Let's say we want to safely keep bitcoin for the long term. Most of the solutions available have issues:
- Online wallet: trust issue, and hacking risk
- Paper wallet: it can be lost or destroyed or stolen
- Brain wallet: it can/will be lost or eventually die
- Offline wallet on dedicated computer: computer can be damaged, lost or stolen
- Leaving them in an exchange: hacking risk and trust issue
What I would ideally want is a secure way of storing the bitcoins online (so I am not vulnerable to physical theft or damage to my property). So how about the the following:
I create a wallet and the 12 word recovery phrase. Then I create various files that contain these words separately. For example I write a couple of the words on a piece of paper, then take a photo of that paper. I record a video of myself saying or spelling a couple of other words. I put a couple more in a spreadsheet, etc. Then I put all these files in a folder and zip it with a password, and then save that zip in a usb stick and on a cloud service.
What would you say about something like that?
What if you lose the password of that zip file? I mean you can host even your wallet.dat file (can rename it or even encrypt it within a video/song/image if your password is long enough it would be hard to break the file).
Other things you could do personally I am also a lover of these BIP39 seeds cuz with them I can keep multiple addresses and not just for bitcoin!:
- You take some poem and take every first word of a sentence and see if it can generate the keys from those words.
- You take some book like harry potter and starting from the page X to an page X+11 you take every first/last word of the page and see if you can generate the keys. (or from every 5th row etc.)
- Or even generate the keys and engrave them onto a metal plate that you will keep with yourself
There are a lot of ways you just need to be creative!
By storing them online you still trust the 3rd party that their servers won't fall apart. Maybe don't save all in one zip but rather put them on multiple locations divided.