If you have a Software/Hardware Wallet then there are ways to recover your Cryptocurrencies if it gets lost, broken or if you happen to lose access to it.

Some devices use an SD Card Backup like the BCvault but some others like Ledger, Trezor and Tokencard use the Bip39 Protocol. The Bip39 Protocol involves a Recovery Seed, which is essentially a series of 12/18/24 words. These 12/18/24 words will vary in size, but you only require the first 4 letters of each word to recover your Software or Hardware Wallet. Once these words are entered in the correct order into the Wallet supporting the Bip39 protocol, your Cryptocurrencies will be recovered onto the new Software/Hardware Wallet.

When you setup a new Software/Hardware wallet, the Recovery Seed is generated and you are usually provided a piece of paper to write the Recovery Seed. The reason you write it on paper is that you want this recovery seed to remain offline, to be inaccessible via the web.

Awesome great news, your Recovery Seed is safe and you can sleep like a baby tonight…No you can’t, I lied!

The problem with writing it on paper is that the paper can get wet, it can be thrown out accidentally and it can burn. As such there are some companies that have created devices made of metal in order to store your Recovery Seed Securely. We have reviewed a few and you can check those out: