Seven steps to self custody.

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

Now what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Oh. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it! Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

Alright, you ungovernable misfits. I'm your host, Max. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless, and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong? What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in this space and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back to Bit by Bit. Today's episode is with Antimus. We went through the seven steps to self sovereignty. Antimus also did the show notes for me, so thank you very much for that Antimus.

They will actually be good today. This intro will be a little bit short because I'm running out the door, but I just wanted to say a massive thank you to Antimus for putting the seven steps together, and also for everything he does on the monthly show.

Before we dive in, I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who has been supporting the show on Fountain, Breeze, and all the other podcasting 2.0 apps. Also, if you missed it, make sure to go back and have a listen to the episode I did with Urban Hacker.

I really enjoyed chatting to him. His project is so interesting. It really is a different take on orange-pilling people, and he was also kind enough to donate some sets to the show, so a massive thank you to him, and make sure to check it out.

This episode is all about taking custody of your sets, and Antimus breaks it down beautifully. We do go into the different options for hardware, and one of those options is foundation devices.

It's my favorite hardware wallet. The foundation devices passport is fully open source, beautifully designed, and it is so simple to use. Our good friend, Bitcoin Q&A, is working with them, and that tells you all you need to know.

He is pushing them constantly to make sure that they keep their users safe, private, and secure. Check them out at foundation devices.com and use my code bit by bit to get $10 off. Finally, a big thank you to FastBitcoins.

They support this show, despitely constantly shitting on KYC services, and that tells you all you need to know about this company. They genuinely do care about Bitcoin, and they're doing what they can to spread the message.

They're happy with me discussing the trade-offs, and if you are going to go to a KYC service, you really should go to one that is respected. FastBitcoins do everything that they can to keep you safe, and they have an amazing team.

FastBitcoins do not want to hold your sats, so everything that we discuss in this episode applies. If you have any questions about the trade-offs or how to get sats off the exchange, you can reach out to me or Antimus, and we will help where we can.

Enjoy the show. Ah, hello? - Yeah, I can hear you, mate. - There we go, okay we got it. (laughing) - This is my first recording in new office, and already problems. (laughing) Let's see, if that was the problem on your end, or I think it might be on my end.

But yeah, anyway, you've got a new studio, what? - Yeah, yeah, got a new studio, nice. The only problem with this is nice, it's almost all unpacked, and everything built the desk, the other day, you've got everything all set up.

But for some reason, it smells of fish in here. (laughing) - What the hell? - Yeah, and I'm like, where the fuck? And I've been looking, 'cause we've just moved, and I'm looking through all the boxes with all my computer stuff in it and everything, and I'm like, have I left some fucking fish?

I'm a few bits, but I don't think I would do that. It's more takeaways than where, man. Yeah, it's disgusting, so I've got a candle burning just to get rid of the smell and coffee that I'm sniffing as well, but other than that, mate, it's lovely.

Proper desk goes up and down, the internet seems to be working pretty well. I've still not got a computer, I've just got a bar on my misses still, but we'll be saving up for that. But yeah, I mean, I feel like the real deal, I've got the big screens and all that, I feel pretty cool.

- Yeah, and the audio is good as two. - Yeah. - Like new sticks. - Ooh. - Oh, never loved one, man. (laughing) - What about you, mate, how's it all going? - Nice, nice, it's going good obviously now before Christmas.

Got quite a few plans now for the next couple of weeks. So really looking forward to that, just going back and seeing family and friends and stuff, just taking a couple of weeks off. And obviously before Christmas now there's so, quite a bit to get done and to be sent out and stuff to be planned for for the beginning of the next year,

but it's all exciting. Looking forward to 2023, man. - All the family and friends are getting seed plates, are they? - Yeah, well, although I mean, 'cause we've been going for like now, what is it?

Like nine months, so most of them have birthdays, so they're all set by now. So now I've got to find something else for Christmas one. - Seed signer? - Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm hoping on delivery before Christmas, a larger delivery of the boards.

So that'd be sweet. Then I could stock everyone up on a seed signer, 'cause at the moment, in pure seed signer fashion, they're passing them around at the moment. So it would be nice to have enough to give everyone one.

- Yeah, it's so frustrating with all these shortages, especially when you've got a project like that, where that's the one that you need and all can get ahold of it, it's fucking pain in the ass.

- Yeah, they put out all the Raspberry Pi Foundations, put out a statement a couple of days ago, actually, saying that, yeah, they're hoping to alleviate all the shortages by the end of Q1, or at least have a decent supply by the end of Q1, and then by the end of Q2, there should be no issues at all anymore.

So it's looking good, we're getting closer to back to more fertile ground on that. So that's been pretty rough over the last year, especially when we have a seed signer project. I mean, it was a pretty steep rise at the beginning, and that's obviously their growth.

The whole project has been hampered with the shortages, which is real shame, and just like their whole ethos and the whole idea of the project of having a really accessible, cheap, easy to source, signing device for everyone around the world.

That was kind of undermined by those shortages, which was a rip. So I hope we can take off with the project the next year again. - I'm sure it will happen. Yeah, and so you've been working pretty closely with them and supplying seed signers as well by the looks of things on the site.

- Exactly, yeah, we got them in stock. I think it was in September, but that was more or less just scavenging like on different platforms like here and there, like every now and again, like they had a small stock ready of like 10 or something, and then you could always just buy them individually.

So you had to create multiple accounts and stuff and obviously, or like getting them on other sites or something, which was, yeah, and still is a real pain. So our stock is always pretty low but we've been able to meet demand up till now, which has been good.

But obviously it's been pushing the price up pretty dramatically. I mean, for like one half years ago before the shortages, they were going for like five euros apiece. And at the moment, like average cost for buying them into stock is around 30 euros or something.

- Okay, that's pretty sweet, right? - Absolutely, yeah. So that obviously pushed up the price from about 50 euros to like 80 euros. And then it says, it's not great, but it's looking better.

The sun's coming up at the horizon. - But so you actually, 'cause I'm looking at the site, you can actually order everything with you. You can get the seat sign around the case and choose your color and all that kind of stuff.

And then you have the preassembled option or the DIY option. Do you do the 3D printing yourself or do you outsource that? - No, we don't do the 3D printing. We, the 3D printing at the beginning, I started quite a bit of stock from black coffee.

- Oh, that feels shy. - Yeah. - It's a mess also, that Coen Beach Street. That's great and he gave me quite a few. And I've also been working together pretty closely with Patrick from the go brrr shop from Austria.

And he also prints, so I'm getting a restock of all the different colors from him as well. And he's also doing the really beautiful, resin printed cases, which I've been then polishing up and that's a huge quality jump.

Oh, also a bit of a price jump as well, 'cause obviously there's quite a bit of additional manual work that has to go into polishing them up. - Was it like a clear resin, is it? - It's like a yellow resin epoxy.

- Yeah, well, I'm not exactly sure what the combination there is. But, yeah, it's like really dense material. And so you can like really nicely, I sand it down to about a level of 1,500 or something.

And then with additional polishing just by hand and with the cloth. And then you get a really high quality surface, a real boost in just handling it. So we've got those as well as the additional conventional 3D printed cases in different cases as well.

It's cool, mate. It's nice to see how the shops come into its own. You've got more and more stuff. When you first started, it was with one product and it's just one step at a time, new quality stuff on there.

And I like that you've got a donator seat sign of buttons is laid out nicely. Like it's, yeah, it's looking really clean. And for something that hasn't been going that long to have one stop shop for all this quality stuff is very nice.

Like, you know, like a lot of the time, people will ask me like, oh, where do I get this? Where do I get that? And I kind of feel like if I was saying to somebody for the millionth time, get your fucking sats off exchange, you retard.

Now, do it now. I can just send them here. And pretty much they're done. - Yeah, that was the goal from the beginning to some point to have like everything there. And we're still like, because I'm an engineer from my background.

So like tinkering around and coming up with new variations and new solutions. That's kind of what I love doing. But at the same time you have to kind of keep the range of products as like efficient also, but also just to not like overwhelm customers as well with optionality.

So that's quite a square circle. But like the goal was to have a whole range of products that we can cover everything from the signing device itself to the backup solutions in different versions, as well as all the tools to go along with it.

And we've managed to build up that up to now. And I think like the steel QR plates, like our main product are designed to be used with the seed signer. It's great now that it's becoming somewhat of a standard that you can also use it with other wallets like blockchain, Jade, and also Spectre, DIY, and also Sparrow wallet and so on.

And there are a few more hopefully to come. But the original combination was with the seed sign and there is ethos as mentioned at the top, was yet to be like a really accessible low cost solution for people around the world that maybe don't have direct shipping access to the US or to the EU, and that was kind of what we wanted

to follow as well with the steel QR plates to have like maximum quality and like the best materials that we can get, as well as with the manufacturing, but to a low cost. And obviously that kind of means you have to cut corners with fancy packaging and all that kind of stuff, but like that the absolute core product itself,

like what it's actually made for and what people use it for, it gives you the highest quality and security you can get. So that's like the basis that we started with. And now with time, obviously it would be nice to have at some point also like a nice packaging and all the stuff, all the accessories that go along

that just make the experience of like unboxing it more appealing, but like we want to start off with like the first principles of just the product itself has to live up to its expectations here.

- That's something me and Mr. Crown struggling with at the moment with ungovernable misfits. It's like we care about the quality of the clothing and so we focus on that first, but the packaging it goes out in is shit.

Like it's so underwhelming. When it arrives you're like, oh, this is shit. It looks like it's just coming in like a bin liner or something like that. It just doesn't complete that experience.

So we'd like to do it as well. But at the end of the day, that's only that little let down for five seconds while you unwrap it and then you throw that packaging away and then you're like, oh, what's inside is good.

And so I don't think it really matters that much. It's just a nice touch. - Yeah, obviously, and that makes a huge difference in the price of the product. I mean, if you just look around like other metal backup solutions will cost double if not triple the price.

And I can definitely understand that as well, 'cause I mean, I've looked into this as well and gotten some quotes for, especially for the packaging, but also for other accessories to go along with it or like branding the tools and all that kind of nice stuff.

But that would, it's a higher price point or it's a higher portion of the end cost than the actual material. So if you cut away all of that, the actual product itself and the actual use is not compromised at all.

So that's that kind of, yeah, that was our priority from the beginning, but it is still like human beings still are creatures who are seduced by good looks and that great feeling of - That's why we're such good friends, mate.

(laughing)

- Yeah, so, yeah, at some point obviously, it would be nice to go into that as well, 'cause if that does obviously also just boost the appeal and probably also sales there, but starting from the right point, that was really important for us.

- Yeah, and just, you know, especially with what's gone on, you know, these last few months. Well, I mean, basically what's gone on forever in Bitcoin, it's still happening and people are losing their sats because they aren't holding their keys.

And so the most important thing is that they do that and that it's not at a price point that's gonna scare them off. And I think that's really important because, you know, a lot of people, if they're dipping their toe in and you're saying, you know, say they buy a hundred dollars or a couple of hundred dollars,

if you then say to them, right, well, you need three hardware wallets and you need this stamping kit and you need this and you need that. And you're like, whoa, hold on, this is like five, six hundred quid's worth of stuff.

I've only got a hundred dollars. This doesn't make any sense. So I think having an accessible option is really important. And also that when they choose that option, it's not accessible because it's shit.

You know, some people might go through all the trouble and they stamp a steel plate or they do whatever they do and then they have a fire or they have a problem, then suddenly they've lost their seed because they bought something cheap and it wasn't good quality.

And so that's something that I like about your stuff is, it's actually been tested. And so when you actually stamp something and you go through that effort, it should last a lifetime. - Yeah, at a minimum.

That's definitely the standard that we hold ourselves to. I mean, as you mentioned, self custody is absolutely non-negotiable. Everything that Bitcoin is built on, like the absolutely core fundamentals of Bitcoin that are really not in any dispute in the wider Bitcoin community

are all dependent on the users of Bitcoin taking self custody. And I think that ranges from everything that defines Bitcoin as a network, from decentralization to the hard cap of 21 million, which is so incredibly important for the entire ecosystem as well as the asset itself being something that you can hold as a bearer asset,

but also has like a permissionlessness in transmission. All of these points are undermined by not holding self custody. And so with that in mind, the most important obstacle that we saw in the wider Bitcoin ecosystem at the moment is that it's still quite a hurdle to take self custody.

So we want to improve that and make it as accessible as possible. - Yeah, it's difficult though for people, I think, because when you first come in, like if you're not a Bitcoin, or if you're not sort of like really into this stuff, you just sort of come in and you see, "Oh, this is an investment," or whatever, however you view it,

you would think, "Oh, well, I'll leave it with the professionals." You know, I'll leave it on the exchange 'cause they know what they're doing and I don't feel comfortable. And I can understand why people think like that because everything else in their lives, their hands are held and, you know, they're like, "Oh, well, I'm insured."

And, you know, I'll be fine. Like, you know, it's a big company, it's not going anyway, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, "Hmm, not exactly." Like, you don't have to look back very far to see that that's not true.

And until people even know someone who's like pushing them or they already have been rubbed, then I can see why they don't bother. And they think it's complicated. Now, I think sometimes Bitcoiners overcomplicate things on the like financial side, like how they explain things and also when it comes to self custody and other things,

sometimes it's overcomplicated. And I think sometimes it's 'cause people want to sound smart and it's really annoying because actually, it's not that fucking difficult. It really isn't that hard to get your SATs off exchange.

There's levels to it, obviously. And you have to take into consideration like your personal situation and how private you want to be and blah, blah, blah, but really any fuckwit can hold their own SATs.

It really is not that difficult. - Yeah, there's a whole kind of sense, especially like on Bitcoin, Twitter, is that there's like purity aspects, like everything has to be 100% perfect kind of otherwise you're not in the club.

And especially when it comes to self custody, there's like a really concrete zero to one moment. Like just download an app on your phone and create 12 words, like your seat and transfer your funds from an exchange to that.

Later on, obviously, we can go into a much more detail, nuance into that subject, but that zero to one moment is so incredibly easy at this point that there's really no excuse to not do that.

And I don't want to oversimplify too much 'cause there are quite a few considerations that you can go through after that to improve your setup and to make sure that your security does match the funds that you're storing but the risk of holding it on one of these exchange.

I mean, as you said, just now, like we've been having this issue for fucking ages, like since the whole Mt. Gox situation, was it 2014 or something? I mean, that was a huge wake-up call at the time and there was a big push after that to self custody and to improving self custody through the whole implementation of Bit 39 seed words

and all that kind of stuff that improved self custody so much. But like over the years, people have again become complacent and it was all like, ah, well, they said that was ages ago and it was kind of, even though the Bitcoin amount was insanely high that was lost there, but still it was kind of a niche thing.

Like there was not a whole lot of like legitimacy in like air quotes. - Yeah, they're like, oh, it was the Wild West back then. Blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, the fiat financial guys are in now.

It's really the Wild West. These are the real fucking scammers. - Exactly. And then like FTX comes along and like suddenly they've got Tom Brady and like all these guys backing it and it's the family of the dude running it is like all hooked up in politics and all that kind of stuff.

Like these are like, it doesn't get any more secure than this. Like they're not gonna do anything nefarious and this is all great. There's a huge legitimacy to the whole thing. So there's no comparison whatsoever to the mankind situation.

And that's kind of the narrative that we've been fighting for the last years. And at the end of the day, I mean, now we've obviously been proved wrong, which is important to note but the main core message of this is just that we've got this one chance, this like lifetime chance to take self custody

of this absolutely revolutionary new technology. You don't want to trust anyone with that responsibility to those funds. And we have the opportunity to take self custody of a digital bear asset.

- And there's nothing else like it. I think for anyone listening, we're gonna go into sort of start to finish like zero to hero of self custody. That's really what we're gonna go through today.

But just to reiterate, there is nothing else on the planet that never has been anything else on the planet that you can take control of and done right. No one can take it from you. There's never been property like this.

And it's only when you own it that you start to realize how much you don't own everything else. I didn't realize quite how little I really owned because you don't, you think you own it, you own it on paper.

In reality, you own the dare. I think people discount or don't fully appreciate that until you've actually held the Bitcoin, you really start to click in your head like, oh, wow, this is fucking special.

- And how crazy is it that you have all of those properties and then you just go and like dump it with some custodian and you just have like login and password. And that's it. Like it can be frozen, it can be like gambled with, it can be just completely lost within seconds and you're sitting there with literally nothing.

And I just think that as many pitfalls there may be with self custody considerations that you have to do, like taking that self, like that personal responsibility is the only way to go forward if you want to hold Bitcoin.

So yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, I mean, that's something we can go through today. Like if there are any listeners who either still had their funds on an exchange and have now hopefully pulled it off the exchange and are now thinking of how to do self custody, how to set up their security.

This will give quite a few points to think about. Obviously everyone's situation is a bit different. So you'll have to like adapt it a bit, but we can go through kind of a step-by-step here to give at least a starting point on all the things that you might want to consider.

- Yeah, definitely. A starting point for people who are new to self custody, but also even if people have been around in this space for a long time, there's always something that you can do to improve.

And that's something that I'm constantly working on myself and I know you are and a lot of other people, it's just you constantly take another step forward and you learn something new and you improve and you refine, but it's one step at a time.

So you don't go in over your head and then lose it all 'cause you don't know what you're doing. So yeah, I guess we just start at the most simple and basic and secure way for someone to do self custody.

- Yeah, so obviously step one and I hope if like get your funds off the exchange. And so that should be a given for everyone, anyone listening, if you haven't, please pause and do that now.

Like on desktop, you can get a sparrow wallet, nunchuck, spectre wallet or on your phone, you can get samurai for Android or blue wallet for iOS. And that's like a one click install and you can generate a seed, write it down, do a small test transaction, recover your wallet.

If everything's there, if everything's looking good and transfer you through that wallet and then you've already done about 85% of the work towards self custody. So that's definitely the starting point.

- Can we slow that down just in case there's someone who is really new 'cause we do get new listens every week and someone might just go, hold on, what do you mean by what you've just said?

So obviously the download bit simple, but after that, when they're sending a test transaction and then they're checking their backups, what does that look like to them? - So at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if you're doing this on desktop or on your phone or using any of the wallets that I just mentioned.

Definitely don't just go into the App Store and search for Bitcoin wallet. That will give you quite, yeah, the worst of the worst. So use one of those that I just mentioned. When you start it up, it will give you the option to create a seed and this will either give you 12 or 24 words and these words are the representation

of your private key. So this is the information that you have to hold secure. This is the information that will give you access to your Bitcoin. So don't show these to anyone, write them down so you won't forget them.

And these are the words that we then later have to back up in a secure way. So you'll get your 12 or 24 words and that will then set up your wallet automatically on your phone or on your desktop.

And here you can then generate a receive address. So this is the address that you will then plug into your exchange interface to send to, first of all, so that you could check that everything worked smoothly.

You'll want to do a test transaction. So that'll be a very small transaction. It can be as small as you can go. Send that out from the exchange to one of your receive addresses. Then it should come up in your wallet on your desktop or on your phone.

Once you see that, you can then once again, double check that you've written down all the words and then delete the app on your desktop or on your phone. And then you can reinstall the software and then restore your wallet by entering those 12 or 24 words.

And then you should again see the identical wallet with that test transaction that you already did. And then you know the whole setup worked, your recovery words, those 12 or 24 seed words are correct and you can restore any time you want.

I think that's where you can start to feel comfortable because you know that, okay, even if you lose your phone or your laptop, whatever you're using as your wallet interface, as long as you have those words written down, you're fine.

And once you see it, you believe it. You're like, ah, okay. You can even do it in a different wallet and you know, in different bit of software if you want to really test things out. But it's quite a magical moment where you know, okay, this is not just that it lives on my phone and if it's gone, it's gone.

It's like, I have access to this anywhere in the world with any device, as long as I have these words. When I ever do it with someone, I always get them and I do it myself as well. I write it down twice, so I actually get a piece of paper, write them all down and then I check them and double check them.

And then I do it again on a separate piece of paper and I keep them in separate locations. I always make everyone do that as well, just to be belt and braces because yeah, it's easy to lose a piece of paper and all write something down wrong, especially if you're a dyslexic fuck like me.

So it's just, it's just best to be double checking these sorts of things. - Yeah and just so that you can also be reassured, there's a set amount of words that are available for your seed, it's called the BIP 39 word list and these words were specifically chosen so that they don't look too similar.

So that even if you maybe misspelled something, it should be pretty obvious what the word is and each word can be deterministically characterized by the first four letters. So even if the word is longer, there are no two words in this entire list that have the same first four letters.

So that's like the most important part here. So yeah, once you've recovered your wallet with that, you see the test transaction, you know everything went smoothly, you can recover at any time.

At that point, you can say, okay, now I can transfer the rest of my funds to this wallet and then you've taken the first and most important step of getting your funds off the exchange and breaking that link of dependency and trust that they will secure your funds and will give you access to those.

- Also another thing I wanna mention is a lot of people, especially if you're on Bitcoin Twitter and if you're new, people will throw all sorts of fun and bullshit and scare people from doing something as simple as just downloading a samurai wallet on your phone and using that, it's like, oh, it's not perfect

and you need a multi-six set up and you need this and you know, technically someone could break it and they could get in and blow it, it's like, just shut the fuck up. It's pretty damn good.

It's a million times better than keeping it on an exchange. Okay, you can do something that is better but it is still a massive step in the right direction and it annoys me because people make others scared to do it and then they end up leaving their sets on exchange.

I can't tell you how many people I've set up just on samurai wallet and who still just use samurai wallet and they're absolutely fine, they've had it on there for years. It's like, it's fine.

- Yeah, and I think that's something that just takes care of itself, like once you've taken that step and you've taken personal responsibility for this, you like go through a whole progression of thinking about ways to improve your security, improve your setup, you might wanna use lightning at some point,

you might want to experiment with adding a passphrase to your seed or multi-seagant, all this kind of stuff will go into that later in more detail. But I think there's a whole journey for people to go through that once you take that first step, it's like kind of a natural path to go down

that people just led that way from some it takes a bit longer for some, you wanna jump right in. But most people who take that first step at some point want to improve on that and I think that's also a good thing at some point.

- Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so what's the next step if we were to improve slightly? - Well, I think like once you've taken that first zero to one step, then everything else follows at that point.

So here, first of all, first of all we can go through now is like a kind of a plan that I've set up that I show people if they want to go through all of the different considerations and it's a seven-step plan.

So the first step. - Very organized. - Exactly, seven-step plan, exactly. So everyone who's listening to this light knows what they're in for now. But yeah, so the first definitely would be to, like at this point, you've secured your funds and now you're thinking about, okay, how do I want to do this long-term?

First thing is definitely take your time at the beginning and do like research, listen to podcasts or read articles. There are books on this more to speak to people that you maybe know who have experience in this field.

It doesn't matter if you have your funds lying on that hot wallet, like on one of the wallets we just mentioned for a couple of days, weeks, whatever, like just take your time that you do your research and that you're kind of comfortable with the solution and the decisions that you do at the end.

And during this process, do your documentation. So write down like kind of what the different options are and why you maybe decide to do it this way or not in a different way so that at some point in the future, once you've finished with the whole setup and it's been lying around for quite a while,

you can go back to this and you kind of know, okay, that's why I chose to do it this way and not a different way and so that you can like build off of that and then also in the future, if you want to change up your setup or prove on that, you've already got like a starting point and don't have to go through everything again.

So that's definitely step one is do your research and document everything that you learn and that you decide on. Then the step two would then be to identify your threat model. So this would be, it's this kind of always like a term that's pretty daunting for people when you say threat model is like, oh God, they don't know.

I didn't like what's the deal here. But it's kind of just a fancy word for like, what are the things that you're most concerned about in terms of securing your seat, those 12 or 24 words?

Like what's your situation like? Like obviously theft is one of the things that some people may be concerned about depending on where you live, like what your house security is like any way like how you're living in a flat with other people, a lot of people have access to the locations where I have things stored

then another consideration could be like environmental impacts of flooding, fire, hurricanes, whatever. Like there are in more vulnerable situations there. Then there's like legal prosecution, like you may be living in a country where you are part of a minority that are prosecuted

or where you're just guarding against future risks of like maybe your government turning on you or you're coming into a situation there. Or you're just scared of losing it. You're just scared of just getting about it or just not doing like there are a whole range

of different threats around you and for everyone like the importance of these different threats vary. So make that clear to yourself of like what are the things that are most impactful here and according to that you can then say, okay, I can go in this direction or a different direction

but having kind of an awareness of where these dangers may be coming from is really important at the beginning. - Yeah, like if you say you're a student you lived in a shared house and there's people coming and going all the time.

Don't leave your seed words on a piece of paper on your desk or on a post-it note, don't do that because people are going to have access. If you live at home and you're very organized and you have a drawer to put that piece of paper in, you're in a much better position.

So they're the sort of like basic things to think about and also your own personal, like if you're just a forgetful bastard like, oh, fucking useless at keeping anything safe then you know that you're your own threats so you have to think about that.

- Yeah, and I mean now the whole rise of digital nomads of people just like traveling around who maybe don't have a physical permanent residence and that's then also a different kind of threat model of like how to secure your seeds while you're traveling around.

So there's no like one size fits all solution here. There are kind of nuances to this. So that's another reason why it's important to take your time to think through these things and to model your setup according to those considerations.

- We've got the step three, which would be then to determine your budget and that would be specifically in relation to the amount of funds you're storing. So here, if you want to level up your security, there will be a certain amount of costs involved and this can be very minimum but it can also be very expensive setup as well.

Like and that's not just the Bitcoin specific security. This could also include your physical security generally with your whole house or like getting safe or even bodyguards or whatever.

Like I mean, this can go from like very, very basic things to very complicated security setups. So at the end of the day, whatever you decide on doing it should somehow be in relation to the amount of funds and the value that you attribute to the funds you're storing.

One rule of thumb should be that your security setup should be or you should choose your security setup as if your funds were 10x the value that they have because this will give you a bit of a buffer into the future and you never know you might wake up one morning and that buffer might be gone

and leveling up your security at that point may take longer than you're comfortable with. So giving yourself a bit of flexibility there, obviously only if your financial situation allows that but you want to kind of have a bit of a buffer there.

So the 10x rule is not a bad way to go. - Yeah, agreed. So now we've gone through doing research and documentation. Step one, step two was identify your threat model. Step three was then to determine the budget in relation to the funds you're storing.

And then we come to step four, which now is more concrete to your Bitcoin setup itself. And that would be like what your key setup will be. So here we have different ways to secure your funds.

So you, the most basic, and that's what we did right at the beginning with that one wallet that we set up to withdraw the funds from the exchange. We had a single seek wallet. So that means single signature, which means that you have one set of seed words.

So that would be those 12 or 24 words that secure your funds. Anyone who has access to those words, to that seed can move your funds or control those funds. That's the most basic form of securing your funds.

The next step up would then be to combine that seed with an additional passphrase. So that's kind of like an additional password that it can be randomly chosen. You can choose that. It can be arbitrarily long of any characters that you want to use.

And that is additional security level so that you have two different sets of information that are both needed to access your funds. And these can be stored in two different locations so that if someone breaks into your house and finds one of those two parts, they don't directly have access to your Bitcoin.

So this is quite a significant improvement on single seek. And one of the other things that it guards against is the so-called retirement attack. And that means that when you create a seed with a device like a hardware wallet or a signing device or some other software on your laptop or phone,

you are in a way trusting that software to not give you false information and maybe hand you a predetermined seed. This is obviously really going quite deep into the paranoia sphere but it's still something if you store a lot of funds that you might want to consider.

- It's not unreasonable. - Exactly. I mean, this retirement attack would then basically mean that at some point in the future, the provider of that software or that device will then just sweep all the funds that have been stored behind those keys that they've predeterminedly given out.

So if you add an additional passphrase that you chose personally, they won't have that option anymore. The one downside that you still have with a single sick and a passphrase is that you still have a single point of failure.

If you lose one of those two components, you've locked yourself out of those funds as well. Here you can then level up to multi-sick, which means that you have multiple keys in total and a smaller number of keys that are required to access the funds.

So here the most common is a two or three multi-sick, which means that you have three total keys and any two of those keys in combination will give you access. - Can I just fuck up your seven steps and try and make it eight?

(laughing) - Sure, sure, sure. I feel like there's one step after single-sick with a passphrase. I feel like that single-sick with a passphrase with multiple backups and multiple quality backups.

So whether that is encrypted micro SD cards, whether it is steel plates, whatever it is, if you have multiple, I feel like that's better because you lose one seed plate or it goes missing or whatever, then you go, oh well, that's okay because I have another copy and I have that in another location.

So I'm fine. I just think that actually for most people, especially when they're starting, that's not a bad idea. Obviously not everyone can do it. Not everyone has multiple locations. They can put something, but I do think that is another step forward.

- Absolutely, yes. I mean, that's definitely a viable solution and there's no worries at all 'cause you didn't fuck up the steps 'cause this is all step four. So the step four of choosing the way, the amount of keys or the setup you want.

- Okay. - So this, but obviously that would be one step over just regular single seed of just having one backup. You can just multiply the amount of backups you have. They're all identical, but you can distribute them geographically, which will give you additional security there.

The one consideration for people just, I mean, this is definitely an option that you can do. Just keep in mind that the more copies you create, the higher the risk of someone finding one of them.

And because you only have single seed, it doesn't matter which one they find because they're all identical, they are full access. So obviously if you just store, if you make one or two copies, so you have a total of two or three locations with that seed stored at the risk isn't high, but if you go to the extremes

and you suddenly have 20 or 30, you can quickly see that the risk of one of them being exposed rises. So at some point, it might be an idea to move up to single seed plus passphrase, but especially at the beginning, like what you were saying with writing down the words twice and storing them into locations, even if it's,

at the beginning, like in the same building, that's still better here again. It depends a bit on your threat model of like what exactly you're guarding against, but that's definitely a viable option.

One of the nice things with single seed plus passphrase, but also with multi-sake is that here because you have different sets of information that you're storing, you can also combine digital and like physical security.

So you can say with a single seed and passphrase, you can store your passphrase in, for instance, a password manager or somehow encrypted on a hard drive or on a microSD card or something like that.

And then you can store the single-sake separately, stamped in steel somewhere physically offline. So that you have access to the passphrase wherever you are and the other set, this single-sake is exclusively physical.

And you can do the same with multi-sake as well that you can say, okay, one of the seeds is stored somewhere in encrypted cloud or in a password manager or something like that and the other are physical.

And at this point, I mean, now we can see, okay, now we're suddenly coming into an area where there have been business models created around this and this is like collaborative custody. So this would be with multi-sake that you have, for instance, two or three, so three total keys and two required to move the funds

and your collaborative custodium. So a company that holds one of these three keys. So you still hold two, so you have full access over your funds at any time. But if you lose one of these keys, you can always go to this collaborative custodian and ask for the last key so that you can recover.

It's just an additional security step. Some, especially for people who are not that comfortable with the way that all of this works technically. It's great, they give you support, like two companies to name here would be Unchained Capital and CASA, and they have a great service of like holding your hand through this whole process.

And there's at the end of the day one big downside to all of this that you should keep in mind, but maybe for some people it's a valid trade-off. You are giving up your privacy to them, like your transactional privacy because they can see any movements of funds on your wallet.

So definitely keep that in mind if you want to do this. - Yeah, it's something definitely to consider because like you say, they can see everything and unless you are, I mean, even though CASA have kind of disgraced themselves recently with a few choices they've made, it's still slick and the UX is nice.

So I can see why people would want to do it. And the one thing is with them, you can actually be relatively private, but it's kind of one of those things that when the more I think about it, the more I think it's such a niche, not many people will do it because to be private with them, you have to create a burner email.

You have to sign up for them using a VPN. You need to whirlpool all of your funds before you send them in so that they don't have any information to track you on. And then when you send them back out again, you have to whirlpool them again so they don't track you on the way out.

And then I kind of think, well, okay, that is possible. And it's nice that you can do that with them, but if you're capable of doing all of those steps, you're probably capable just to do it yourself anyway.

Yeah, that's a pretty good point. I mean, for the people who really want to go the like, the whole nine yards, this isn't really something that will be a good option. 'Cause as you said, the additional steps to secure your privacy and on the way in and on the way out again, it's just not worth it.

I just think that there's still a lot of people who for any other reasons, like in their private life, they are completely KYC than docs anyway. Like, I mean, the privacy aspect is just not that high on their list.

It's not something I would do personally for myself, but I still think that it's a far better solution than to holding your funds on an exchange holder. So if you are someone who say like all of these things that is just kind of too overkill, like I'm hooked up to the whole legal

and financial system in other ways anyway, but I want better security than just having them lying on Coinbase, then this is a pretty good step in between. 'Cause it's still the end of the day, you're still holding your keys yourself, you're holding the majority of the keys yourself.

So it's technically it's still self custody, but you are trusting them with your privacy, but like there are certain scenarios where in the future, if self custody is banned outright in the jurisdiction that you live in, if you're holding your funds on an exchange, you just won't be able to withdraw.

In this scenario, obviously they can give up the information that you own Bitcoin and like what movements you've been doing on your wallet, but they at no point have the power to restrict movements on your wallet.

So there's no permission required to withdraw. And technically you're not withdrawing because you've held the majority of the keys the whole entire time. So that's something to keep in mind that that is a big, big difference compared to holding it on the exchange.

- Yeah. - Okay, so that's a pretty elaborate point for, just going through those different scenarios. One thing that I often recommend and I also personally like as a setup is having like a tiered system that you have like a wallet on your phone,

whether you just have the keys hot on your phone with a very small amount of funds that you can just spend when you go to a meetup or if you wanna buy certain things or just tip people or whatever, just have a small amount on your phone hot.

And then either having just a cold storage is a single-sick with a passphrase or even multi-sick that's like having that two tiered system. You could even do like a three tiered system of having like a hot wallet on your phone, then somewhat better security with single-sick and passphrase and then having a deep cold storage long-term,

geographically dispersed multi-sick for yeah, the long-term secure storage. You can mix and match there as well. That's just another consideration or option that you have at your disposal.

Okay, so now we've gone through the first four. The fifth would then be once you've chosen your key setup would be to choose your method of backing up your keys. So like how do you actually want to do that?

A few things were already mentioned in this discussion, one was for like passphrases like a password manager or a cryptic cloud or something so that you have access globally. Another thing obviously, that was what we did right at the beginning when we pulled our funds off the exchange was to just write it down on paper.

This is a very accessible low-cost option for anyone but has some durability downsides long-term. So here you might want to level up and use like a steel backup. That was what we were talking about right at the beginning with the products that we also offer to Falcon was the steel plates to actually stamp it into

maybe there are a lot of other providers of these solutions where you can stamp it into metal so that it's durable against corrosion, fire resistant and also against like mechanical force.

And here definitely just take your time to choose the option that you want to rely on here. Definitely it's important that the provider of those plates specifies what material it is. You definitely want to have a stainless steel material and also with like a high grated alloy.

So something like a 3.16L would be good if like that. It's always a good sign if the vendor of those plates actually specifies exactly what alloy it is because there are also very big differences between different stainless steel alloys.

You can also check on a conno-alchemist likes to try and destroy these things with blow torches and everything else doesn't it? - Exactly. - Mostly through their paces. Has he done it with yours yet?

- Yeah, he's taken the steel QRs to the test as well for like a helium torch which goes up pretty steeply. Yeah, so he brought them like to like the melting temperature which is about 1500 degrees centigrade which is pretty brutal.

I mean that's high just as like a reference for like residential fires. You'll like basically never get higher temperatures than a thousand degrees centigrade. So that's kind of like the absolute minimum but you don't want to just rely on like the melting temperature of the material 'cause obviously it's depending on like the material

that you're relying on it can just get very soft beforehand and get in combination with like mechanical like physical force and it'd be so strongly distorted that it doesn't really matter if it melts or not but you definitely want to be well over the 1000 degrees centigrade which is like I think like 1900 degrees Fahrenheit

saying like that, like that's the level that you definitely want to be over. So that would be step five is to choose the method of backing up your keys. And yeah, that obviously ties into the considerations that you've made beforehand especially with like your threat model but also your key set up

like how many of these backups you'll need and where to store them. Okay, so now we're going to point six on the list which would be to acquire the hardware wallets signing devices and to install your coordinator software or like watch only wallet on a laptop or phone.

And this is definitely an important step 'cause what you want to do is you want to hold your keys or your seat, your 12, 24 words, you want to hold those offline so you don't want to enter them onto your phone or onto a laptop or something.

I mean, this is now talking about your cold storage. So you'll need a device to sign transactions offline but to communicate that to a software on an internet connected device. So this would be your phone or a laptop or desktop.

And so from there then broadcast the transaction into the Bitcoin network. So here you'll traditionally find the hardware wallets. So these are devices that actually store your seed on them permanently.

And then you also have signing devices like mentioned at the beginning also the seed sign as one of these that is stateless. So it means it does not store your seed permanently on it anytime, every time you turn it off, it forgets everything.

There is no internal storage. It only runs on memory. So on RAM and every time you turn it off and power it down, all information is erased. So here you have to enter the seed every time you want to do a transaction.

So those are the two main options that you have today. And then with the coordinator software, that would be the wallets that we mentioned at the top as well usually cover that functionality.

So Sparrow Nunchuck Spectre for desktop and also for mobile, you can use blue wallet or also Nunchuck or so as a mobile wallet there. And now to cap it all off, we've got the seventh point and that would be actually then to follow through with your plan, so to actually create your seeds using one of the hardware wallet signing device

that you acquired and then to back up your seeds and to securely store them in the locations that you chose. And then a very important point is then to regularly check your backups. So actually physically go to the locations that you stored them in and just go through the whole process as if you were in an emergency

and you don't obviously have to do this every few days. You can do this maybe every six months or something like that, definitely in an interval that you don't forget everything in between.

And if you followed step one, you'll have a documentation of this anyway. So you'll be able to go through everything and then know exactly how to do this. - Like a fire drill? - Exactly, yeah.

And that will just allow you to sleep more calmly at night 'cause you know you've been through this process quite a few times and if something happens, it's maybe not quite second nature 'cause there's still quite a lot of nerves involved but you definitely know the process and you can be confident that it works.

- Very nice, mate. Hopefully anyone who's listening to that, that's very clear and they can at least have a starting point. I think sort of as you get more and more into the weeds, you know, with multi-sig and refining things, then you get to the stage where you're then thinking about not only like what software am I using

which we've sort of covered really, I particularly like samurai wallet and also sparrow but you know, you start to get to what do you use as your hardware and how do you store these seeds and do you have any, I mean, obviously seed signer is one that you love.

Like do you have any preferences in terms of hardware? If someone's do you use multi-sig and do you have any preferences? Like let's say outside of your products, like what's the next thing down from there?

Like maybe if we can have like an okay, better and best for the hardware wallets and for the storage? - I think that depends a bit on what your key setup is 'cause in like a single-sig setup, you're relying on one device.

So here, I mean, for a signing device, as mentioned, the seed signer, that's definitely something that I use personally as well. You can also use like the Spectre DIY, it's a similar kind of project, also as a signing device.

For like hardware wallets, obviously one of the great, very user-friendly ones is the foundation device passport, which has great onboarding, very easy to use, high quality product. But yeah, and that's one of the devices that stores your seed natively in the device on a secure element.

And so you'll have like an additional pin to log into that device, but you'll want additional backups next to that as well. And there's obviously there's another very well-known hardware wallets is the cold card from CoinCite that has been around for quite a while now.

And this also gives you a lot of technical options so you can really go into the weeds with that. It's not the most user-friendly option, but if you know what you're doing, the sky's the limit with that.

Yeah, those are definitely good options here. One thing I would say is that you kind of want to, in your whole setup, if you're using different devices and different software, you kind of want to mix those so you're not using multiple devices or multiple software from the same project or supplier.

That's great with multi-sick, if you have multiple keys, you can use multiple hardware wallets or multiple devices with those keys so that you're not relying just on one of them. And so the here, then it doesn't like the security aspect definitely is reduced in a big way if there's no single vendor

that covers all of your security. Yeah, 'cause then that retirement attack that we talked about before, it makes it much less likely. If you have multi-device, multi-sick, it's possible, but it's far less likely.

Yeah, I mean, one of the main things, I mean, here, especially with the retirement attack, it's about like seed creation, that's the attack vector. So you could use one device with your whole multi-sick, but just create the seeds on different devices with different methods.

I mean, obviously there are very highly theoretical tinfoil attacks that can happen if you're using one device or multiple device from the same vendor, but that is the very, very theoretical.

It's definitely not happened in the world yet. But yeah, if you wanna go the safer out there, you can use multiple hardware wallets from different vendors. I mean, if you're using, for instance, like the seed signer, one of the great advantages of the seed signer is that it's, as mentioned, stateless,

so you'll forget everything every time you power it down. But that also means that you can manage an arbitrary amount of seeds and multi-sick quorums that you wish to control. So you don't have to, if you have like a two or three multi-sick, you don't have to buy three hardware wallets.

You can only have one device and manage all of your keys with this one device. Actually, doing transactions with this one device with your multi-sick quorum is not the risk in this situation.

Just make sure that, I mean, if you really want to be paranoid, you just create those seeds for the multi-sick on different devices or there are ways to do it without a hardware wallet or signing device, you can use like the seed tool.

- That's the one. Yeah, super fat arrow and Q&A, isn't it? - Exactly. You can use that. I think it's at bitcoin.guide/seed, I think that's the one. - So it's not right. It's always bitcoin.guide, yeah.

- Yeah, so that's a great tool that you can use to create a seed. Definitely keep in mind to download the software from the site and use it on an offline device. If you really want to go the whole way, you can use something like Tails, which is like an operating system that just runs on a thumb drive and on the RAM of your computer.

But just, I mean, if you want to really do this, the most secure way, create the seeds with different methods, using different devices, and then actually managing your core and doing transactions, you can also just use one device, like the seed signer, in this case, you could just have one device

and manage 50 different wallets if you want. - Cool, and then so the obvious one, and I think it just makes sense is stamp your seeds into steel. If anyone's going, especially to the lengths we're talking now, if anyone's at that point and they're not stamping their seeds into steel, I don't know what to tell them.

The cost for these things is not that large, and the benefits are just huge. You know, no matter what happens with these devices, as long as you have that, you're okay. You touched on it before, which was a kind of alchemist, you know, taking a 1500 degree blowtorch to one of them, and they survive, like,

what do people have to worry about? What has to happen for someone to lose their seeds if they do it properly and stamp into one of your plates? - The great thing about the actual backup plates, in general, it doesn't matter from what supplier they come, you don't have the same danger of, if you have them all from one supplier,

'cause there's obviously no software involved here, so there's nothing that I want to-- - No retirement attack for you. - Exactly, exactly. So once we send the plates out, I mean, that's all yours.

So here, yeah, you can all just use one method, whatever it is you choose. As mentioned, obviously, you want to have a product that uses a very high quality material, and it's not just the material itself.

I mean, here, obviously, you have considerations with temperature, but also corrosion, like some materials are a lot more, have less resistance to certain acids, but also things just like normal salt exposure or something like that.

I mean, there's a lot of variation between different materials. So you definitely want at least a high quality stainless steel in this scenario for longevity. One other thing is, yeah, not just the material itself, but also the thickness of the material.

So if you have one of these plates, it can be a great material, but if it's only half a millimeter or one millimeter or something, I mean, that can easily be burned through or destroyed in other ways.

So you want at least two millimeters, and ideally more, I mean, the plates that we provide have three millimeters thickness. So this is definitely something that you won't be able to bend or break very easily.

So that's definitely another level of security. One other big difference that we haven't spoken about yet with these plates is the way that you actually like, in what form you stamp the information onto the plate.

So the most, the conventional way, obviously, is just having a slab of steel and you get like a number and letter punch set and just stamp each letter and number in. So at some point, when you want to recover, you can literally read those 12 or 24 words.

There are a bit more efficient ways of doing this. There are some with like a grid. So you have a large grid and on one of the axes, you have then from one to 24 or one to 12. And on the other axis, you have the entire alphabet.

And then you just punch holes in those cells of the matrix so that you can mark every single letter of every single word and then you can go through that and reconstruct your 12 or 24 words.

And then there are also other more like elaborate ways of encoding this like in a binary form, something like that that gets very, very efficient. The way that we do it is a completely different approach.

All the ones that I just mentioned, they all rely on you personally looking at this backup and extracting the information out of that and then entering it manually into a wallet. Again, the way we do it is we do it with the QR code.

So this is like a standard that was developed in the seed sign of community. It's called the seed QR standard. And it's a QR code that has your seed encoded into this QR code. And that was especially developed for the seed sign because it's stateless as mentioned a few times now.

When you want to do a transaction, when you power it up, it has no knowledge of your wallet. So you have to enter your seed every time. And like typing in your 12 words on that small device is pretty tedious.

So with this QR code, you can just scan the QR code and it will instantly import all the information it needs. And the plates that we provide, the steel QR plates are just as the name suggests, a physical way of stamping your own QR code manually onto stainless steel metal plates.

So this way you have the physical security and longevity of all the other products out there. But at the same time, you have that flexibility and accessibility of quickly scanning your steel plate to import your seed to do a transaction within seconds.

- Yeah, that's pretty slick. But also some people might not want that or they have a device that they use that doesn't have that option. And then if that's the case, then they can use something like the seed mint and then they can stamp into washers or something like that if they don't wanna use the QR presumably.

- Exactly, yeah, the seed mint, I mean, that was the first product that we started off with. I have one sitting proudly on my mantelpiece in the office at the moment. - Yeah, yeah, so it's a beautiful device.

I mean, it was designed by Nick Toshi, I think, on Twitter.

I started working with him like close to one and a half years ago. And yeah, he designed this stamping jig on which you can stamp each individual word onto standard washers that you can get in any hardware store.

Also, you can get these washers in high grade, stainless steel for maximum security here. And then at the end of the day you have 12 or 24 washers that you stamp with the word as well as with the index numbers.

So you know what order they are and then you can screw them or secure them on just like a bolt and nut and then you've got a nice compact, very low cost, a backup solution. Obviously the jig itself is not or is a very like high quality machined device that is more geared towards people

who have a very high nostalgia towards stamping their seeds. So you might wanna, yeah, this is more for people who want to stamp either quite a few different seeds or you can obviously pass this round to friends and family or for even for meetups or something like this.

- We'll pass it down to your kids. - Exactly. - That's my plan anyway, so beautiful. I just think that's something that should be passed down. If someone does this, let's just take it to the extreme, either they buy seed plates or they buy the seed mint and they stamp onto the washers.

If they were to, let's take it to the extreme, they go, you know, this is, these sats are gonna go down to my kids, I want something that's gonna be really secure. They buy the steel QR plates.

What do they have to do to fuck this up? Like with both the plates and the washers, you can also get the steel vault that then clips over that that makes it even more resistant and the same.

I think you have like a titanium washer, capsule thing that you can put the washers in as well. Like what has to happen other than losing it to fuck this up? Like has anyone done something where they've gone, okay, I've managed this by putting it in acid for a year and then running it over with a tank

and then firing it with a 50 caliber rifle and you know what I mean? There must be something worse, like you could fuck this up but it's pretty hard, right? - Sure, I mean, obviously there are limitations.

This is not like an infinite, like a security solution here. But like the, at the end of the day, the material itself is what sets the limitations for this. So especially when it comes to like any really extreme accident situation.

So if we're talking about floods, if we're talking about residential fires, all this kind of stuff like that is absolutely covered. The steel QR plate won't protect against it being washed away.

So you want to have it somewhere contained either in a safe or something like that. But it gets as extreme as like physically reasonably possible. I mean, with the salt and that's what you just alluded to, that's an additional hardcore protection for your steel QRs for the plates.

And this is like a casing, like a housing for these plates that is made from the same material, but like protected from all sides again by another three millimeter thick plate. So this was also tested by Nick and fired up to over a thousand degrees centigrade

and then shot cooled in oil as well as in water on different test runs. And then smashed for about 20 minutes with the sledgehammer. So I mean, you can see all the photos on the website as well for the steel vault.

This thing was, yeah, he really took it from a rat. Yeah. And yeah, after that, I mean, those obviously a bit of like certain stuff like from the fire, from the temperatures like on the surface that had to be sand down a bit, but it was 100% recoverable after that.

And these are forces and environments that won't naturally really happen around your seat. So I think like the actual physical security, this is pretty much covers everything. The biggest dangers if you go to these lengths of actually stamping your seat onto one of these plates

is losing access to the location or just forgetting where you had them in the first place. These are much or theft or something like that. If you haven't secured that location to an extent, I mean, those are the dangers that are then much more relevant

than the actual physical security of these parts. One other thing that a lot of people think when they stamp one of these steel QRs is that, oh God, I have to stamp a whole bunch of these dots to create the QR codes.

If I like set one of these dots wrong, then I've got to start again or whatever. But the great thing about QR codes is that they have a certain failure tolerance. So here in this error correction, as you call it, so with our plates, we have around 7% error correction.

So you can set quite a few of these dots in the wrong location and it will still scan and I'll still be able to recover. And it's actually quite fun. If you've got one of these, I mean, don't use it with one of the real plates because I mean, you'll just be destroying them.

But you can use like paper templates. You can also find them on GitHub of these QR grids and you can just draw them out with just a felt tip pen or something. And if you actually create a real seed and you can check it, it scans.

And then you can just start adding random dots into the QR code grid and you'll see, you'll have to add quite a few additional dots before it doesn't scan anymore. So it's pretty high error correction there, which is definitely great.

- Cool. Well, mate, I think that basically covers for anyone zero to hero. I think anyone who goes to that length and stamps into steel and does all of that, like you've got to be very, I don't know, I don't know how you fuck it up because the testing is pretty serious.

You can just sleep better at night. And I think that is a big thing. You know, if you have, especially in the bull runs and you're looking at the dollar value and you're thinking, oh, fucking hell.

Like, have I actually done this right? Like, it can be a little bit scary. I've done stupid things in the past and it can be pretty worrying. So doing this, it doesn't take that long. It's not all that expensive.

And I don't think there's really a better way to have not come across a better way to have that, like, physical backup. So, yeah, I love what you're doing. I think that this is really important.

And people should at least take the time to consider it. And maybe they're not at that stage yet where they have enough funds, where they feel that it's necessary, but they might be at some point and just have that in the back of their heads to know that that is an option is really cool.

- 100%, yeah, no, I really appreciate the opportunity to put the message out there, not about our products, it's just about self custody and taking personal responsibility. I think that's such a wonderful community that has been built up over the last 12, 13 years now, that just so much is based on open source.

So much information is broadly shared that pretty much all the really quality software and projects, devices and so on, it's all interoperable. So, the most important thing for me personally is just to, yeah, urge people to take self custody to educate about that and to use whatever tools

they find the most convenient and secure and trustworthy. And if you use any of the different projects, products of different companies that we've mentioned today, you'll be on a pretty good track.

- And can people reach out if they have any questions and they're not 100% sure before they make an order? - Please, yeah, I mean, that's always wonderful, generally I have quite a few people reaching out, which is really great, I've just like talking through and I definitely understand that as well,

'cause this QR based system is not the most intuitive at the moment, I think it'll become more widely used in the future, but please, yeah, if you have any questions or also just hesitations regarding self custody in general, questions regarding your setup or whatever, just, yeah, reach out either via Twitter,

with the company Twitter at Vulcan21.com, personally, at Antimasbee and yeah, it's also Antimasbee on all the other platforms I telegram and Matrix also and Antimasbee@fulcon21.com for any mail.

So yeah, any of those channels you want hit me up and we can, yeah, we can chat. - Nice one, mate, anything else you wanted to cover? - No, I mean, well obviously there's not the end of the rabbit hole, there are a lot of things that can follow from here and maybe sometime in the future we can go into those as well,

but yeah, just keep pushing and keep learning and there are always things to improve on, but if you've taken at least the absolute first steps that we mentioned today of getting your fangs off the exchange and taking personal responsibility, you've done most of the heavy lifting and you're on a good way, so yeah, that's my two cents.

- Brilliant, well, thanks to that, mate. As soon as we finish the call, I'm gonna go and get my sats off Coinbase and I'm gonna follow through your guide and I really appreciate your time.

- All right, work is done. - All right, mate, we'll catch up soon anyway for the monthly and yeah, appreciate everything you're doing and I'll put all the links, everything in the show notes so people can reach out.

- Likewise, thank you, man. - All right, mate, speak to you later. - Thanks for listening. I hope that answers any self-custody questions people might have had. If you still have questions, you can reach out to me or to Antimus.

I wanna say thank you again to everyone who's been supporting the show and a huge thank you to Mr. Crown for helping with the website. If you haven't checked it out already, go to ungovernablemisfits.com.

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