Most wallets — hardware and digital — come with recovery seeds. These are 12 to 24 words that let you to recover your wallet. Unfortunately, any attacker that finds these seed words would have complete access to your funds.

What if there were a completely secure way of storing these seed words online? A method that’s secure, even if your computer and your Dropbox have both already been compromised?

Store your hardware wallet seeds online, securely.

This method entails using images instead of words to store your seeds, using pictures that only make sense to you. Your brain becomes the encryption key.

Before jumping into how this works, let’s take a look at the drawbacks of physically storing seed words.

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Drawbacks of Physically Storing Seed Words

The most common advice given to wallet owners is to keep your seed offline, and never upload it to the internet. While this does prevent most hackers from getting access, it has several major drawbacks.

Easy to Steal

Source: Alex Miller, GridPlus

Anyone who can gain physical access to your seed words would have instant access to all your funds.

Easy to Misplace

Physical storage also puts your crypto in danger of being lost to physical accidents.

Wired Magazine author Nick Ortega describes losing $30,000 in BTC because his housekeeper threw away a piece of paper with his seed words and PIN.

Physical storage means risking house fires, robberies, or plain forgetfulness (i.e. “where’d I put that thing again?”)

Hard to Access

Offline storage makes it hard for you to get to your seed words, if you ever need them. If you’re traveling, at a conference, or unable to get to your seed words, you’re locked out of your funds.

The only reason people don’t store their seed words digitally is for security reasons. So, how can you make it secure to store your seeds online?

Your Brain: The Unbreakable Encryption Key

It is possible to store a digital version of your seed words, without it being accessible to others, even if a hacker gets their hands on your seed file.

You can do so by storing your seed words with pictures instead of words. Pictures that only make sense to you.

Your thoughts are the encryption key.