Relay on online exchange to store your crypto is not considered as best practice because they are vulnerable to many hacking attacks.

Instead of keeping your crypto in exchange, use a wallet that let you own your private key by creating a seed phrase.

The Seed Phrase is a simple 12-24 randomized words created while setting up a wallet.

Note: It’s also called the seed key, recovery key, seed phrase, etc.

Wallet creates public-private key pairs based on the Seed Phrase.

If your wallet is lost or destroyed, you can use Seed Phrase to backup all your crypto holdings.

That is why it is important to store the Seed Phrase safe.

Here are some methods to store your Seed Phrase safely.

Take a Pen and Paper Write Down Your Seed Phrase.

One of the simple and secure ways to store your wallet seed is, take a pen and paper write down Seed Phrase and keep that paper in any secure place.

It is the cheapest way to store seed words and the main advantage of writing them down on paper is that it is never get digitalized so you can avoid dangers such as viruses and malware.

But the main downside of writing on paper is, paper can easily be misplaced, destroyed by water, fire.

Use Hardware Wallet.

There are different types of crypto wallets you can store your crypto-assets such as Paper wallets, Desktop Wallets, Hardware Wallets etc.

By using Hardware Wallet alone you can protect 99.99% of crypto-assets from different types of attacks.

Hardware Wallets are physical devices that help you to store your crypto holdings. They come in a few forms, but the most common is the USB stick.

Wallet set up your seed phrase while setting up and store your seed in a protected area of a micro-controller, protecting them from being transferred out of the device in plaintext.

Also, you can set up Two Factor Authentication (2FA) as an additional layer of protection against unauthorized access.

Ledger nano x and Trezor Hardware Wallets are recommended for safeguarding your Seed Words.

Use Metal Plates (Metal Puch Card).

Metals like Steel, Aluminium, Titanium can survive in extreme temperatures also resistant to salty water and acids.

There are different companies providing Metal plates to store our Seed Word.

Metal plates have 24 numbered slots with 12 slots on each side you have to engrave your seed word to slots using letter punches (make sure you do this yourself with no one else around!).

Once you put the letter into slots correctly, tighten the corners and then store it in a secure place.

Cryptosteel, Cobo Tablet recommended Metal Plates providers.

Use Safety Deposit Box.

Again and again, I am stating that store your Seed Word hard copy in a secure place protected from unauthorized access and natural calamities.

You can use the Safety Deposit box to store your Seed Word hard copies like Paper, Metal plates because these boxes require multiple keys, identification or fingerprint scanners to gain access and are locked away in vaults that are monitored 24 hours/day.

Also, Safety Box is immune to fire or water.

But the downside is, you can only access Safety Box during bank hours, and the bank ultimately is in control of the box’s contents plus you have to bear the cost.

Always Set Advanced Recovery Phrase or Passphrase.

What if your recovery seed somehow gets compromised?.

You don’t have to worry if you set up a Passphrase to your seed.

The passphrase is essentially a password added to your seed phrase that provides access to a whole new set of accounts.

If an attacker wants to access a passphrase protected account then, the attacker will need a seed phrase as well as the secret passphrase.

But remember a passphrase can be any word, phrase, any set of letters, or even a sentence, up to 50 characters long. If you misspell any one word while typing the passphrase, a completely new wallet is generated and forever tied to (or “built on top”) your original recovery seed.

Now you can set up passphrases in Trezor and Ledger nano x hardware wallets.

Use Steganography.

Steganography is a technique used to hide a file or message within the other file or message.

You can use this technique to hide your seed phrase within other files.

There is a tool called Stegoseed, which help you to convert your seed phrase into a long story which you can save as a text document on your computer.

Whenever you need your seed, you can paste a saved long story to this tool to get your seed phrase back.

Stegoseed builds a story around your Seed Phrase using non-Seed words as filler text. This allows the tool to work in reverse to decipher the seed words by simply pasting the entire story.

Note: If you want to store your seed using Stegoseed then, it is safer to download the files from Github and run the tool locally from your computer.

Memorize Hole Seed Phrase.

The most secure way to store your seed is simply remembering it.

But we are all don’t have the greatest memory power to always remembering the 24-word seed phrase.

However, you can memorize hole seed by creating a story involving seed, or you can use the Mnemonic pegging technique to remember seed.

These are the simple methods to follow for keeping your recovery seed safe.

Also, I listed some methods you never follow to store your seed.

Never Use These Methods.

#1 Don’t take a screenshot or mobile photo of your seed because computers/mobile are vulnerable, an attacker can easily gain access to your device and copy it.

#2 Never make a digital copy of seed phrase; never store it on email or cloud services.

#3 Never buy or accept a used hardware wallet.

#4 Never print your seed word.

#5 Never share your seed with a stranger or post on social media.

#6 Don’t use a pre-generated seed.

#7 Do not split up your seed into 2-3 parts to keep it in different locations. This can be fatal, and you can lose everything you have.

Conclusion.

In the end, all your crypto holdings depend upon how you store your seed safely.

You can make use of the above one or multiple methods to store your seed.

Now tell me which method you chose and why in the comment.

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