FUD BUSTER - Multisig on bitcoin is too hard for most people.

Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. Bitcoin consumes more energy than entire countries. It's a way to both hide dirty money and destroy the environment at the same time. Bitcoin just seems like a scam.

So I forgot the whole business is anti-social stupid. We've got debit cards, isn't like we don't have a pay on stock. I'm dealing Bitcoin and we'll shut the fuck up about Bitcoin. Your money-hungry opportunist. Stop that.

This is the FUD buster line. Please leave your name, your FUD and your response after the beep. Hey man, hope you're doing well. I wanted to get back to you about something we spoke about last time.

Give me a call back, okay? Oh wait, you know what? I've got some time on my hand, so maybe I'll just go on a bit of a rant here and you can listen to this later. So I've been hearing a lot of FUD lately about multi-sig being too complicated for average Bitcoiners.

Really? Let's set the stage, are we? Bitcoin is the hardest money there is, right? And I hope we all agree you can only truly own Bitcoin if you hold your own keys. Let that sink in for a second.

Bitcoin is regarded as hard money precisely because it cannot be rolled back or manipulated by any central authority. That's great, right? But it also means there are no bailouts for those who lose their keys.

So if holding your own keys is the only way to truly own Bitcoin, the responsibility is all yours. But this is no reason to panic. There have been countless people developing methods and tools to secure your seeds to a level of which you can sleep well at night.

So where do we begin? Let's break it down. The majority of sovereign Bitcoin is hold their SATs in single signature wallets, meaning one seed protecting all funds. To ramp up security a notch, you can always use a passphrase in combination with your one seed and store it separately.

You can think of this as a kind of two factor authentication. But both these setups have a single point of failure. And this is exactly what multi-sig was designed to fix. Multi-signature is, as you may have guessed, a setup in which you have multiple keys with a predefined threshold

of how many of these keys are required to complete a transaction. For example, the most common setup is a two or three multi-sig. Any two or three keys must sign to create a valid transaction.

But you could also do a two of two, three of five or even eleven of fifteen set up. This means you can afford to lose access to a portion of your keys and still recover your funds. This is a huge step in terms of seed security.

For a bit of history, Gavin Andresen was the one to first introduce multi-signature transactions back in 2011. So this isn't a new concept. In fact, it doesn't get too much older than this in the Bitcoin space.

But for quite a few years, creating and managing multi-signature wallets was extremely complex and it wasn't until the development of hardware wallets and desktop coordinator software that things got more broadly approachable.

But especially in the last two years, the progress around multi-sig management has been phenomenal. Next to all the technical improvements, there are now tons of tutorials, articles and other educational materials to guide you through the process step by step.

So now you have a high level idea of what multi-sig is, how it is developed and how it can improve your security. Here are some actionable advice in form of a seven-step plan. Step one, do your own research and document as much information about your considerations, decisions and ongoing changes to your setup as possible.

Step two, identify your threat model, theft, loss, destruction through environmental forces, legal prosecution, etc. Step three, determine the budget for your setup in relation to the amount of funds you want to secure.

Step four, choose the number of total keys, signing threshold and storage locations. Step five, choose your method for backing up your keys. Step six, acquire hardware wallets or a signing device and install multi-sig coordinator software on your laptop or phone.

Step seven, create your keys and backup your keys as well as your wallet descriptor and set a time interval to check your backups. Now you're ready to go. In case this may be too abstract, I'll give you an example for a cold storage multi-sig setup, but keep in mind that there are many alternatives available

and you should adapt this to your personal situation. Let's start with the threat model. In this scenario, we're most concerned about theft, residential fire and shooting ourselves in the foot.

For a budget, let's say we're securing 0.5 Bitcoin, the current price is 1% would give us a security budget of roughly $200. As a number of keys, we'll choose a 203 multi-sig setup to eliminate single point of failure, but manageable number of keys to keep things relatively simple.

As for locations, we'll have one key at home in a safe, one in a safety deposit box within our country, and one with a close family member or trusted friend. We're going to use the password manager Bitwarden to secure our wallet descriptor.

We'll use three high-quality stainless steel backups. The seed sign is a great choice as a signing device. Our coordinator software will be Sparrow wallet for desktop and/or blue wallet for mobile.

Finally, we'll test our backups every six months. Total cost, $150 to $200 for the seed signer and the plates, plus the annual fees for the safety deposit box. Not too bad, right? Listen, I know this isn't a walk in the park, but most of the heavy lifting is related to critical analysis of your situation

and deciding on a setup in the first place. The technical multi-seed component is pretty straightforward. So, to wrap this up, I really don't think multi-seed is too much of a hassle. I understand that complexity is the enemy of security, but in my opinion, we have reached a level of simplicity with multi-signature management

in which the benefits far outweigh the risks. Give it a shot, and feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions along the way, okay? Keep it up, man. See you soon. Bye. Thanks for listening. I hope that was helpful, and if you have any fun you would like busting, you can always reach out to me by email or on Twitter.

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