A recovery field guide
Seeds Are Not Enough
Not your keys, not your coins — and not your recovery process, not your coins either.
- Twelve Words, Then Dark
- Not Your Recovery
- Hidden Paths
- Descriptors and PSBTs
A beautiful list of twelve or twenty-four words… and then left them completely in the dark.
In this book
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About this book Available now
In Bitcoin we repeat the mantra “Not your keys, not your coins” like a sacred oath. Yet there is a quieter, more painful truth that almost no one talks about:
Not your recovery process, not your coins either.
Over the last decade I have watched too many people lose funds they will never get back — not because their seed phrase was stolen or their hardware wallet was physically destroyed, but because the wallet they trusted gave them a beautiful list of twelve or twenty-four words… and then left them completely in the dark about how those words actually translate back into their money.
Different wallets use different derivation paths. Some support BIP39 passphrases, some don’t. Some use standard paths, others invent their own. Some document their recovery process clearly on their website. Many do not. Some never did at all.