in the house.

What finders check first

A targeted searcher goes where people hide things, and people hide things close to where they sleep and where they keep valuables. The bedroom, the office, the safe, the desk drawers, the bookshelf behind the desk, the freezer, the bathroom cabinet, the toolbox. Whatever the exact order, the places feel safe for the same reason they get searched: they are yours.

The rooms that get searched last are the ones that feel like nobody's: the garage shelf of paint cans, the box of the kids' school papers, the binder of appliance manuals, the shed. Boring survives. If the hiding place would embarrass you to explain, it is probably a good one.

The test

Hand a friend a note that says "there is a bitcoin seed somewhere in this house" and twenty minutes. If they find it, it's a burglar-grade hiding place. Move it, change the form, and try again. If the friend finds twelve numbers and shrugs, you have the second kind.

We will never ask for a seed word or a passphrase, and you should never type one into this site or any tool it links to. Run the test with the public example phrase (pizza educate fat kiss domain venue …), not your own.

What a hiding place can't do

It can't stop fire, flood, or the person who moves house and throws out the paint cans. Hiding is one copy's job. The storage pages cover durability and the second and third copies. And a hiding place can't stop the person who knows exactly where it is; the next page is about that.

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