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Crypto Inheritance: A Guide for Law Firms

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Vault12 is NOT a financial institution, cryptocurrency exchange, or custodian. We do NOT hold, transfer, manage, or have access to any user funds, tokens, cryptocurrencies, or digital assets. Vault12 is exclusively a non-custodial information security and backup tool that helps users securely store their own wallet seed phrases and private keys for the purpose of inheritance. We provide no legal or financial services, asset management, transaction capabilities, or investment advice. Users maintain complete control of their assets at all times.

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Crypto Inheritance: A Guide for Law Firms

Trust & Estate planning is already complex for many law firm clients, this guide covers the key elements lawyers need to know about crypto inheritance to be useful to their clients.

With the introduction of crypto assets into estate planning, there are new challenges emerging for Trust & Estate teams at firms globally. The learning curve for both the technology and an entirely new asset class is high, and clients are increasingly likely to have crypto assets as part of their overall investment portfolio.

How Are Crypto Assets Different Than Traditional Assets?

Typical assets have a location and are retrievable, crypto assets, whilst they live on the blockchain can have a variety of ways to access them - so you need a full and complete inventory which is always kept up to date and you need the access instructions - this is hard.

1. Cryptocurrencies do not inherently have to be held by a custodian, which is something that is not typical of most other types of asset classes. As a result, it can be extremely difficult to maintain an accurate inventory of a client’s crypto assets over the years of their life.

2. There is no custodian for any crypto assets that the client self-custodied, there is also no third party to help trigger the process of transferring the assets upon the passing of the client.

3. Since self-custodied crypto assets are not present in the physical world and are also not maintained in a consistent record by a custodian, it is much more likely that they can simply go unaccounted for.

4. Crypto assets - even if documented in a an inventory need access instructions - especially when the assets are spread across multiple wallets. The next of kin and executor may not be able to access the assets if a plan was not kept up to date and meticulously reviewed over the years.

This leads to the risk that crypto assets can become lost or stolen, which carries a serious risk for Trust & Estate teams who attempt to undergo digital asset estate planning without being properly equipped to handle a new class of assets.

Key Risk Highlights For Clients

In addition to the usual risks for clients when it comes to estate planning, crypto assets bring an additional set of risks into play that firms need to be aware of and remain prepared to address:

  1. The risk of an incomplete or inaccurate list of inventoried crypto assets, resulting in lost assets.
  1. Access risk, specifically when trusting third parties with digital asset risk. Providing asset access to the wrong party can result in asset loss, leaving firms open to liability.
  1. The privacy and security of the client, their assets, and their information within the firm. When information is written down, it can be accessed by multiple people - this is a privacy risk, one that carries with it the potential of loss of the asset entirely.

Without specifically considering these risks for crypto assets, most firms are ill-prepared to assist clients with the protection and security that is required when handling the inheritance of crypto assets.

What Do Firms Need For Traditional and Digital Inheritance At A High Level?

Regardless of whether the firm plans on assisting clients with traditional assets, crypto assets, or a combination of both, there are some core planning requirements that they should be considering. The manner in which the firm conducts these steps will vary, depending on whether the assets in question are traditional or digital:

  1. Identifying the beneficiaries of the client.
  1. Creating a legally binding will for the client.
  1. Writing, as well as maintaining, instructions that detail how to transition the client’s assets.
  1. Contracting for a form of storage to help protect the client’s inheritance plans.
  2. Creation of an asset inventory, especially for crypto assets.

What Could Happen Without Proper Digital Asset Planning?

There are a plethora of these examples happening with worrisome regularity:

In December 2018, Gerald Cotten, the founder of Canadian Bitcoin trading exchange QuadrigaCX, died (under somewhat mysterious circumstances) resulting in the loss of $250M and the exchange going bankrupt. Gerald was only 30 years old and had not created an inheritance plan, nor were instructions of how to access the centralized assets ever found.

In April 2018, Matthew Mellon, heir to Mellon family banking fortune and former chairman of the NY Republican Party finance committee, and cryptocurrency proponent died. Prior to his death, he held an estimated $1B in Ripple (XRP) - all of this remains inaccessible as he left no instructions, even though he protected the cryptocurrency via cold storage in multiple locations around the US in different people’s names.

In 2017, an unidentified young crypto investor in Colorado died with a small fortune in cryptocurrency held in a Coinbase account. The family, however, had no access to the account, and had to petition Coinbase directly. Eventually, the assets were released after a lengthy process. If the account holder had not been a U.S. Citizen, this would have been a much more complicated process.

How Can Vault12 Help Firms to Manage Digital Asset Inheritance?

Vault12 is the pioneer of crypto inheritance, the company was founded in 2014 just as crypto assets (Bitcoin) started to become talked about. Vault12 Digital Inheritance, launched to Apple and Google app stores in 2019, is the first solution to offer a simple, direct, and secure method for all investors to ensure their crypto assets are available to future generations.

Traditional approaches to asset inheritance, when applied to crypto assets, introduce complexity and risk.

A crypto asset portfolio is continually changing. It is not possible to rely on doing an inventory once, or for that matter, continually, without assistance.

Vault12's simple Digital Vault solution with trusted Guardians accommodates all types of crypto assets and reduces the uncertainty around assets not being available to the designated recipient. It also avoids having to approach and petition each service individually during probate to gain access.

How Does Vault12 Digital Inheritance Work?

The Vault12 Digital Inheritance solution provides an app for protecting, backing up, and securing clients' crypto assets. It enables the client to designate a beneficiary who can inherit their entire portfolio of crypto assets stored in their Vault when the time comes. With Vault12, there is no need to continually update an inventory or to issue updated instructions.

Crypto assets, including cryptocurrency, financial login information, legal documents, medical records, and more, can be added to a Vault12 Digital Vault.

The Vault is protected by a network of Guardians. Guardians are friends, family, and business associates of the client. The firm can also be designated as a Guardian on behalf of clients. Additional resources for assisting clients in choosing their Guardians can be found here.

A beneficiary is designated by the Vault owner from amongst the Guardians, and a declaration is digitally signed and transmitted to the beneficiary and lawyers as needed.

Upon the passing of the Vault owner, when the beneficiary is ready to access the crypto assets, a designated number of Guardians approve the request, and the assets are restored with access granted to the beneficiary.

Should the beneficiary attempt to access the assets before the owner’s passing, the owner can veto the request.

How Can Vault12 Help Maintain a Digital Asset Inventory While Maintaining Privacy?

Vault12 Digital Inheritance was designed to reduce the risks associated with managing crypto assets and preparing them for future transfer: backed up by distirbuted decentralized technology infrastructure that protects privacy and quantum-safe cryptography to ensure only the right person can see this information.

  • Comprehensive Digital Asset Inventory: Designed to accept all forms of crypto assets. When used to secure and back up an investor’s full range of assets, it provides an up-to-date inheritance inventory.
  • Direct access for the designated individual: Offers a simple and direct way for the designated individual to gain access to crypto assets without having to petition multiple services or financial institutions.
  • Privacy: Ensures that, unlike with multi-sig solutions, information about the crypto assets is kept private, even from the firm, while still allowing the firm to assist in the process.

What Digital Asset Risks Exist for Beneficiaries?

In traditional trust and estate planning, an executor ensures that the client’s beneficiaries receive the assets specifically designated for their inheritance at the appropriate time. Just as an executor ensures that these traditional assets are transferred at the appropriate time and no sooner, a robust plan for crypto assets must also exist to ensure that a similarly appropriately timed transition occurs for the client.

Let’s highlight some beneficiary risks and how Vault12 Guard can assist the firm in handling them for clients with crypto assets.

Example 1: If the intended beneficiary is given direct access to the client’s crypto assets today, they are free to access those assets immediately. Furthermore, anyone who happens to stumble upon the access directions given to the beneficiary could also achieve inappropriate access to client assets.

Example 2: If the lawyer representing the firm or executor of the will is given immediate access to the client’s crypto assets, they take on a variety of third-party risks, such as loss or theft due to improper security, closure of the firm, or seizure of the assets.

Vault12 Guard brings beneficiaries into the process of estate planning without the risk that they can access assets before they are supposed to. It also allows for custodial access to client assets without such centralized third-party risk, helping to create less liability to the firm for handling crypto assets.

What Digital Asset Risks Relate to Writing and Maintaining Instructions?

Crypto assets are not all the same. A client’s crypto assets could include works of art, fungible cryptocurrency tokens, important documents, and other real-world assets, or a combination of these. Accessing these assets could vary as well, based on where the asset is stored, how the asset is stored, and maintaining a ledger of all of the seed phrases, pin codes, passwords, and other access information for the client’s crypto assets.

As with beneficiaries, Vault12 Guard can help mitigate these risks for firms.

Example 1: Key access information for client assets could be documented incorrectly or omitted, leading to loss of asset access.

Example 2: The firm forgets to update the list of client crypto assets or access information frequently enough.

Example 3: The ledger of assets and access instructions is maintained perfectly, but falls into the wrong hands.

Vault12 Guard can help simplify asset access instructions, despite the ability of digital asset portfolios to change frequently. It also helps to mitigate centralized access risk by spreading out the responsibility of keeping access to the crypto assets safe.

What Risks For Crypto Assets Relate to the Storage of Digital Inheritance Instructions?

Traditional asset storage for financial assets has historically been handled by a custodian, like a brokerage firm, that works with the firm on behalf of the client and assists with transitioning those assets upon the passing of the client. Physical assets are typically stored within some type of safety deposit box or another custodial solution.

Example 1: Access to safety deposit boxes for digital inheritance instructions is not always available, nor are they always insured in the event of loss or theft.

Vault12 Guard’s app is a more secure location to hold access instructions for client digital asset inheritance than a physical location like a safety deposit box.

How Does Vault12 Guard Help Firms Manage Digital Asset Inheritance Risk?

The previously mentioned risks, both to the client and to the firm, can seem overwhelming when discussing digital asset inheritance. Firms can look at these assets as an extra hurdle to have to overcome for clients, with a learning curve that is fraught with liability for the firm if proper precautions aren’t taken and shortcomings occur in just one of a number of areas, as highlighted above.

As digital asset adoption continues to grow, the ability to plan for the future is becoming more complex. There is a definitive learning curve associated with the adoption of crypto assets, and more estates will likely contain Bitcoin and other crypto assets as the adoption of this asset category matures in the future.

Many centralized exchanges do not currently offer sufficient options for succession, and digital asset holders also do not have to keep their assets with a custodian, as they would with traditional assets such as stocks or bonds. While technological innovation for self-custody of crypto assets is one benefit to the asset class, it also adds complexity when it comes to transferring assets to the beneficiary upon the owner’s passing.

Traditional paper wills and trusts are not enough to ensure the successful transfer of crypto assets. This is the case for several reasons, including encryption barriers, two-factor authentication, lost or misplaced hardware wallets, and a variety of other factors. Fortunately, Vault12 can help not only mitigate these concerns but also serve as a differentiator for lawyers when it comes to advising clients on digital asset inheritance.

How Does Vault12 Change Inheritance Advisory Options?

The technology underlying Vault12 helps to create a simpler experience for legal professionals seeking tools to advise clients on digital asset inheritance.

Vault12 Guard encrypts private information utilizing cryptographic technology in a manner that is Quantum-safe by splitting the encrypted information into various pieces (referred to as shards).

The user can choose the number of shards to create from their data, as well as how many shards need to be recovered to recover access to the wallets. This is a decision that a legal professional could assist their client with, as the client will need to select a handful of trusted confidants with whom to trust their cryptographic shards, known as guardians. Lawyers themselves can be a Guardian, and we will get into why that’s a better role than other options.

This guardian concept is a more secure option for inheritance than previous password-protected models. It has been shown time and time again in crypto that having private wallet keys be password-protected, even in a password manager, is a major liability. The password serves as a single point of failure, and once that password is cracked by bad actors, every wallet whose private keys were listed is compromised.

Some use a multisig wallet to help decentralize the risk of access. Multisig is short for multiple signatures, which means that the risk of a singular access point is spread out across multiple fractional access points. While decentralization of risk does help to ensure a higher level of safety for crypto assets, how the data is decentralized makes a big difference. Simply ensuring that no one centralized server has all of the data needed to access the assets is only the first step.

Multisig wallets are only an option for a small subset of crypto assets. Anything that is not close to the very top of the adoption curve is likely not going to be accessible through a multisig wallet. Furthermore, separate software is required to run a multisig, as it is necessary to be able to field signatures from all wallet holders upon activation. Vault12 Guard does not have this potential downtime liability. The shards that are created can always be used to access the underlying data with no need for any additional software to be run in parallel to Vault12 Guard or any other integrator.

Why Should Legal Professionals Choose Vault12?

Historically, if a crypto asset holder came to a law firm seeking counsel for how to pass on their assets to their beneficiary, it was extremely important that someone within the firm specialized in this type of asset class. The fact that crypto assets can be self-custodied, which is not the case in most other asset classes as of the writing of this article, created a major learning curve for anyone who wasn’t already deeply immersed in the world of crypto and blockchain technology.

The biggest problem with taking this type of work has been the legal liability if something happens to the assets after the firm has been provided access to them. Previously, the only way to entrust asset access to anyone was to provide them with the private keys (often in the form of a seed phrase) to each digital wallet. This is a highly insecure practice and opens up law firms providing this type of service to massive liability should assets be stolen or lost.

Vault12 Guard helps to mitigate this risk by providing the options for the firm or lawyer to serve as a Guardian of the assets. Guardians are trusted individuals or entities to the user/client who hold a cryptographic shard, as discussed earlier. Guardians are typically only provided with a singular shard, meaning that any individual Guardian can’t access the crypto assets entrusted to the vault because they don’t have a majority share of the vault’s shards.

This helps to mitigate internal fraud since the firm and its employees can’t unilaterally access client assets. It also creates a mechanism where a legal professional (and their shard) is needed to help approve a restoration of the vault and enable access to any third party trying to claim inherited crypto assets, so long as the firm is a Guardian. Creating this technical integration of requiring the firm to review also helps to initiate the probate process directly into the unlock flow of the vault. It is assumed that if the firm is going to provide access to its shard, it believes that the claim against the crypto assets is valid and legal.

How Can Firms Onboard Clients to Vault12?

The process of utilizing Vault12 to help secure and pass along client assets is relatively straightforward.

  1. An initial meeting will need to be set for the firm to help the client create a Vault12 Digital Vault,
  2. Help import their wallets, based on an inventory
  3. Choose their Guardians. Examples of potential Guardians include the firm itself, a spouse, adult children, and other trustworthy individuals.
  4. Designate one of the Guardians as a beneficiary.

The Vault12 website has multiple onboarding articles for clients that can assist, including this one.

Once the initial setup is created, there is a (hopefully) long dormant period between setting up the infrastructure and the passing of the client, triggering the need for beneficiaries to access their crypto assets.

The beneficiary will request access upon the client’s passing, at which point, Guardians will review the request, and enable authorization to their Guardian shard. Once enough shards have been enabled, the beneficiary can access the assets directly, bypassing the complexities that can occur with custodied assets being willed.

What are the Strategic Benefits of Vault12 for Firms?

Not only does utilizing Vault12 help to mitigate centralized risk for firms by helping to prevent fraud or lost assets, but it can also be used to help generate upside for the firm itself.

Take the dormant period, for example. Over the course of the (hopefully) years between enabling the client’s vault and their eventual passing, it will be necessary for someone to check on the vault, its access, and ensure that everything is still operational for when the beneficiary ends up showing up to claim the assets. This creates an opportunity for firms to create a recurring revenue course by having clients retain them for these spot checks on their vault. It also makes the burden of changing law firms higher, given the firm’s role as an established Guardian of the client’s crypto assets. This type of deepening of the client relationship not only helps retention but could also lead to additional business from the client over the course of their lifetime.

The reputational boost to the firm should also be considered. As previously mentioned, crypto assets have historically been so specialized during their infancy as an asset class that many firms lack the technical and practical understanding to service clients who hold crypto assets effectively and safely. High-net-worth and tech-savvy clients, who can account for a lot of business for firms, are therefore in need of technically competent service providers who can handle their specific needs. Due to the recency of crypto assets coming on the scene, there is not a large number of established players who have a reputation for being highly technically skilled in serving clients in this vertical. Vault12 allows firms to differentiate themselves from their competition by making the process smoother, safer, and more automated than ever before.

Where Does Vault12 Offer Value to Firms?

The Market Shift: The rapid increase in estates containing Bitcoin and cryptocurrency assets, and high-value digital accounts.

The Failure Point: Most exchanges offer minimal succession options and involve significant long-term counterparty risk. While asset holders prefer non-custodial crypto storage, this introduces complexity, costly security and operational measures, and potential for lawyers’ liability. Traditional paper wills and trusts are often ineffective for transferring crypto assets due to encryption barriers, 2FA, hardware wallet loss, and other issues.

The Opportunity: The ability to secure digital legacy is not just a technical fix; it’s a premium service differentiator for modern law firms.

The Lawyer as the "Professional Guardian"

New Service Model: specific role of the attorney within the Vault12 ecosystem. The firm acts as one of several "Guardians" required to unlock the Vault.

Liability Mitigation:

The Problem: Lawyers or firms holding private keys/hardware wallets assume massive liability (theft/loss risks).

The Solution: As a Vault12 Guardian, the lawyer/firm holds only a fragment of the key. They cannot access funds unilaterally (preventing internal fraud) but are required to approve the restoration (ensuring legal compliance).

Probate Integration: a technical "check-and-balance" that mirrors the legal probate process.

Operational Workflow: From Setup to Succession

Phase 1: Onboarding: The firm assists the client in creating a digital vault and assigning Guardians (e.g., Spouse, Law Firm, Adult Child).

Phase 2: Dormancy: The system operates autonomously; the law firm requires only a monthly health check for maintenance.

Phase 3: Activation (The Event):

  1. Upon client death, the beneficiary requests access.
  2. Guardians are contacted via the app.
  3. Assets are restored directly to the beneficiary, bypassing complex exchange probate.

Strategic Benefits for the Firm

Recurring Revenue: Potential for retainer models based on "Digital Guardianship" maintenance.

Client Retention: "Guardian" status necessitates a long-term, active relationship between the firm and the client/heirs.

Modernization: Establishes the firm as technically competent to handle high-net-worth crypto and tech-savvy clients, a demographic often underserved by traditional estate planners.

(Re-) Introducing Vault Guardian Rewards

Once agin, Vault owners can provide rewards for Guardians using $VGT with the blessing of the SEC and CFTC.

Recent regulatory changes announced by Chairman Paul Atkins of the SEC and Chairman Michael Selig of the CFTC mean that projects can resume implementation of their token economies. Vault12, the pioneer of crypto inheritance provided critical feedback to the SEC in 2025, on how its token was intended to be used, now with new regulations in place, Vault12 can complete introduction of its full token economy as described in its white paper. The most important aspect of this is, once agin, for Vault owners to provide incentive rewards for Guardians using $VGT.

Vault12 White Paper, § 6.1 Custodian Incentives (2018)


Custodians are giving owner's free storage space on their phones, which will grow as owners add more files to their Vaults. To motivate Custodians to safeguard the owner's shards, respond to owner's requests and to demotivate Custodians from deleting platform storage application, owners can opt-in to pay a mothly storage fee. This will be proportionate to the amount of assets stored and level of service expected from a given Custodian.

Vault12 White Paper - M. Skibinsky, Y. Dodis, T. Spies, W. Ahmad (2018). "Decentralized Storage of Crypto Assets via Hierarchical Shamir's Secret Sharing"

Promises made, promises delivered

In 2020, right after the launch of the Vault12 app in Apple and Google's App Store, an essential part of the VGT token economy was introduced.

The token provides utility by enabling subscriptions to Vault12 backup and inheirtance Vaults via the use of Guardians. These are friends, family and professionals who guard your Vault, ensuring your crypto assets can be passed on to your heirs. To support this utility an incentive is necessary for Guardians to guard your Vault, respond to notifications and requests to unlock and restore the Vault,

In 2020, Guardian incentive rewards capability was introduced into the product - however had to be disabled because at the time the SEC's stance was that all tokens are secutities and therefore not freely distributable, Vault12 complied, with this and the token utility was restricted to obtaining subscriptions.

In March 2026, the SEC and CFTC announced wide reaching changes to how tokens are to be treated. From a practical perspective these changes involve reviewing token economies described by project white papers and looking at how those token economies are functioning once the project is live. For Vault12 this means we can now re-introduce Guardian incentive rewards using VGT to complete our token economy,

Next Steps

Vault12 is re-introduing Guardian Incentive Rewards in an upcoming release of the Vault12 Guard app, This will enable Vault owners to provide Guardian incentive rewards to people guarding your Vault. No incentives will be issued to device Guardians, Guardians will be able to see that rewards have been deposited into their wallets, and Vault owners will be reminded to issue rewards.

This completes delivery of the VGT token economy per the Vault12 White paper.

How to create the best Guardian Strategy to protect your assets

Introducing Guardian Stories to prepare for the future.

There are very few things in life that matter more to anyone than their loved ones. We as humans will go above and beyond for those we love, time and time again. Yet, when it comes to planning the best future for our loved ones once our time on this Earth comes to an end, we struggle mightily.


As discussed in “Where there’s a Will, there’s a way,” the uncomfortable truth of our own mortality makes it hard to plan an estate properly. This has long been an issue, far before crypto came around, but the problems are exacerbated when it comes to digital assets.

Why Do Digital Assets Require Additional Estate Planning?

As a reminder from the previous piece, all of the same traditional estate planning pitfalls also impact digital assets, but there are some additional issues that are specific to blockchain assets as well. First, crypto and blockchain are new, and the technical barriers to entry to use the technology are still quite specialized. The odds that the family happens to know how to access and use digital assets in the event of a loved one’s passing are slim. Additionally, crypto allows for self-custody, which is not something that exists in traditional finance.

If stocks or bonds are listed in a will, most people at least know what those are. There is also a custodian, often a brokerage firm, who has an account for you and holds these assets on your behalf. Part of the benefit of a custodian is that you can set up who has access to your accounts upon your passing, and the custodian will take care of ensuring that this information gets to the right place.

Given that self-custody means that the asset owner also serves as their own asset custodian, no entity will inherently assist in the transition of your digital assets upon your passing if you custody them yourself. The law firm you draft your will with may not be familiar with digital assets. The executor of the will may have never touched a blockchain before. These are all additional dilemmas in how to successfully leave this new type of asset to one’s next of kin.

How Does Vault12 Help Protect Digital Assets?

Guardians are one of the people who receive a shard connected to the client’s digital wallet, which holds their digital assets. Here is a short summary of how the cryptographic technology works from a prior Vault12 blog article, “Quantum-safe Data Storage for App Developers with Open-Source Shamir Secret Sharing for Capacitor.”

“Traditional security models create single points of failure. Lose your password manager database? Everything's gone. Company servers get compromised? Your data's exposed. Phone gets stolen? Access to your accounts vanishes.

Shamir's Secret Sharing flips this model entirely. Instead of protecting one critical thing perfectly, you distribute security across multiple independent channels. Each share can live in a different place:

One share encrypted by your phone's secure enclave

Another with a trusted friend or family member

A third is stored in a safety deposit box

Additional shards are distributed to other devices or locations

The threshold system means you're protected against multiple simultaneous failures. Device breaks? Friend moves abroad? Safety deposit box becomes inaccessible? Your system keeps working because no single failure can compromise your security.

This distributed approach creates applications that become more resilient as they scale, not more vulnerable.”

Who Bears The Cost of Procrastinating Estate Planning?

It may seem easy today to dismiss this concern, but it is vitally important to create a plan for digital assets. Vault12 has long championed the technology that makes willing self-custody digital assets safer and more reliable, but recognizes that the technology alone does not make the conversations with loved ones about this difficult topic inherently easier.

That is why the launch of Guardian Stories is so important. The campaign features a quiz to recommend guardian setups based on existing relationships and testimonials from existing community members about how utilizing Vault12 has helped them to ensure that the stress of inheriting digital assets is minimal in a time period that is already immensely stressful and difficult.

It would be a disservice not to include at least one quote from the community regarding Vault12 guardianship, so without spoiling them all, here is the sentiment from John Paul, who is one of many Vault12 guardians:

"When my best friend asked me to be one of his crypto guardians, I had no idea what I was signing up for. Six months later, I understand why this role is about much more than technology—it's about friendship, trust, and being there when it matters most."

It would have been easy for John Paul’s friend to put off their estate planning, especially with the difficult surrounding digital assets, but instead, they used Vault12. John Paul didn’t need to learn everything about crypto and blockchain in six months to be a good guardian. Simply listening to his best friend, being there when he knew that he would be needed, and keeping this shard safe on behalf of his friend was enough to assist in a critical time for his best friend and their family.

If you would like to read or share the testimonial of John Paul or other Vault12 users, they can be found on the Guardian Stories page linked earlier in this article.

What Should I Take Away From Guardian Stories

If there is any takeaway from the stories shared by our community members, it should be that overcoming the difficulty of having difficult conversations about estate planning is critical to any family in their time of need. Guardian Stories helps assist in thinking through the proper people in life to protect a legacy, utilizing the Guardian quiz, conversation guides, and testimonials from existing community members as an outline to help ensure inheritance of digital assets.

Ledger vs Trezor: Which Hardware Wallet is Best in 2025?

Looking for a comparison of Trezor and Ledger hardware wallets? Let's review all of the popular models.

Comparison of Ledger Nano X and Trezor Model T

Ledger Nano X

  • Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable (at least with smartphones).
  • Wider interoperability with wallets, coins, and apps.
  • Compact. User input is via buttons, not touchscreen.
  • Has Secure Element.
  • Price Point: Reasonable.

Trezor Model T

  • No Bluetooth connectivity. iOS app is view-only.
  • Smaller set of wallets, coins, and apps.
  • The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences.
  • Missing Secure Element.
  • Price Point: About the same.

 

Ledger Nano X vs Trezor Model T

Ledger Nano X vs Trezor Model T

Full comparison is HERE.

 

Comparison of Ledger Nano X and Trezor Safe 5

Ledger Nano X

  • Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable (at least with smartphones).
  • Wider interoperability with wallets, coins, and apps.
  • Compact. User input is via buttons, not touchscreen.
  • Has Secure Element.
  • Price Point: Reasonable.

Trezor Safe 5

  • No Bluetooth connectivity. iOS app is view-only.
  • Smaller set of wallets, coins, and apps.
  • The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences.
  • Has Secure Element.
  • Price Point: About the same.

 

Ledger Nano X vs Trezor Safe 5

Ledger Nano X vs Trezor Safe 5

Full comparison is HERE.

 Comparison of Ledger Stax and Trezor Safe 5

Ledger Stax

  • Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable (at least with smartphones).
  • Wider interoperability with wallets, coins, and apps.
  • Posh design with according price level.
  • Has Secure Element.
  • Large but potentially irritating display.

Trezor Safe 5

  • No Bluetooth connectivity. iOS app is view-only.
  • Smaller set of wallets, coins, and apps.
  • The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences.
  • Has Secure Element.
  • Price Point: About half of Ledger Stax.

 

Ledger Stax vs Trezor Safe 5

Ledger Stax vs Trezor Safe 5

Full comparison is HERE.

 Comparison of Ledger Stax and Trezor Model T

Ledger Stax

  • Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable (at least with smartphones).
  • Wider interoperability with wallets, coins, and apps.
  • Posh design with according price level.
  • Has Secure Element.
  • Large but potentially irritating display.

Trezor Model T

  • No Bluetooth connectivity. iOS app is view-only.
  • Smaller set of wallets, coins, and apps.
  • The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences.
  • Missing Secure Element.
  • Price Point: About half of Ledger Stax.

 

Ledger Stax vs Trezor Model T

Ledger Stax vs Trezor Model T

Full comparison is HERE.

More comparisons coming soon...

Missing comparison for any model not mentioned?

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Death and Taxes… Why Tax Time Is the Perfect Time to Fix Your Crypto Inheritance

In this world nothing can be certain except Death and Taxes


“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Benjamin Franklin wrote that in 1789. If he were alive today, he’d probably add a third certainty:

If you don’t plan your digital inheritance, a good chunk of your wealth will simply vanish.

Every year, tax season forces us into the same ritual: pull together documents, log into accounts, reconcile statements, and finally see—clearly—what we actually own.

That’s exactly why tax time is the single best moment to get your crypto and digital inheritance sorted out. You’re already doing the hard part: creating an inventory of your assets. All you need to do is extend that thinking one step further:

“If I got hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow… who could access this, and how?”

Let’s walk through how to turn your yearly tax chore into a quiet act of love for your future heirs.

The Hidden Superpower of Tax Season: Asset Inventory

Most people think of taxes as punishment, not a planning tool. But when you look at what you actually do each year, it’s powerful:

  • You list employers and income sources
  • You gather bank and brokerage statements
  • You track gains, losses, and cost basis
  • You note property, side gigs, investments, and loans

In other words: you build a living snapshot of your financial life.

That snapshot is exactly what your heirs and executor will need one day. The gap is that:

  • It usually lives in your head, scattered in email, or dumped into a folder called “2025 Taxes.”
  • It rarely includes your digital footprint or crypto assets in a structured way.

So tax time becomes this moment where you almost have everything needed for a great inheritance plan—but then you hit “submit,” breathe a sigh of relief, and bury the work for another year.

Most people think of taxes as punishment, not a planning tool. But when you look at what you actually do each year, it’s powerful:

  • You list employers and income sources
  • You gather bank and brokerage statements
  • You track gains, losses, and cost basis
  • You note property, side gigs, investments, and loans

In other words: you build a living snapshot of your financial life.

That snapshot is exactly what your heirs and executor will need one day. The gap is that:

  • It usually lives in your head, scattered in email, or dumped into a folder called “2025 Taxes.”
  • It rarely includes your digital footprint or crypto assets in a structured way.

So tax time becomes this moment where you almost have everything needed for a great inheritance plan—but then you hit “submit,” breathe a sigh of relief, and bury the work for another year.

The Missing Column: Your Digital and Crypto Assets

Traditional estate planning is still stuck in a world of:

  • House
  • Bank accounts
  • Brokerage
  • Retirement accounts
  • Insurance

But your actual life now includes:

  • Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other tokens
  • NFTs and digital art
  • Assets on DeFi platforms and L2s
  • Staked assets and yield strategies
  • Exchange accounts (even the “small” ones you forgot about)
  • Password managers
  • Encrypted notes and backups
  • 2FA apps and hardware keys
  • Cloud storage with important documents, photos, and IP

For your heirs, the hardest part is not taxes—it’s discovery and access:

  1. Discovery – “What did they have, and where is it?”
  2. Access – “How do we unlock it without their passwords and keys?”

Without answers to those two questions, a perfectly legal, well-structured estate still leaks value. With crypto, “leaks” usually means “gone forever.”

The Brutal Truth: Estate Law Can’t Recover a Lost Private Key

With traditional finance, losing a password is annoying but fixable:

  • There’s a helpdesk.
  • There’s KYC.
  • There’s a paper trail.

With crypto, if your heirs don’t have:

  • The seed phrase
  • The private key
  • The social recovery method
  • Or the hardware wallet PIN + recovery

…then the assets are effectively burned.

Death certificates, probate orders, and court documents mean nothing to a blockchain. The network doesn’t know you died; it only knows valid signatures.

That’s why crypto inheritance must be designed in advance, at the same level of care you put into optimizing your tax bill.

Turning Tax Prep Into Inheritance Prep: A Simple 6-Step Ritual

You don’t need to become a lawyer or a security engineer. You just need to add a few extra steps to what you’re already doing each year.

1. Expand Your Asset Inventory to Include Digital

While you’re gathering statements and logging into platforms for tax reporting, create one master inventory that includes:

  • All exchanges you use (even “test” accounts with small balances)
  • All wallets (hardware, mobile, browser, paper)
  • All major on-chain positions (staking, DeFi, L2s, NFTs)
  • Any custodial platforms (CeFi yield platforms, centralized staking, etc.)
  • Critical digital services:
    • Password manager(s)
    • Cloud storage that contains important docs
    • Domain registrars, app store accounts, creator platforms (where there’s IP or revenue)

Treat this like a crypto & digital asset schedule to sit alongside your traditional tax and estate documents.

2. Label the “Where” and the “How”

For each item in your inventory, add two simple pieces of information:

  • Where is it?
    • Exchange name, wallet type, protocol, or chain
  • How is it secured?
    • Hardware wallet, seed phrase in a safe, multi-sig, social recovery, etc.

You’re not putting the actual secrets in this list—just the map, not the keys.

Think of it like this: if you weren’t around, could your executor at least know which hills to dig under?

3. Decide Who Should Ultimately Inherit What

Estate planning sounds technical, but at core it’s emotional:

  • Who do you want to benefit from your Bitcoin, ETH, or NFTs?
  • Are there assets that are more meaningful to specific people—e.g., digital art, ENS names, in-game assets, or creator royalties?
  • Do you want a portion of your crypto to go to a foundation, DAO, or non-profit?

You can formalize distribution wishes in:

  • Your will
  • A letter of wishes
  • A separate digital asset memo that your executor knows about

The key is that tax time already has you thinking in percentages and allocations—just extend that mindset one step into “what if I wasn’t here next year?”

4. Establish a Secure Way to Pass On Secrets (Without Sharing Them Now)

This is the biggest practical challenge:

How do you make sure your heirs can access your keys only when they’re truly supposed to?

Some approaches people use:

  • Multi-sig wallets where one key is held by a trusted person or entity
  • Shamir’s Secret Sharing or other threshold schemes, where parts of a secret are split among multiple “guardians”
  • Dedicated crypto inheritance tools that combine encryption, sharding, and social recovery
  • Estate-aware password manager plans, where a trusted contact can gain access after a verified event

What you don’t want to do is:

  • Put seed phrases directly in a will (it becomes public in probate in many jurisdictions)
  • Email your seed phrase to yourself or someone else
  • Put everything in a single safe that no one even knows exists

The ideal pattern is:

Your inventory and intentions are discoverable,
your keys and instructions are recoverable but strongly protected,
and the whole system doesn’t depend on any one person’s memory.

5. Document “How to Use This” in Human Language

Your heirs might not be crypto-native. They might be terrified of doing something wrong.

So along with your technical plan, add a plain-English guide:

  • “If I’m gone, here’s who to contact first.”
  • “Here’s where to find the inventory of my accounts and wallets.”
  • “These people/platforms have pieces that can help unlock access.”
  • “Before moving anything, get a reputable crypto-savvy lawyer or advisor to help.”
  • “Do not share seed phrases in email, text, or random websites promising recovery.”

You can think of this as the “Meet Joe Black” note to your future self and your family—the part the lawyers and accountants usually skip, but the humans desperately need.

6. Make It an Annual Habit: “Death and Taxes Day”

Finally, turn this into a ritual.

Once a year—when you do your taxes:

  1. Update your asset inventory (including new wallets, protocols, or accounts).
  2. Check that your inheritance mechanism (social recovery / Shamir / multi-sig / tool of choice) still works and still involves the right people.
  3. Revise your instructions and wishes if relationships or holdings have changed.

You don’t need to obsess over it all year. Just pair it with something you’re legally forced to do anyway.

If death and taxes are unavoidable, you might as well hijack tax day to make death a little less chaotic for the people you love.

Why This Matters More Each Year

Every year:

  • More of your net worth migrates from the physical world to the digital one.
  • More platforms, protocols, and wallets come into your life.
  • More of your story—photos, messages, creations, IP—lives behind encrypted logins.

Failing to plan doesn’t just mean your family may pay more tax.

In the digital world, it means they may never even know what’s missing.

A thoughtful crypto and digital inheritance plan is:

  • A financial decision (don’t burn assets by neglect)
  • A security decision (don’t leak secrets prematurely)
  • And above all, a love decision (don’t leave a puzzle no one can solve)

Tax season hands you the raw material for this plan every year. The next step is simply deciding:

“This is the year I stop pretending I’ll live forever—and I make sure my digital life is as well-organized for my heirs as it is for the tax office.”

If you’d like, I can now:

  • Add a short intro blurb about Vault12 / your product as the “how” piece
  • Turn this into a shorter LinkedIn version or an email newsletter
  • Or create a 5-point checklist graphic you can use as a lead magnet: “Turn Tax Time Into Crypto Inheritance Time”

Where there's a Will, there's a way

How to protect your Digital Legacy

Many topics in life are difficult to discuss. Uncomfortable truths are often more easily brushed aside and ignored than discussed. The reality is that this doesn’t fix the issue. Although it can be difficult, it is essential to have open and honest conversations, especially with those closest to you. Being on the same page when it comes to these tough conversations often results in much better overall outcomes than ignoring them and hoping they go away.

One topic of particular difficulty for families to discuss is inheritance. The reasons for this are obvious. Nobody wants to think about losing their loved ones. It is one of the most painful experiences in this life. Not wanting to endure it more than one already has to in one lifetime is a completely understandable mindset.

The problem becomes that without a plan, families often find themselves in all sorts of predicaments that arise due to a lack of planning. Without having the conversation, children often don’t know what they even stand to inherit from their parents. When an inheritance comes as a surprise, it is even more difficult to know what to do with it.

Where there's a Will, there's a way

If you have never had a discussion with your core family about an inheritance plan, you probably aren’t super keen to start discussing their or your untimely demise over a casual dinner.

One major reason that people don’t set a plan is that inheritance doesn’t come up easily in conversation. It is simpler not to make others uncomfortable, as well as not to address the uncomfortable truth of one’s own mortality. Furthermore, unless someone has had the experience of having someone close to them pass away before, they likely don’t have the context for how the process of distributing assets to next of kin works and why it is so important to create a plan.

The law surrounding what happens to assets without a legally binding will from the deceased varies from one country to another, but the process of claiming assets without a will is messy at best, no matter where you go. The assets can end up getting tied up for months, sometimes years, and there are instances of people not inheriting their loved one’s wealth at all due to the lack of a will naming them the heir.

Willing assets to next-of-kin is already a painful enough process without having to combat outside parties, including the possibility of your own government, to obtain what you should have been rightfully entitled to from your loved one. As painful as it can be to think about losing a loved one, creating a legally binding will is a great first step to ensuring that there is some type of plan that can be carried out should the unthinkable happen.

Stick to the Plan

In addition to the grief that comes from losing a loved one, there are a great deal of practical expenses that come up when someone passes away. Ideally, these things are already covered through some plan in the will, allowing those closest to the departed to grieve instead of frantically coming up with thousands to cover end-of-life expenses while they’re in distress from losing their loved one to begin with.

Even with a will, there is no guarantee that the recipient of this windfall of assets is going to know what to do with them. The first step is to ensure that while expenses are covered, the family doesn’t transition their grief into a massive spending spree from receiving a windfall of assets. In many instances, inheritance is the largest individual wealth increase that a person will experience in their life, and it can be overwhelming to suddenly have significantly more money and borrowing power at your fingertips.

Fortunately, the ability to immediately access assets can vary greatly, depending on the liquidity of the asset class being inherited. It is not simple to turn around and sell a home, for example, but it can be fairly easy to unload stocks, bonds, and crypto, given the liquidity of the market. Avoiding the pitfall of liquidating everything is a step that many struggle with, and it isn’t easy to accomplish on your own, especially given the severity of emotions in this moment of life.

If this isn’t enough, there are also major tax concerns when it comes to inheritance, which vary based on geographical location. Again, unless they’ve had the great misfortune of going through the process previously, it is not very likely that the average person is an expert in tax law regarding willed assets and inheriting wealth. Without proper planning, wealth that should be going to the next of kin of the deceased can end up being paid in unnecessary taxes instead.

Inheritance management advisors can help with this issue. Not only do these experts have a lot of experience being a supportive presence for grieving families, but they also have the benefit of being well-versed in how to maximize the impact of an inheritance to help the family going forward.

Additional Considerations

An initial meeting with an expert in inheritance can make a world of difference in how solidified your plan is for when the worst happens to you or your loved ones. The professional advisor likely has years of experience in having discussions about wealth and estate planning, and can help to overcome the initial hesitancy regarding the difficult topic of death.

Your planning professional will also know local inheritance tax law and can help to create a structure that allows you or your loved one to give as much of the wealth that has been accumulated to whomever you desire, instead of having to pay an unnecessary amount to the government. Of course, it is best to follow the law and to pay the necessary taxes to avoid even further headaches when mourning a loved one, but few people would sign up for more of their wealth going to their government than to their own family, friends, or charitable causes.

In addition to tax planning, a proper plan will also help to create a route forward for the assets in question once they’ve been passed along. There is not necessarily a “right” answer to what should be done with the inheritance, but meeting short-term goals while ensuring longevity of the wealth to benefit the family without burning through it all is a balance that is easier struck by an unbiased third party than from within the familial unit.

Experts should be well-versed in the asset class or classes that are being passed on. There are so many different types of assets, especially today, that everyone can’t be an expert on every type of asset class or market. Ideally, the initial meeting with an estate planning professional can help identify what types of assets you or your loved one owns, what the plan is for those assets, and how comfortable the advisor is with planning around these types of assets. A good professional will assist in their own areas of expertise and have a network of experts in areas that they’re less familiar with to consult with or outsource management services to on behalf of clients.

With the emergence of blockchain technology, wealth has started being accumulated in digital assets over the course of the last decade and a half. While most asset custodians execute the beneficiary wishes of their customers on their behalf, digital assets can be self-custodied.

A plan for digital asset inheritance management should be conducted with a company like Vault12, who have experts in blockchain and crypto technology. This can be done in addition to planning for non-digital assets, which a traditional estate planner would likely have more experience with up to this point in their career.

If you or a loved one is involved in blockchain and digital assets, it can be too easy to misplace or lose access to wealth that exists on the blockchain without a proper plan. Instead of panicking during an already traumatizing event, consider reaching out to Vault12 for a consultation to discuss creating a wealth management plan.

Digital Inheritance with Vault12

How it Works

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Inheritance Management

Managing digital assets like cryptocurrencies can be complex, especially when it comes to inheritance.

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Preview of Guardian Incentive Rewards in Vault12 Guard

Preview of how Guardian Rewards will work in Vault12 Guard

Recent regulatory changes announced by Chairman Paul Atkins of the SEC and Chairman Michael Selig of the CFTC mean that projects can resume implementation of their token economies. Vault12, the pioneer of crypto inheritance provided critical feedback to the SEC in 2025, on how its token was intended to be used, now with new regulations in place, Vault12 can complete introduction of its full token economy as described in its white paper. The most important aspect of this is, once agin, for Vault owners to provide incentive rewards for Guardians using $VGT.

Preview

Here's a short video that shows ho Vault owners will be able to configure and manage Guardian Rewards.

Vault12 Rewards Preview

Next Steps

Vault12 is re-introduing Guardian Incentive Rewards in an upcoming Summer release of the Vault12 Guard app, This will enable Vault owners to provide Guardian incentive rewards to people guarding your Vault. No incentives will be issued to device Guardians, Guardians will be able to see that rewards have been deposited into their wallets, and Vault owners will be reminded to issue rewards.

This completes delivery of the VGT token economy per the Vault12 White paper and paves the way for more sophisticated rewards and incentives for people participating on the Vault12 ecosystem/

Preview of Guardian Incentive Rewards in Vault12 Guard

The Great Inheritance and Crypto: What you need to know.

The Great Inheritance or The Great Wealth Transfer and Crypto and what it means for you.

The Great Inheritance is here - huge growth in wealth acquisition via Inheritance.

Crypto and Digital Assets make up approx 5-10% $6T in the next 20 years.

Ensure your customers can inherit crypto assets with Vault12.

For $1 a day your customers and their friends a manage their crypto inheritance, easily.

Summary

We are in a unique period of history. Referred to as the Great Inheritance, it is a time when inheritance is the greatest vehicle of wealth accumulation. Over $6T will be passed down to people in 2025 alone, with $80 trillion of assets passing to younger generations over the next twenty years. This means that effective strategies for wealth transfer and wealth acquisition must be in place, including for crypto and other digital assets.

Unlike traditional assets, crypto assets must be documented ahead of time; otherwise, they will be lost and irrecoverable. This requires careful management, as recording information about your crypto wallets (seed phrases and private keys) must be done in a secure and private way; otherwise, should that information get into the wrong hands, these wallets can be emptied ahead of time.

Many solutions exist to document this sensitive information. The problem, however, is that they all suffer from risks and drawbacks. This is why a native solution based on maximizing privacy and security was created by Vault12, the pioneers of crypto inheritance. This process involves securely backing up your crypto wallets, then designating a technical beneficiary. This is done in a simple and easy-to-use fashion, suitable for both the average retail consumer as well as law firms and wealth managers alike.

A little crypto inheritance planning and management will safeguard accessibility to assets from one generation to the next.

Inheritance Growth Over The Years

Image courtesy of The Economist

According to The Economist, inheritance rates are rising to levels not seen since the early 1900s. While this chart measures inheritance as a percentage of national output and not the net value of the inheritance alone, national output has undoubtedly grown globally in most cases over the past century. The Economist states that this year, the total value that will be inherited globally is equivalent to around 10% of global GDP.

What Can We Learn From The Past?

In many cases, inheritance is the largest windfall of value that people will receive at one time in their lifetime. Couple this with it occurring during a period of grief that overwhelms, and it is clear how easy it is to make decisions that lead to value destruction instead of value accumulation.

In the previous chart from The Economist, there is a clear lull in inheritance growth as a percentage of national output in the middle of the 20th century. Back in the 1960s, at the approximate bottom of the chart, it was difficult to access investment products as an average citizen globally. The internet did not exist. There had been no democratization of financial markets. Investment was available to a small portion of the population, and based on the chart, even those who could access it didn’t use it well when it came to maintaining the value of their family’s wealth.

It can be incredibly tempting to spend such a windfall, especially in a time of grief. We see the temptation to “rub your hands in glee and ponder what you ought to do” with your inheritance, as The Economist article describes. It can be surmised that this is why so few of today’s globally wealthy can trace their wealth back to the early 1900s, when the inheritance flow as a percentage of national output was at its highest levels.

Today’s Challenges

In today’s world, even more pitfalls exist than those navigated by the families of the industrial pioneers of the early 1900s. Not only are there more shiny toys to buy than ever before, but access to financial markets has become even more widespread than at any prior point in human history. This means that even if you make the responsible decision to invest some or all of an inheritance, there are more options as to what to do with that money than ever before.

In the age of the internet, someone is promising to change your entire life around every corner with the next incredible investment opportunity. These types of promises can sway people into making poor decisions with their money in any scenario, but especially when they’re in a vulnerable state after a family tragedy.

Image courtesy of The Economist

In their book “The Missing Billionaires,” wealth managers Victor Haghani and James White show that if the millionaires of the past had simply worked with someone who could’ve helped them properly plan what to do with their family fortune, they could have increased the value of each dollar invested by a multiple of six figures over the course of the past century. The Economist uses this historical data to show the value of properly planning and allocating an inheritance.

Applying this lesson to today, more and more people stand to benefit from the work that their parents and grandparents have put in over the course of their lifetimes than ever before. The decision of what to do with this money when the time comes can feel overwhelming, but creating a plan and sticking to it, especially in a time of grief, can lead to preservation and growth of the family fortune for not only you, but your children and grandchildren as well.

Who Stands to Gain?

A recent report, the 2024 Bank of America Private Bank Study on Wealthy Americans, shows key trends related to inheritance, and particularly how younger generations view the future of wealth, including crypto and estate planning. An astounding $84 trillion of wealth transfer is projected over the next 20 years from current generations to Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z.

According to the report, younger generations (ages 21-42) are more inclined to see digital assets like cryptocurrency as a key growth opportunity. Around 28% of younger respondents ranked crypto as a promising investment vehicle, significantly higher than older generations, where only 4% expressed the same confidence. This highlights the generational shift towards embracing newer financial instruments like blockchain and decentralized finance.

Interpersonal family dynamics can create tension during wealth transfers. For both younger and older wealthy individuals, unequal distribution of assets and a lack of clear instructions or communication were common sources of strain. Younger heirs are more likely to pursue alternative investment strategies, such as private equity and digital tools, reflecting their broader interest in controlling their wealth. These individuals also prioritize sustainability and impact investing as part of their inheritance planning, distinguishing their approach from older generations.

These insights demonstrate the ongoing generational divide in attitudes toward wealth management and the evolving role of digital assets in estate planning.

How Do Digital Assets Tie Into Inheritance?

Given that approximately $84 trillion is projected to transfer from seniors and baby boomers to Gen X, millennials, and their heirs by 2045, Matthew Sigel of VanEck Investments estimates that up to $6 trillion could enter the crypto market through inheritance in the next 20 years.

Why does Sigel believe this to be the case? Well, we can surmise from the earlier information regarding digital asset investment that as this money makes its way down to younger generations, there will be a larger appetite for alternative investments outside of stocks and bonds than there was in previous generations. As a growing and developing new asset class, digital assets will certainly gain their fair share of attention from younger investors, who will be looking to diversify and conserve what will likely be their largest windfall they receive in their lifetimes.

You may think that this would require an immense risk appetite, given the volatility of digital assets in their young existence, but for Sigel’s estimate to be correct, only approximately 14% of this Great Inheritance would need to be allocated to digital assets. Couple this with the fact that younger investors do generally have a higher risk appetite than their older counterparts, and it doesn’t seem that far-fetched that Sigel’s estimate could be accurate, or even fall short of what ends up flowing into digital assets.

Breaking Down Digital Asset Inheritance

Unlike traditional assets, crypto assets need to be managed differently from an inheritance standpoint. In fact, the only similarity between traditional and digital assets is that you must maintain an updated inventory of them. The main challenges associated with crypto inheritance are:

  • Ongoing Digital Asset Inventory: You must carefully maintain an inventory of crypto assets. This means backing up seed phrases and/or private keys of all crypto wallets, across all blockchains, and all types of devices or places where those wallets exist, e.g., mobile phones, hardware wallets, cloud, and paper backups. Any assets that are not documented in your backup are liable to be lost.
  • Absolute Informational Privacy: You must ensure absolute privacy of the backup information. Anyone with access to private keys or seed phrases will be able to compromise the funds. This includes ensuring that any documentation left with your lawyers is strongly protected.
  • Critical Points of Failure: You must eliminate personal devices and cloud services as critical points of failure. The most significant risk in inheritance is reliance on individual devices, which can be stolen, lost, or damaged. The second risk is the dependency on one or more cloud servers. We have seen what happens when business relationships between cloud partners face legal challenges, or cloud services are disrupted by malware or bad software updates.
  • Technical Beneficiary Awareness: As the varieties of crypto assets expand over time, staying aware of them becomes important. You will need to designate someone technically fluent in this area. They may not be the ultimate beneficiary; however, you will need to trust them to distribute the assets per your wishes.
  • Trust & Estate Attorney: You must consult with experienced lawyers who are well-versed in the inheritance of crypto assets. A great resource is "A Practical Guide to Estate Administration and Crypto Assets" by Richard Marshall from Hill Dickinson LLP.

How Vault12 Can Help

Alright, so you’ve read this far and are convinced that doing nothing and having no plan is not a good idea. However, you also read the part where it is acknowledged that this can be a difficult subject, and you’re curious how to overcome that to ensure that you don’t end up like the families of yesteryear.

The great news today is that there are inheritance management advisors out there who can help you and your family navigate this difficult topic. While this discussion may be difficult to have with your loved ones around the dinner table at a family holiday, setting an appointment with an advisor and making time to be intentional about creating a plan is a great first step in figuring out how best to navigate the future of your family’s finances.

A quality advisor will not only help you avoid all of the pitfalls of trying to invest your inheritance all on your own, but their presence and expertise in navigating these types of conversations with families over the course of their career will help make the topic more palatable for you and your family when you meet with them.

Creating a plan for your family’s existing assets, especially in today’s age, will help protect your family’s legacy from any short-term decisions brought on by grief, confusion, or anger. It is essential to acknowledge these emotions as an integral part of the human experience. Allowing yourself the ability to experience and sort through them without it having a lasting impact on your family’s future is a critical lesson that we all can take from the shortcomings of generations gone by.

Why Choose Vault12?

Vault12 is the pioneer of crypto inheritance management. Vault12 Guard is the first solution to offer a simple, direct, and secure way for all types of investors to ensure that all of their crypto assets can be accessed by future generations.

Just because digital assets are new does not mean that classic lessons of asset management have no applicational purpose in this asset class. Stop to consider traditional approaches to the inheritance of assets, when applied to digital assets, create complexity and risk. Your portfolio of digital assets is continually changing — you cannot rely on doing an inventory once, or for that matter continuously, without assistance.

Taking a simple and direct approach like Vault12 Guard reduces the uncertainty around assets not being available to the designated recipient. It also avoids having to approach and petition each service individually during probate to gain access.

What Benefits Does Vault12 Offer?

Especially in a time of crisis, like in the event of losing a loved one, the less that the family has to put on their plate and struggle through while simultaneously mourning, the better. Vault12 offers a variety of benefits for peace of mind. Let’s walk back through the checklist from before about variables that you’d want to consider when mulling over digital asset inheritance:

  • Inventory of crypto assets: The first step in inheritance is backing up all your crypto wallets. Vault12 makes this as easy as possible - despite the appalling lack of usability in current hardware and software wallets. There will always be new crypto assets on new blockchains, and Vault12 can manage any crypto asset on any device, on any blockchain, now and in the future.
  • Privacy of all information: Your crypto assets are protected via a Secure Element (Secure Enclave in iOS, and Strongbox on Google Android phones), and the encryption used is Quantum-safe. With this security, no one knows what assets are part of your Vault.
  • No Critical Points of Failure: No assets are stored locally, no assets are stored in any cloud, and no assets are stored at Vault12. There are no devices to lose, no paper backups, and no need to manually give encrypted assets to a subset of people. The Vault12 system is decentralized, making it a difficult target for hackers — and in fact for any type of failure.
  • Confidence in a Technical Beneficiary: With Vault12, you get to designate a trusted technical beneficiary. Should you change your mind, you can swap them out at any time.
  • Flexibility in Trust & Estate Attorney: While regulations and guidelines for inheritance planning can vary from state to state and country to country, Vault12 Guard is designed to be independent of whatever legal framework you choose to govern the inheritance of your assets. Vault12 Guard is simply a transfer mechanism that ensures all your crypto assets are passed from your control to a designated technical beneficiary.

Key Product Features of Vault12 Guard

The Vault12 platform provides your crypto assets with the highest security and strong backup resilience. Vault12 Guard Inheritance enables you to designate a beneficiary (an executor, trustee, or other chosen beneficiary) who can inherit the entire portfolio of digital assets that you choose to store in your Vault. There is no need to update an inventory continually or to issue updated instructions. Vault12 Guard Inheritance allows for peace of mind through the following features:

  • Unified Digital Vault: Use Vault12 Guard Digital Vault to store digital assets, including cryptocurrency, financial login information, legal documents, medical records, and more.
  • Guardian Network: The Vault is protected by your network of Guardians: friends, family, and/or business associates — people that you know and trust.
  • Beneficiary Designation: Designate a beneficiary from your chosen Guardians. A declaration is then digitally signed and can be emailed to other parties, such as lawyers.
  • Trigger-Based Access: As a Vault Owner, you can configure a legally-defined trigger, such as incapacitation or death. When the trigger occurs, the beneficiary indicates they are ready to access the digital assets. Assets are unlocked and transferred to the beneficiary only when a designated number of Guardians approve the request.
  • Preemptive Veto Option: Should the beneficiary attempt to access the assets before they are intended to, the owner can veto the request before any of the Guardians receive an approval request.

How Can Estate Planners Utilize Vault12?

Would you, an estate planner, be willing to spend only $1 a day to protect your customers’ legacy and expand your customer base? What about offering peace of mind to your customers, especially in their time of need?

Anyone can download and use Vault12 Guard to protect their digital assets; it’s available in the Apple and Google app stores in most countries around the world. However, there is an even larger opportunity for financial institutions to provide crypto inheritance to their customers for as little as $1 a day.

Since Vault12 encourages the use of guardians, people that the customers know and trust, to guard their digital vault, the number of people engaged through the Vault12 product is much higher than any other solution for backup and inheritance. The guardians also get to experience safe and secure management of digital assets through the Vault12 Guard Inheritance program. This makes them more likely to use your services, as well as Vault12, for their own digital asset inheritance needs, given that they have already familiarized themselves with the product.

If you are interested in learning more about Vault12, please visit https://vault12.com/.

Sources

The Economist, 2025

Van Eck/CoinMarketCap, 2024

FT (Capital Group)

Bank of America Private Bank

UBS

RBC Wealth Management

J.P. Morgan Private Bank

HSBC Global Private Banking

Barclays Private Bank

  • Family Business Report (commissioned research with a section on the approaching inter-generational wealth transfer; PDF).

Northern Trust

Fidelity (Wealth Management / Custody)

Bonsai saplings growing

Staked crypto assets need inheritance too

DeFi assets in your wallet or staked - remember to back them up.

The world of digital assets is complicated. Understanding how to access, trade, and secure these assets is enough information to fill a book or two. This leads to an already steep learning curve for new users who may inherit these assets upon the passing of a loved one.

Not only can accessing the assets be complex, but you may not be the only one with access to your loved one's assets. Welcome to the world of Decentralized Finance (DeFi for short) and one of its first introductory functions: staking.

How to Inherit Staked Crypto: Traditional vs Liquid Staking

Staking is one of the most popular ways to earn yield on crypto assets, but few people think about what happens to those assets if the owner passes away. While staking can be a powerful tool for compounding returns, it introduces real danger of assets loss when it comes to inheritance.

In this article, we’ll walk through the two primary forms of staking — traditional (locked) staking and liquid staking — and explore what it takes to ensure they can be passed on securely and reliably. Whether you’re planning your estate or helping someone else manage theirs, knowing the difference matters.

🔐 Traditional Staking: Locked but Rewarding

In traditional staking, crypto assets are locked with a validator to help secure a proof-of-stake blockchain. While this earns staking rewards, the assets typically cannot be moved or used during the staking period, and there is often a mandatory “unbonding” delay when unstaking (ranging from a few days to several weeks).

Common Examples:

  • ETH staked directly on Ethereum via a validator.
  • SOL staked with a validator through SolFlare or Phantom.
  • ATOM staked using the Cosmos Hub.

Inheritance Considerations:

  • Access requires the original wallet’s seed phrase or private key.
  • Heirs may need to interact with validator dashboards, unstaking mechanisms, and network-specific tools.
  • Without clear guidance, unlocking and transferring these assets can be daunting — or impossible.

    • How Vault12 Guard Helps:

    Vault12 Guard enables the secure backup of private keys, seed phrases, and unstaking instructions, even if the original staking setup is complex. By storing all access materials offline in a decentralized, tamper-proof format, Vault12 Guard ensures that heirs can retrieve and unlock these assets when the time comes — without compromising security beforehand.

    💧 Liquid Staking: Inheriting Without Lockups

    Liquid staking offers an alternative: instead of locking tokens with a validator, users stake through a protocol (like Lido or Marinade) and receive liquid tokens in return — such as stETH for staked ETH via Lido Protocol, or mSOL for staked SOL. These tokens earn staking rewards and remain transferable, allowing holders to use them in DeFi while still compounding yield.

    Inheritance Considerations:

  • Liquid staking tokens are treated like regular ERC-20 or native tokens.
  • There is no need to “unstake” — heirs can sell or transfer the tokens directly.
  • However, the value of liquid staking tokens may fluctuate slightly depending on market conditions (peg risk).

    • How Vault12 Guard Helps:

    Because liquid staking tokens are stored in wallets like any other crypto asset, they can be protected using the same Guard setup. Vault12 Guard secures access to the wallet containing these tokens, and can also store explanatory notes about what the tokens represent and how to use or convert them.

    This ensures that even non-technical heirs can understand what they’ve inherited — and how to recover the full value.

    ⚖️ Traditional vs Liquid Staking: Inheritance Comparison

    Feature Traditional Staking Liquid Staking
    Token Accessibility Locked until unstaked Transferable anytime
    Technical Knowledge Needed High (unstaking, validator selection) Moderate (DeFi familiarity helps)
    Inheritance Complexity Higher Lower
    Smart Contract Risk Minimal Moderate (depends on provider)
    Compatible with Vault12 Guard ✅ Yes ✅ Yes

    📘 Best Practices for Inheriting Staked Assets

    Regardless of how your assets are staked, inheritance comes down to access and understanding:


    1. Avoid reliance on exchanges: Custodial services may have inheritance policies (and may not), but if they do, they often require an enormous amount of legal hoops — or worse, a cross-border regulatory nightmare. Not to mention that it depends on the platform staying operational. Self-custody with Vault12 Guard frees your assets’ longevity from all those factors and gives you full control.
    1. Check compatibility: Due to architectural choices, Vault12 Guard is the only known solution to date for backup and inheritance that is officially compatible with inheriting staking and DeFi positions.
    2. Secure the keys: Vault12 Guard can store your wallet’s seed phrase, hardware device backup, or passcodes — all offline and under your control.
    3. Provide context: A secure note in Vault12 Guard can explain staking positions, validator choices, and steps for unstaking or liquidating.
    4. Test your plan: Ensure your heirs understand the recovery process — or rehearse it with a trusted person while you’re alive.

    🧭 Final Thoughts

    Whether your assets are traditionally staked or in liquid form, they represent long-term value — and that value deserves a secure, intentional inheritance path. By combining staking strategies with decentralized inheritance planning using Vault12 Guard, you can ensure that your assets outlive you, and remain protected for the people you choose.

    Inheritance doesn’t have to be a vulnerability. With the right tools and mindset, it can be a legacy.

    Staked crypto assets need inheritance too

    $6 Trillion of Crypto Assets to Be Inherited by 2045

    How will you manage your crypto inheritance?

    Over the next two decades, up to $6 trillion in crypto could be inherited, as younger investors favor digital assets over traditional stocks and bonds. Learn how this shift is reshaping wealth transfer and the future of investing

    Unprecedented Asset Transfer via Inheritance by 2045

    A recent report, the 2024 Bank of America Private Bank Study on Wealthy Americans, reveals key trends related to inheritance, and particularly how younger generations view the future of wealth, including crypto and estate planning.

    An astounding $84 trillion of wealth transfer is projected over the next 20 years from current generations to Gen X, Millenials and Gen Z. Renowned expert Matthew Sigil, head of digital assets research at Van Eck (a prominent issuer of Bitcoin ETFs) has estimated that of this amount, $6T in crypto assets will be passed on via inheritance.

    This transfer will be successful only if care and attention are paid to crypto inheritance planning and management, and if the right approaches are in place to support the technical transfer of these funds. Crypto assets are technically different in a number of ways to traditional assets, so inheritance needs to be carefully choreographed between asset owners, Trust and Estate Lawyers, and intended crypto beneficiaries.

    Despite the fact that important steps must be taken for the safe, secure, and private transfer of crypto assets, none of the participants in the crypto ecosystem have offered inheritance plans or services. The pioneer of crypto inheritance management since 2015 has been Vault12.

    Vault12 has built and continues to innovate a comprehensive solution that is easy to use for non-technical participants, yet incorporates a highly secure architecture and technology that is designed to preserve your crypto wealth and ensure successful transfer to your heirs. Learn more at vault12.com.

    The Bank of America Private Bank Study

    This report by Bank of America Private Bank analyzes financial outlooks, investing habits, and estate planning practices of wealthy Americans. The study reveals a generational divide, with younger wealthy individuals exhibiting different investment preferences than older generations. Younger individuals tend to be more skeptical of traditional investment strategies, and favor alternatives like cryptocurrencies and private equity. The study highlights the challenges facing wealthy families as they navigate wealth transfer, including the emotional strain of inheritance and the increasing burden of serving as trustee or executor.

    Takeaways

    • Great Wealth Transfer: Approximately $84 trillion is projected to transfer from seniors and baby boomers to Gen X, millennials, and their heirs by 2045.
    • Crypto Inheritance Surge: Matthew Sigel of VanEck Investments estimates that up to $6 trillion could enter the crypto market through inheritance in the next 20 years.
    • Investment Shifts: Millennials and Gen Xers will inherit $84 trillion, with a growing proportion of cryptocurrencies.
    • Young Investor Participation: To reach the $6 trillion estimate, young investors (ages 21-43) need to allocate 14% of their inherited wealth to crypto: about $300 billion annually.
    • Broader Investment Preferences: Many young investors view traditional stocks and bonds as insufficient for superior returns, preferring high-growth assets like cryptocurrencies.
    • Risk Appetite by Generation: Younger investors show a higher risk tolerance, with significant crypto allocations (14%-17%) compared to older investors, who remain conservative.
    • Crypto Exposure: Younger investors hold the highest average exposure to crypto, highlighting a shift in how the next generation approaches digital assets.

    Sources:
    2024 Bank of America Private Bank Study of Wealthy Americans

    VanEck: $6 Trillion Could Pour Into Bitcoin, XRP and Crypto via Inheritances Over 20 Years

    Crypto and Digital Asset Allocations

    Younger generations ranked Real estate (31%), Crypto/digital assets (28%), Private Equity (26%), Personal company/brand (24%), Direct corporate investment (22%), Companies focused on positive impact (21%), and bonds (17%) ahead of US stocks (14%) as the greatest opportunity for growth.Older generations (age 44+) ranked US stocks as the best growth opportunity (41%), followed by Real estate (32%), Emerging market equities (25%), International equities (18%), Private Equity (15%), Direct corporate investment (15%), Bonds (12%) and Crypto/digital assets (4%).

    Bank of America 2024 Private Bank Study on Wealthy Americans

    Crypto, Inheritance, and Wealth Management in Younger Generations

    The 2024 Bank of America Private Bank Study on Wealthy Americans focuses on several key trends related to inheritance, particularly how younger generations view the future of wealth, including crypto and estate planning.

    1. Crypto and Digital Assets

    Younger generations (ages 21-42) are more inclined to see digital assets like cryptocurrency as a key growth opportunity. Around 28% of younger respondents ranked crypto as a promising investment vehicle, significantly higher than older generations, where only 4% expressed the same confidence. This highlights the generational shift towards embracing newer financial instruments like blockchain and decentralized finance.

    2. Inheritance and Estate Planning

    Interpersonal family dynamics can create tension during wealth transfers. For both younger and older wealthy individuals, unequal distribution of assets and a lack of clear instructions or communication were common sources of strain. Younger generations are more focused on including hard assets like jewelry and heirlooms — which are frequently overlooked in formal planning — in their estate plans.

    3. Generational Differences in Wealth Management

    Younger heirs are more likely to pursue alternative investment strategies, such as private equity and digital tools, reflecting their broader interest in controlling their wealth. These individuals also prioritize sustainability and impact investing as part of their inheritance planning, distinguishing their approach from older generations.

    These insights demonstrate the ongoing generational divide in attitudes toward wealth management and the evolving role of digital assets in estate planning.

    Inheritance and Estate Planning "Strain Points"

    Reasons for strain. 41% of younger, 65% of older and 59% of total respondents say the reason for strain is interpersonal family dynamics. 29% of younger, 41% of older and 38% of total respondents say it's the unequal distribution of assets. 36% of younger, 20% of older and 25% of total respondents say it's a lack of clear instructions and documentation. 32% of younger, 22% of older and 24% of total respondents say it's a lack of communication. 33% of younger, 12% of older and 18% of total respondents say it's a lack of trust/transparency in the executor/trustee.

    Factors driving strain on inheritance-related issues

    Bank of America 2024 Private Bank Study

    What you need to know about Crypto Inheritance Planning

    Unlike traditional assets, crypto assets need to be managed differently from an inheritance standpoint. In fact, the only similarity between traditional and digital assets is that you must maintain an update inventory of them. The main challenges associated with crypto inheritance are:

    1. Inventory of crypto assets: You must carefully maintain an inventory of crypto assets. This means backing up seed phrases and/or private keys of all crypto wallets, across all blockchains, and all types of devices or places where those wallets exist, e.g., mobile phones, hardware wallets, cloud, and paper backups. Any assets that are not documented in your backup are liable to be lost.
    2. Privacy of all information: You must ensure absolute privacy of the backup information. Anyone with access to private keys or seed phrases will be able to compromise the funds. This includes ensuring that any documentation left with your lawyers is strongly protected.
    3. Critical Points of Failure: You must eliminate personal devices and cloud services as critical points of failure. The most significant risk in inheritance is reliance on individual devices, which can be stolen, lost, or damaged. The second risk is the dependency on one or more cloud servers. We have seen what happens when business relationships between cloud partners face legal challenges, or cloud services are disrupted by malware or bad software updates.
    4. Technical Beneficiary awareness: As the varieties of crypto assets expand over time, staying aware of them becomes important. You will need to designate someone technically fluent in this area. They may not be the ultimate beneficiary; however, you will need to trust them to distribute the assets per your wishes.
    5. Trust & Estate Attorney: You must consult with experienced lawyers who are well versed in inheritance of crypto assets. A great resource is "A Practical Guide to Estate Administration and Crypto Assets" by Richard Marshall from Hill Dickinson LLP.

    Why Choose Vault12 Guard for Crypto Inheritance Management?


    Vault12 is the pioneer of crypto inheritance management, and Vault12 Guard is the first solution to offer a simple, direct, and secure way for all types of investors to ensure that all of their crypto assets can be accessed by future generations.

    Consider that:

    • Traditional approaches to the inheritance of assets, when applied to digital assets, create complexity and risk.
    • Your portfolio of digital assets is continually changing — you cannot rely on doing an inventory once, or for that matter continuously, without assistance.
    • A simple and direct approach like Vault12 Guard reduces the uncertainty around assets not being available to the designated recipient. It also avoids having to approach and petition each service individually during probate to gain access.
    Vault12 Guard offers you:
    1. Inventory of crypto assets: The first step in inheritance is backing up all your crypto wallets. Vault12 makes this as easy as possible - despite the appalling lack of usability in current hardware and software wallets. There will always be new crypto assets on new blockchains, and Vault12 can manage any crypto asset on any device, on any blockchain, now and in the future.
    2. Privacy of all information: Your crypto assets are protected via a Secure Element (Secure Enclave in iOS, and Strongbox on Google Android phones), and the encryption used is Quantum-safe. With this security, no one knows what assets are part of your Vault.
    3. No Critical Points of Failure: No assets are stored locally, no assets are stored in any cloud, and no assets are stored at Vault12. There are no devices to lose, no paper backups, and no need to manually give encrypted assets to a subset of people. The Vault12 system is decentralized, making it a difficult target for hackers — and in fact for any type of failure.
    4. Confidence in a Technical Beneficiary: With Vault12 you get to designate a trusted technical beneficiary. Should you change your mind, you can swap them out at any time.
    5. Flexibility in Trust & Estate Attorney: While regulations and guidelines for inheritance planning can vary from state to state and country to country, Vault12 Guard is designed to be independent of whatever legal framework you choose to govern the inheritance of your assets. Vault12 Guard is simply a transfer mechanism that ensures all your crypto assets are passed from your control to a designated technical beneficiary.

    Key Product Features of Vault12 Guard

    The Vault12 platform provides your crypto assets with the highest security and strong backup resilience. Vault12 Guard Inheritance enables you to designate a beneficiary (an executor, trustee, or other chosen beneficiary) who can inherit the entire portfolio of digital assets that you choose to store in your Vault. There is no need to update an inventory continually or to issue updated instructions.

    • Unified Digital Vault: Use Vault12 Guard Digital Vault to store digital assets, including cryptocurrency, financial login information, legal documents, medical records, and more.
    • Guardian Network: The Vault is protected by your network of Guardians: friends, family, and/or business associates — people that you know and trust.
    • Beneficiary Designation: Designate a beneficiary from your chosen Guardians. A declaration is then digitally signed, and can be emailed to other parties, such as lawyers.
    • Trigger-Based Access: As a Vault Owner, you can configure a legally-defined trigger such as incapacitation or death. When the trigger occurs, the beneficiary indicates they are ready to access the digital assets. Assets are unlocked and transferred to the beneficiary only when a designated number of Guardians approve the request.
    • Preemptive Veto Option: Should the beneficiary attempt to access the assets before they are intended to, the owner can veto the request before any of the Guardians receive an approval request.
    To learn more about Vault12, please visit vault12.com.

    .

    The death of safe deposit boxes

    Where will you store your digital wallet seed phrases now?


    Vaults are a historic solution

    For thousands of years, wealthy tribes and individuals have stored their treasures in temples, palaces, and fortresses. From ancient Mesopotamia to Egypt to the Knights Templar to today’s public banks, vaults have long been used to safeguard valuable possessions.

    In the last couple of centuries, increased availability has led more "regular people" to turn to safe deposit boxes held at banks or private vaults to store heirlooms, cash, and important documents. In this way, vaults — once limited to society's elites — became a popular and practical mechanism for protecting one's most important assets.

    We all need vaults in today's digital world

    Just in the last couple of decades, people have had to consider what the safest place is to store not just small physical assets, but also digital assets and passwords such as electronic documents and crypto wallet seed phrase backups.

    Digital asset owners know how important it is to keep a backup copy of one’s wallet seed phrase. Losing your wallet seed phrase results in losing access to your digital wallet — and thus, losing access to all of the digital assets you hold! The stakes are very high, and there are not many simple and robust solutions to choose from.

    Safe deposit boxes for digital wallet private keys?

    It has seemed natural for many people to turn to safe deposit boxes to store paper, electronic, or engraved-metal copies of their digital asset wallet seed phrases. In fact, the iconic and well-educated Winklevoss twins Cameron and Tyler used safe deposit boxes as part of their early strategy to distribute and protect pieces of their Bitcoin wallet keys.

    "The Winklevosses came up with an elaborate system to store and secure their private keys. They cut up printouts of their private keys into pieces and then distributed them in envelopes to safe deposit boxes around the country, so if one envelope were stolen the thief would not have the entire key.""How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune" by Nathaniel Popper, New York Times, December 19, 2017

    Safe deposit boxes are no longer the best solution

    But given the state of the world today, is it a good idea to rely on a safe deposit box to store your digital wallet seed phrase backup? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding “No.” Let’s consider why not.

    Safe deposit boxes are disappearing

    Many banks have phased out the availability of safe deposit boxes. In the United Kingdom, HSBC and Barclays have completely stopped offering safe deposit boxes. In the United States, JPMorgan Chase, Santander, and Capital One have stopped offering new safe deposit boxes, while Bank of America and Citibank have also reduced their availability. Among the reasons for this trend: declining demand, high maintenance costs, and regulatory challenges. The chart below reflects these startling changes.

    Graph showing reduction of availability of safe deposit boxes, 2015-2024

    Fewer and fewer safe deposit boxes are available

    ChatGPT

    Safe deposit boxes are subject to theft

    In 2015, a Citibank safe deposit box in Sherman Oaks, California was mysteriously emptied of over half a million dollars worth of valuables — and surveillance cameras only covered the vault entrance, not individual boxes. In 2017, a Brooklyn Santander bank branch was broken into from an adjacent basement, and crooks made off with the contents of about 50 boxes. And from 2020 to 2023, safe deposit box customers at MUFG Bank in Tokyo had valuables stolen by a bank employee! (In this case, the customers were repaid by the bank.)

    Safe deposit boxes are subject to natural disasters

    Natural disasters do not spare safe deposit boxes. Hurricanes in the United States (Katrina in 2005 and Harvey in 2017) led to many lost and damaged safe deposit box valuables. Earthquakes have resulted in safe deposit box losses in Japan and New Zealand. Fires destroyed the contents of safe deposit boxes in Australia (2019/2020) and California (during several years including 2025), after the boxes essentially became high-temperature ovens. In cases of extreme physical disaster, sometimes the only possible safety is being in a different location.

    Safe deposit boxes can be legally seized

    If a safe deposit box custodian is presented with a legal claim to freeze or seize the contents of a safe deposit box (for example, if there is a suspicion of illegal activity), law enforcement will assume custody of the contents as permitted by the relevant jurisdiction. Sometimes, depending on a warrant’s scope, many boxes can be opened even without specific individual warrants.

    Safe deposit boxes aren’t insured

    Many people assume that safe deposit boxes are insured by default — but they’re not! In the United States, neither the FDIC nor the National Credit Union Administration insures them.Some private insurers will cover them with special policies, but you have to specifically seek them out and pay extra for them — and carefully analyze the fine print about valuation, exclusions, and policy limits.

    Safe deposit boxes aren’t always accessible

    Banks aren’t always open for business. Beyond expected “business hour” limitations, banks can be unexpectedly closed for various reasons, including pandemic responses. If a bank that holds safe deposit boxes finds itself in a legal dispute or financial failure, although the contents of the safe deposit boxes are not considered bank assets, access to the boxes may be temporarily blocked while administrative proceedings unfold.


    Additionally, if a safe deposit box owner passes away, special access rules (varying by region) come into play, and a spouse or the executor of a will may not be permitted to access a safe deposit box — even if they have the key and PIN.

    A Digital Vault is safer and more convenient

    A better solution is to use a secure Digital Vault like Vault12 Guard. The Vault12 Digital Vault fulfills and exceeds all of the secure digital storage requirements that a physical vault offers … without the limitations or third-party risks. Vault12 Guard takes the form of a simple-to-use mobile app that can protect all of your digital assets in a highly-secure, decentralized manner, monitored by Guardians of your choice.

    A Vault12 Digital Vault is secure and always-accessible

    The Vault12 Digital Vault is more secure than a safe deposit box, safe from natural disasters due to its decentralized design, always accessible, and its Digital Inheritance feature is simple for your next of kin to use when the time comes.

    View the Vault12 Guard demo and download a trial today

    Check out an overview with demo to see how the Vault12 Digital Vault works. Learn more on the Vault12 website. When you’re ready, you can get started with your Digital Vault in just a few minutes.

    View all articles

    Backup

    Vault12 Guard provides inheritance, and secure decentralized backup of seed phrases and/or private keys, giving Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH).

    View all articles

    How To Back Up Your Crypto Wallet

    Backing Up Your Crypto Wallet With Vault12 Guard Preserves Your Personal Crypto Security

    Crypto can be difficult to store securely, but backing up your crypto wallet is essential so you can recover funds if your crypto wallet is ever lost, stolen, or damaged. A proper crypto wallet backup is also important for inheritance purposes so your assets live on, even after you die.

    Why should you back up your crypto wallet?

    Proper crypto wallet backups protect you from threats ranging from criminal actors and accidents to natural disasters and damage. Once securely backed up, you can recover your assets in times of need.

    A proper backup of your crypto wallet involves recording:

    • Each crypto wallet asset
    • Seed phrases and passphrases
    • Any supporting files for your assets

    All crypto backup solutions should be physically secure, digitally secure, and resilient to degradation – but unfortunately, not all of them are.

    What are some limitations of common crypto backup methods?

    These are some common backup methods, but each has drawbacks:

    1. Back up to metal plates - This method sounds simple, but to do it right takes some planning, cost, and time.
    2. Back up to a local drive - This method is quick, but fraught with risks!
    3. Back up to the Cloud - This method is also quick, but it has significant risks related to the involvement of third parties.
    4. Back up to “brain wallet” - This method is slow, unreliable, and only justifiable in cases of extreme limitation or duress.
    5. Back up to paper - This method is extremely vulnerable and surprisingly subject to error.

    How does Vault12 back up your crypto wallet?

    The video demo below shows you how Vault12 Guard is used to back up a crypto wallet, making sure your assets live on, even after you pass:

    YouTube

    Vault12 Guard crypto backup is decentralized, resilient, and secure.

    Vault12 Guard allows you to breathe easy, as it avoids the pitfalls of other backup methods:

    • Guard's backups are decentralized. There is no single point of failure, allowing you to recover even if your phone is lost or stolen.
    • Guard does not rely on Cloud servers. Your assets remain private from third parties and resilient to Cloud outages.
    • Guard implements post-quantum encryption - giving your assets the highest possible level of security.

    Vault12 Guard is the most advanced yet simple crypto backup solution

    Not only is Vault12 Guard secure and resilient, but it is also simple to use. It allows you to back up all types of wallets, as well as NFT-related files, to construct a full inventory of your crypto assets. This includes multi-wallet management, which Vault12 simplifies with an integrated backup and inheritance solution. When you need to restore your Vault, Vault12 makes the process easy by requesting access from your most-trusted Guardians.

    Of all your choices for backing up a crypto wallet, Vault12 Guard uniquely backs up your crypto wallets in a manner that is physically secure, digitally secure, and passes the test of time.

    Image of various crypto backup methods

    Risks of backing up your seed phrase on paper.

    Paper is inherently vulnerable as a medium for long-term storage of any information - but the risks can be somewhat reduced if you counteract its weaknesses.


    Cryptocurrencies are fueling a fundamental financial shift by allowing individuals to use cryptography to secure their own digital assets. Surprisingly, given the criticality of keeping safe backup copies of the encryption keys that control access to these digital assets, most cryptocurrency holders rely on paper as their chosen medium to back up their cryptocurrency access keys.

    TL;DR (concentrated takeaways)

    Paper backups of seed phrases are subject to a large array of threats, including loss, theft, and destruction.

    Relying on paper backups is the leading cause of lost crypto assets.

    Even safe deposit boxes may not fully protect paper backups.

    Certain precautions, such as added physical protection, and having an equally-secure copy in a different location, can make paper backups less vulnerable.

    Paper is a popular default backup medium because it is convenient for both consumers and wallet manufacturers. The use of paper to back up the all-important "seed phrase," or "private key," was for some years the assumed de facto backup mechanism described by cryptocurrency wallet manufacturers. In a survey of the 20 top wallets, 18 of them offered only one mechanism to back up the seed phrase: to write it down on a piece of paper and store it securely. The other 2 wallets surveyed also provided a paper backup option, and added the ability to generate an encrypted digital copy to be kept in a location such as a USB device, off-network laptop, or in the Cloud.

    If you must write down your seed phrase or private key on paper, please do it temporarily, then use one of these methods to create a reliable backup, and then destroy the temporary paper backup. This article explains why these steps are necessary to preserve your investment.

    The weakest link in crypto.

    Storing your valuable backup key or seed phrase on a piece of paper carries unique risks for the crypto owner. Paper is delicate, and its threats include:

    • Gradual deterioration of legibility over time
    • Catastrophic destruction due to natural disasters like floods or fire
    • Accidental destruction by insects, animals, or people

    Additional threats that are common to nearly all forms of backup include:

    • Loss or misplacement
    • Theft
    • Lack of awareness of backup location to family or heirs

    The list of threats can go on and on. While designed with good intentions to protect crypto owners' assets from loss, paper backups actually have become the leading cause of lost crypto assets. Having a paper backup creates a false sense of security, because when an unplanned event causes a loss of the user's main wallet, they realize they do not remember or cannot access the paper backup they thought they had. As the number of cryptocurrency owners grows, this problem, with its devastating losses and resulting customer dissatisfaction with securing cryptocurrency assets, is also growing — with users often directing blame at wallet vendors.

    The lesson of how fragile paper backups are was recently learned by the many residents of Los Angeles, California, as they had to evacuate their homes quickly to escape rapidly-spreading fires. How many left their paper crypto seed phrase passwords behind?

    Risks of using Paper backups.


    		Paper backups and wallets are often kept in the same location and are therefore subject to the same risks as the owner's main wallet: fire, natural disasters, burglary, etc.

    Casual owners are likely to forget the "secret storage location" of their piece of paper after few years.


    In the case of an owner's accidental death, there is no way for their inheritors to recover the assets, which in the case of cryptocurrency keys makes those assets permanently inaccessible.


    By nature, paper is not a long-term storage medium, and can easily become unreadable after years through natural wear and tear.


    Casual users are confused about the role and function of paper backups and often blame the wallet vendor for any incidents regarding wallet backup and recovery. That creates a significant load of unresolvable cases for customer service and increases customer dissatisfaction with the wallet brand.


    Further, in financially-unstable countries where cryptocurrency ownership is crucial, access to bank safe deposit boxes (a common storage location for paper backups) is often restricted during any bank crisis, exactly when users might need immediate access to their crypto-assets.



    Inheritance.

    Beyond restoring cryptocurrency access that may have been lost in a damaged wallet, one of the times when a seed phrase backup is most desperately needed is in the event of inherited crypto assets. Sadly, there have been many instances when the inheritor has been unable to access assets after the owner has passed away, because no one knows about any paper backup copy.

    What can be done to reduce risk to Paper Backups?

    If a cryptocurrency owner chooses to store their backup seed phrase on paper, they should at a minimum take care to:

    • Ensure that when they wrote the seed phrase down, their writing was not captured on camera, and any underlying pages in a pad were not imprinted from writing pressure.
    • Carefully destroy (for example, by burning) any temporary or interim copies that they may have created while producing a permanent paper copy.
    • Carefully ensure that no electronic copies remain on computers or printers that were used in generating the seed phrase, key, or QR code representation on paper. (This may require expert assistance.)
    • Understand the expected durability of the pen, pencil, or printer ink chosen. (Pencil is often recommended.)
    • Laminate the paper copy with waterproof, fade-proof, high-quality plastic.
    • Ensure physical safety of the backup paper in a vault. Consider keeping a second copy in a separate, equally-secure vault.
    • Let at least one other trusted person know about its existence.

    Even if the protections above are followed, paper backups have limited reliability.

    A better way.

    Some crypto owners will not understand why they can't simply rely on the convenience of recoverable passwords like those used in traditional banking services. In the near future, as more types of transactions occur on blockchain networks, the security levels that we expect for today's cryptocurrency storage will also apply to fully-digital house keys, car keys, real estate titles, and a variety of personal property and documents that are currently secured by cryptographic keys. A better solution is needed to bring security and backup options to consumers at the forefront of this digital economy.

    Illustration of a digital paper airplane with seed phrase words streaming behind it

    How to securely destroy your paper seed phrase backup.

    You should remove all traces of temporary seed phrase backups.


    TL;DR (concentrated takeaways)

    You should not keep any temporary paper copies of your crypto wallet seed phrase.

    The Vault12 Digital Vault is perfect for permanently and safely storing your seed phrase backup.

    Disposing of your temporary paper seed phrase is easy, but the details are very important.

    You could dispose of it by burning it in your kitchen, and then flushing the ashes.

    You could dispose of it by erasing, shredding, and then flushing the pieces.

    Remember that your wallet seed phrase allows access to your crypto

    By now, you know that your crypto wallet seed phrase is the most important thing to protect in order to guard your crypto assets. You have read about the need to use randomness to generate your seed phrase, and then how important it is to back it up to ensure that it is not lost or stolen. In this article, we will assume that you have already decided on which wallet to use, how to generate your seed phrase, and how to back it up. With your wallet set up and your seed phrase safely and permanently backed up, now you find yourself with a piece of paper that holds a "spare copy" of your seed phrase scrawled on it. How should you dispose of that precious piece of paper?

    Why would you have a paper copy of your seed phrase? 

    You probably ended up with that piece of paper containing your seed phrase as a result of your seed phrase generation and/or wallet setup steps. Until you are sure that your wallet configuration is complete, and your permanent seed phrase backup is complete, you likely wrote down your seed phrase on paper along the way.

    If you generated your seed words incrementally with dice, you likely calculated them one by one, capturing each one on paper after it was chosen.

    Similarly, if you let a crypto wallet choose your seed phrase for you, you likely wrote it down in order to confirm the words back to the wallet during the configuration process. In any case, you probably did not transcribe each word directly into permanent storage the instant that it was generated - you wrote it down offline, on paper, in order to have a copy to use to help you complete the steps of saving it to its permanent storage medium. Then you saved your seed phrase to a permanent medium such as your Vault12 Digital Vault, a steel card, or a limited-access, backed-up encrypted file. You might even have chosen to use two of those forms of secure, permanent backup.

    Congratulations! But now you also have this extra piece of paper that you don't need - and it would be silly to leave it lying around waiting to be stolen, or to just throw it into your trash can.

    Planning to destroy your temporary seed phrase copy

    You need a foolproof way to destroy the now-unnecessary, temporary paper copy of your wallet seed phase, such that it can never be reconstructed. Here are some things to keep in mind as you plan to destroy it:

    • Don't put the task off. If you do not keep the temporary copy in a high-security safe until it is destroyed, every moment that it remains readable holds some risk that you could misplace it, or that it could be otherwise accessed. Properly disposing of it is not hard to do, and it does not take long - finish the task.
    • Meanwhile, be aware of cameras that could record the seed phase from the paper. Your smartphone, laptop, tablet, or security camera could all capture an image of your seed phrase without your realizing it. We have all become so accustomed to cameras around us all of the time, especially when they are part of our home security system, that we lose our awareness of what is being recorded. Don't take the chance of accidental image capture.
    • If you wrote down the seed phrase on a pad of paper, ensure that the page below the one that you wrote on does not have impressions that could be used to detect and reconstruct the words. Tap into your spy novel knowledge to imagine that possibility! If necessary, destroy the page underneath as well to remove all traces.
    • Be absolutely sure that you did not make any errors in backing up your seed phrase to permanent storage.

    Now you are ready.

    Illustration of person burning a paper seed phrase

    Option #1: Destroy your seed phrase copy with fire and water

    For all activities related to fire, you should of course carefully take appropriate safety precautions.

    It is possible to burn your seed phrase outdoors, but we recommend doing it indoors, since indoor space is more controllable. (Outdoors, you may be more conspicuous, the paper could blow away partially-burned, or worst of all, you could accidentally start a larger fire.)

    Indoors, you have a ready-made seed phrase burning area: your kitchen stove. When you are ready:

    • Just in case, know where your fire extinguisher is located!
    • Survey the area around the stove to ensure that there is nothing flammable.
    • Turn on the ventilation fan near your stove to prevent setting off the smoke detector.
    • Have a lighter handy.
    • Put a metal pan that you will use to contain the burning paper onto the stove.
    • Fold your seed phrase paper in half so that it makes a V-shaped "tent."
    • Place the folded paper into the pan, pointy side up (as an upside-down "V") - this will allow oxygen to circulate underneath it for a complete burn.
    • Carefully light the paper on fire, and wait for the flame to completely consume it.
    • Wait for the paper to cool. Crumble the ashes.
    • Flush the ashes down the toilet to avoid any chance of reassembly.

    Option #2: Destroy your seed phrase copy by shredding and flushing

    To destroy your paper seed phrase without fire:

    • First, if the words are written with pencil, completely erase them.
    • Shred the paper into extremely small pieces, such that even if any letters could still be read, no more than one letter would be shown on any piece. (This could be done using your hands, scissors, or a shredding machine.)
    • Flush the shredded pieces down the toilet to avoid any chance of their reassembly.

    Your Vault12 Digital Vault is secure and convenient for your seed phrase backup

    It is a good feeling to know that your seed phrase is safe and secure without having to keep paper copies lying around. Your Vault12 Digital Vault is the perfect place to store your sensitive digital assets including your seed phrase. Congratulations on being an informed, responsible holder of your own crypto assets.

    Photo of shredded paper

    How to back up a Seed Phrase

    There are many ways to back up a seed phrase. This article summarizes for you the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

    A seed phrase, or recovery phrase, is a sequence of words that a cryptocurrency wallet uses to access your cryptocurrency holdings. Securely backing up your seed phrase is a very important step, because knowledge of the seed phrase effectively serves as ownership of funds.

    Cryptocurrency wallet documentation often offers limited advice about best practices to securely back up your seed phrase. A common recommendation made by wallet providers is to write down your seed phrase on paper and then store it in a safe place — but in itself, this is not sufficient protection.

    For example, the official documentation on managing a Coinbase Wallet highlights the importance of securing your seed phrase but lacks detailed guidance, particularly on security options. We offer comprehensive guides on how to protect a Coinbase seed phrase, a Trust Wallet seed phrase, and other crypto seed phrases to keep your digital assets secure.

    Keep reading...Show less

    How to back up your seed phrase on Cryptosteel.

    A highly secure way to backup your seed phrase is by recording it onto indestructible metal plates. This type of backup strategy is one of the most likely to pass the "test of time."


    TL;DR (concentrated takeaways)

    Backing up your seed phrase to steel plates offers a robust solution that is subject to only a few threats.

    Don't give a steel plate vendor your seed phrase to stamp or engrave for you! This is a "DIY" task.

    Once created, protect it well from discovery and theft.

    Some options are Cryptosteel, Ledger CryptoSteel Capsule, Crypto Key Stack and Hodlinox (engraveable options), ColdTi (titanium), and Billfodl.

    ​When it comes to a decision about how to back up your seed phrase, you have to consider your personal circumstances, and weigh the pros and cons of the many options that exist. 

    For offline, long-term, cold storage backups, utilizing steel is one of the most secure options. Steel requires no software, is nearly indestructible, and the backup process is completely manual and offline. Furthermore, the steel devices that are on the market today don't look like a seed phrase backup to those not already familiar with crypto seed phrases - this offers a degree of "security through obscurity" that could deter a common thief. (However, you should not rely on that protection! Always keep your backup in a safe or lockbox.)

    Steel backups exist in a variety of formats. If you are handy with metalworking, you could even create a steel backup yourself. This review showcases Cryptosteel, which is produced from the original blueprints of the open-source Cryptosteel steel backup solution that was the first metal backup solution on the market. Cryptosteel sells its original model as the Cassette and has since added a Capsule version. Since the blueprint is open-source, the "cassette-type" steel wallet backup solution may be available from a variety of providers. If you consider several different steel backup solutions, consider the quality of each before making a purchase, since the place of manufacture, the grade of steel, and other characteristics may vary.

    How is the seed phrase recorded onto the card?

    A few companies offer ready-made steel plates, and all you have to do is input your seed phrase onto the steel. Different companies offer different ways of doing this, from sliding metal tiles into locking slots, to engraving, or using a metal punch. If you are handy and have the tools, you can even make a steel plate backup yourself.

    There are 2 rules that you must follow if you are considering using metal plates as a backup:

    1. Simplicity is the win-win! Some solutions are way too complicated. Fewer pieces = less chance for failure.

    2. You should never ever provide the card manufacturer with your private key or seed phrase for "engraving" or whatever process they use. Unfortunately, some reckless manufacturers expose their customers to this severe risk ... pease keep your seed phrase safe by avoiding them.

    What risks are steel cards still subject to?

    Backing up to a steel plate is great - but don't forget about the importance of keeping that plate in a safe location. There is no "data security" layer present on a steel plate, so it becomes critical to implement steps to prevent unauthorized people from accessing the seed phrase or steel plate.

    1. Consider encrypting your seed phrase before committing it to steel - that way if the plate is exposed, you still have a layer of protection.
    2. Keep it in a safe place! If the plate is exposed, then your seed phrase is exposed, and you become at risk of your funds being drained.
    Even if you keep your steel plate in a safe place, don't forget that if it is in your home or some other building, but your that building is devastated by fire, you may not find the steel plate amidst the ashes ... or even if it is findable in the rubble, you may not be allowed back onto the property to find it once you have been evacuated. Analogous risks exist in tornado-prone areas. The 2025 California fires in Los Angeles taught this hard lesson to its unfortunate residents.

    Why protect Your Seed Phrase?

    In the world of cryptocurrency, you are your own bank, and with great power comes great responsibility. Public blockchain cryptocurrencies are run on open, permissionless systems, where transactions are irreversible. There is no credit card company or bank to call and dispute the charges.

    Your seed phrase provides full access to your wallet, and because of this, protecting your seed phrase is critically important. You can think of your seed phrase as equivalent in legacy finance to someone having all of your online banking information. Anyone with your seed phrase can access your wallet, just as anyone with your online banking information can log in to your banking account.

    Protecting/backing up your seed phrase serves two purposes: First, it backs up your Wallet, allowing you to reconstruct your wallets in cases of device failure, new devices, etc. Second, it secures your Wallet by preventing bad actors from gaining access to your seed phrase, which would allow them to steal funds.

    What is the Cryptosteel

    Cryptosteel was the first steel seed phrase backup solution on the market. The concept was developed in 2013, and the blueprints were later released as open-source software. The rectangle block resembles a cassette deck, as suggested by its model name "The Cassette." The frame is a little bigger than a credit card and will fit easily into your pocket (although the pocket is a poor choice of locations for safekeeping).

    The purpose of steel backup solutions like Cryptosteel is to safeguard your seed phrase from extreme scenarios. The Cryptosteel Capsule will survive fire up to 1400C/2500F degrees, and the Cryptosteel Cassette up to 1200C/2100F. (For reference, a house fire is around 600C/1100F degrees.) It will survive physical damage from flooding, electric shock, corrosion, magnetic shockwaves, and extreme pressure.

    The form of the device does not appear to the untrained eye as a seed phrase backup solution - it appears simply as a block of metal. However, someone who is familiar with the devices will recognize what it is. After you have backed up your seed phrase, choose a proper location for storage, such as a safe or a lockbox.

    The device is made from 100% AISI 304 grade stainless steel - the Capsule form also incorporates AISI 303 grade steel - and the company says that it can go undetected by many scanners and metal detectors. Since tech is always advancing, this is not a safe long-term reliance if your objective is stealth and your threat profile involves entities searching your house with metal detectors. If this is the case, embed the device onto a stainless steel object, preferably inside a wall, and your Cryptosteel will become masked and invisible to metal detectors.

    How to use the Cryptosteel

    When you first open the Cryptosteel, you will notice that the instructions are printed on the inside top of the cardboard box, along with pictures for each step. The device and the engraved steel tiles are neatly embedded into cushions.

    0. Cryptosteel Unboxing

    Cryptosteel unboxing

    Remove the Cryptosteel device from the box, and the plastic container holding the engraved steel tiles. Printed on the box, underneath the plastic container, is an outline that maps out where each letter can be found in the plastic container. Each box shows 2 letters because the engraved steel tiles have one letter on each side.

    Do you notice the elongated box in the middle, with numbers and symbols? BIP39 seed phrases do not contain numbers and symbols, but BIP39 does support adding a passphrase to the end of your seed phrase: this is sometimes referred to as the 13th or 25th word. However, the steel wallet only has 24-word options to fill, so if you have a 25th word, it won't fit. If you have a 12-word seed phrase, it will fit.

    Cryptosteel outline and steel tiles

    Cryptosteel device

    1. Setup Cryptosteel

    ​Now that you are familiar with the device and have had a chance to look everything over, let's back up your seed phrase.

    Step #1 - "Open the case by sliding upper and lower containers like a fan."

    When you first hold your Cryptosteel, the device frame is closed and locked, and it appears as a rectangular block of steel. To back up your seed phrase, first, you need to open the device.

    To open the device easily, place your fingers near the top of the device, and slide each side in opposite directions.

    Identify the top of the Cryptosteel by looking for the side that has a thin rectangular opening, which separates the two blocks of metal. In contrast, the bottom of the device will be completely closed and solid.

    You shouldn't have to push too hard to open the Cryptosteel. If you are pushing hard, you are likely pushing near the bottom of the device.

    Opening Cryptosteel

    2. Unlock the frame by turning the screw counter-clockwise

    Now that the Cryptosteel is opened, notice that the device frame is actually 2 plates of steel, with each steel plate holding 12 words, so that you can store your seed phrase.

    The way that you store your seed phrase is by sliding engraved steel tiles into the Cryptosteel and then locking it. By default, the device comes locked. To unlock it, you will need to use a flathead screwdriver, or something similar, to turn a screw counter-clockwise. In our testing, we were also able to use a credit card and a fingernail to turn the screw.

    It is easy to identify the screw, because it is the only screw on the device that has an opening to be turned. If you lay the Cryptosteel horizontal, the screw is on the top right.

    Unlocking the Cryptosteel

    3. Release the safety lever by pressing inside the long slot with a small tool.

    Before you can open the frame, you need to release the safety lever. The safety lever prevents you from accidentally opening the frame and having your steel tiles fall out.

    To identify the safety lever, look for the thin rectangular opening with a small half-oval inside of it. On the 1-12 word side, it is underneath word 12. On the 13-24 word side, it is underneath word 24.

    To release the safety lever, you need to push out the metal piece inside the long slot. It's possible to push it out using your finger, but it's much easier to use something like a screwdriver or similar object.

    Releasin safety lever

    4. Open the frame while safety lever is released

    Once the safety lever is released, you can easily open the frame by sliding it open. When the frame is shut, it protects the steel tiles from falling out by keeping them locked in place. After you have opened the frame, you are ready to start placing your seed phrase in the Cryptosteel.

    Opening the frame on the Cryptosteel

    5. Insert the slots with the first 4 letters of each word

    With the frame open, you will be able to slide the engraved steel tiles into the Cryptosteel. Notice the numbers engraved on the device. It is extremely important to follow the correct order! The Cryptosteel has 3 rows, each with 4 words.

    Due to the way BIP39 works, you will only need the first 4 letters of each word. This is because each word of the 2,048 word list has unique first 4 letters. If you have a word that only has 3 letters, feel free to use a steel tile from the numbers and symbols box to represent the "extra" space.

    Now, it is time to open the plastic case containing your letters, and put them into the Cryptosteel:

    - Identify word 1 of your seed phrase, and identify the position of word 1 on the Cryptosteel.

    - Gather the engraved steel tiles of the first 4 letters of your word.

    - Insert the 1st letter first, position it in the slot, and slide it to the bottom.

    - Insert the remaining engraved steel tiles to complete your 4 letters.

    - Repeat the process for the rest of your 12 words.

    *If you have a seed phrase that has more than 12 words, keep following this guide till the end, and then repeat the same steps for the second steel block that contains words 13-24.*

    Sliding the engraved steel tile into the Cryptosteel

    First 4 letters of the first word in the Cryptosteel

    When you are finished sliding in the steel tiles, this is what it will look like

    6. Close the frame and bend the safety lever back inside the slot

    Now that all the slots are filled, the next step is to close the frame and close the safety lever. When doing this step, be very careful to keep the Cryptosteel flat and horizontal. If you tilt it too much, it is possible for the steel tiles to slide out!

    Before you can close the safety lever, you have to close the frame. Closing the frame is super-simple: just push it back down into place, and it should naturally fall into place without much resistance.

    To close the safety lever, you need to push it back inside the slot. This requires a little more resistance than closing the frame. If the safety lever doesn't want to bend back into the slot, just give it a good push.

    7. Lock back the frame by turning the screw clockwise

    Recall Step 2, when you had to unlock the frame by turning the screw counter-clockwise? This step is the opposite of that: you are going to lock the frame by turning the screw clockwise.

    This is what your Cryptosteel will look like once you have locked the frame

    8. If you have a seed phrase more than 12 words, repeat these steps for the other side

    ​The Cryptosteel is made up of 2 steel plates, with each steel plate containing 12 words. You have just completed setting up the Cryptosteel for a 12-word backup ... congratulations!

    But what if you have an 18, or 24-word seed phrase? If so, repeat these same steps for the 2nd steel plate to back up the remaining words of your seed phrase.

    When you are done, slide the 2 steel plates together so they form 1 steel plate. When finished, it will look like this:

    The Cryptosteel, closed and locked

    The advantages of using Cryptosteel

    Using this method to backup your seed phrase provides protection from destruction via disaster. In today's world, you do not need to look far to see natural disasters happening around the world. From Texas freezing over, to fires in California, Cryptosteel ensures that your seed phrase is protected, and comes out completely intact on the other side.

    The ideal solution

    ​Cryptosteel is near-perfect as a long-term backup and storage solution. Since the steel wallet is a physical device, storing it in a safe place that is under your control is crucial. The best place to store the Cryptosteel would be in a safe, lockbox, or cleverly hidden - for example, embedded in a steel object.

    The Cryptosteel is not without downsides. For starters, recovering your seed phrase requires physically retrieving the device, which could be tricky, depending on your chosen hiding place.

    Today, next-generation digital backup solutions are available that utilize military-grade encryption, providing the same level of security as the Cryptosteel, and incorporating high levels of fault-tolerance and ease of access to your backups. You could choose to have the best of all worlds by using the Cryptosteel to provide protection against disaster and destruction, combined with next-generation tools like Vault 12 for your day-to-day use - with the same level of security.

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    Which is a better wallet: Ledger Nano X or Exodus?

    Consider both your short-term needs and the long-term protection of your assets

    When choosing crypto wallets, many users base their decisions on day-to-day asset management needs and perceived wallet or device security. However, savvy crypto users first consider a wallet's ability to handle long-term security scenarios.

    Long-term security includes expected essentials like backup and recovery tools, and often-overlooked features related to secure and fault-proof third-party recovery. Wait, what's third-party recovery? You can think of third-party recovery as your ability to allow crypto assets to be inherited by successors. All crypto investors should have a comprehensive security strategy for the full life cycle of their crypto assets.

    Let's begin by helping you understand the pros and cons of the Ledger Nano X hardware wallet and the Exodus software wallet for day-to-day activities, as well as considering their ability to safeguard the long-term security of your assets.

    Overview

    The Ledger Nano X and Exodus wallets both provide a wide variety of features and support a broad spectrum of cryptocurrencies, making them suitable for diverse crypto portfolios.

    At a high level, several differences are clear:

    Ledger Nano X

    • Form: A hardware wallet, with mobile-centric usability via Bluetooth.
    • General Usability: User-friendly (with necessary trade-offs due to its more-robust security features).
    • Design: Compact and durable. The de facto standard for securing transactions on desktops.
    • Price Point: It's not free, like software wallets are.

    Exodus

    • Form: A software wallet, available in both mobile and desktop versions.
    • General Usability: Easy to use, and has particularly well-reviewed customer support.
    • Design: Built-in exchange features and a moderate number of integrations.
    • Price Point: The wallet software is free; the company makes money on exchange services provided through the wallet.
    In terms of crypto asset longevity features (such as backup, recovery, and crypto inheritance), both devices provide industry-standard and proprietary options with certain trade-offs, as well as compatibility with third-party solutions like Vault12 Guard for succession planning scenarios.


    The decision between the two will likely hinge on individual preferences for target security requirements, preferred platforms (mobile or desktop), and should take into account the planned frequency of use.

    Approach to comparison

    Now, let's have a closer look.

    When choosing the best hardware wallet for cryptocurrency security, you may wonder not only which is better, the Ledger Nano X or the Exodus, but also:

    • What happens if your wallet is lost or stolen? (How well can these wallets recover from user errors?)
    • How do these wallets handle more advanced scenarios like inheritance of crypto assets?
    • How easy to use are these wallets?
    • How do their security features compare?

    This article compares important characteristics for these two popular wallets. We’ll break down the strengths and weaknesses of each, focusing on security, ease of use, and backup and recovery methods. By the end of this comparison, you’ll clearly understand which wallet is right for you, as well as how to recover your crypto assets in case of accidents.

    What happens if your wallet is lost or stolen?

    Wise wallet owners recognize the critical importance of crypto recovery before they find themselves in an unexpected bind! That's why it's important to understand the fundamental topic of crypto asset longevity, including features such as backup, recovery, and inheritance for crypto assets. These considerations are central to long-term planning.

    Technical security is essential, but in the world of crypto, the degree to which backup and recovery solutions are foolproof for users is at least equally important. Here are the backup and recovery options for these two wallets:


    Ledger Nano X

    Exodus

    Backup & Recovery methods

    Recommends Recovery Seed Phrase be written on paper, or engraved onto metallic plates.

    Recommends Recovery Seed Phrase be written on paper, or using iCloud or Google Account saving it along with your everyday passwords.

    Optional paid subscription

    Ledger Recover, a centralized 3rd-party cloud service, highly criticized by the crypto community. Clouds are not safe — especially when operated by multiple 3rd parties.

    No.

    How do these wallets handle Crypto Inheritance?

    Crypto Inheritance Features

    Currently, most crypto wallets, including the Ledger Nano X and Exodus, lack any features for establishing and managing crypto inheritance. This gap presents a challenge for users who want to be sure that their crypto assets can be transferred to their heirs.

    Ledger Nano X

    Exodus

    Backup

    - Written only
    - Optional 3rd party KYC-based cloud

    - Written only

    Inheritance

    No

    No

    Decentralized backup with Vault12

    Yes

    Yes

    Inheritance Management with Vault12

    Yes

    Yes

    Backup and recovery differentiators

    Ledger Nano X Recover service Disadvantages:

    • The optional Ledger Recover backup service is a paid service provided by three corporations that each hold parts of the user’s seed phrase in a cloud. This introduces risks, as the seed phrase could potentially be accessed via subpoena; or business partners could terminate agreements or become involved in lawsuits that result in locked data or resources (like, for example, Gemini and Genesis). These scenarios contain multiple potential points of failure.
    • Very important detail: The terms of the optional Ledger Recover service do not mention support for inheritance, meaning any unfortunate accident related to the user could make crypto assets unrecoverable for his or her successors. Ledger itself suggests using 3rd-party crypto inheritance services for those purposes.

    Ledger Nano X Recover service Advantages:

    • People have different preferences. If a user is comfortable trusting a bank with their assets, they might also feel confident using Ledger Recover for securing their seed phrase backup (even though Ledger is not providing the entire cloud backup solution).

    Exodus backup Disadvantages:

    Exodus backup Advantages:

    • Exodus does offer a one-click solution for backup for insignificant balances of crypto.

    How easy are these crypto wallets to use?

    Let's compare the key aspects of both wallets side by side, and then summarize what really stands out for user convenience:

    Ledger Nano X

    Exodus

    Display

    1” Monochrome OLED,
    128 x 64 pixels

    Full smartphone screen

    Input interface

    2 click buttons

    Full smartphone screen

    Cable

    USB-C

    n/a

    Wireless

    Bluetooth

    As smartphone

    Platforms

    macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, Browser Extension (3rd party)

    iOS, Android,
    macOS, Windows,

    Browser Extension

    3rd party wallets and dapps support

    MetaMask, Exodus + 28 more

    Ledger, Trezor

    Password manager & 2FA

    FIDO2 2FA & Passkeys, Password Manager

    n/a

    Product size & weight

    72 x 19 x 12 mm / 34g

    -

    Convenience features

    Battery (Up to 5 hours in use)

    Exchange support

    Number of supported coins

    5,500+

    200+

    Price

    $149

    $0

    Crypto wallet user experience (UX) differences

    Ledger Nano X with Smartphone UX

    Ledger Nano X with Smartphone UX

    Ledger Nano X Disadvantages:

    • The display is literally the size of a coin: very uncomfortable to use.
    • Requires two-handed operation, making it difficult to use with a phone simultaneously — contrary to some misleading ads.
    • The buttons are stiff, making operations cumbersome.

    Ledger Nano X Advantages:

    • Offers Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable, at least with smartphones.
    • Wide support for third-party wallets and dapps, allowing the Ledger Nano X to sign transactions directly in MetaMask, Uniswap, and other platforms without relying on Ledger Live software. This is a huge advantage for DeFi users.

    Exodus UX Disadvantages:

    • As a product that prioritizes ease of use, Exodus does not offer a full suite of advanced features such as fiat currency on/off ramps or advanced Web3 / DeFi integrations.
    • The desktop version of Exodus offers more features than the mobile version (e.g., portfolio management tools, Trezor hardware integration, and a broader set of supported cryptocurrencies).

    Exodus UX Advantages:

    • Exodus is generally more user-friendly than the Ledger Nano X (and other hardware wallets).

    How do these wallets' security features compare?

    Now, we dive deeper into the core specification of every hardware wallet: security features.

    Ledger Nano XExodus
    PIN-code 4 - 8 digits up to 6 digits
    BIP39 Passphrase Yes No
    Open-source Partial Partial
    Secure Element Yes No
    Multisignature Yes No

    Crypto wallet security feature differentiators

    Ledger Nano X security Disadvantages:

    • Some critical components are closed-source. This raises concerns, especially after the controversial introduction of the Ledger Recover backup service, which challenged the previous assumption that the Secure Element could never transmit the recovery seed phrase outside the hardware wallet.

    Ledger Nano X security Advantages:

    • Includes a Secure Element, giving Ledger devices a strong reputation for withstanding physical attacks. This is important for users who prefer not to complicate their security with BIP39 passphrases, prioritizing ease of use.

    Exodus security Disadvantages:

    • Portions of the Exodus wallet are closed-source, preventing full transparency of its code security.
    • Exodus, like all software wallets, operates in an inherently less-secure operating environment than a hardware wallet.
    • As a software wallet, Exodus lacks a Secure Element.
    • Exodus lacks support for some common security extensions such as 2-factor authentication, creation of multisignature transactions, and entry of a wallet "extra word" passphrase.

    Exodus security Advantages:

    • Some of Exodus's security disadvantages could be mitigated by using Exodus together (integrated) with Ledger Nano X (they are compatible with each other).

    Summary of Ledger Nano X and Exodus Comparison

    The Ledger Nano X and Exodus both provide a respectable set of features, and support a broad spectrum of cryptocurrencies, making them suitable for diverse crypto portfolios.

    The Ledger Nano X is a mobile-friendly, security-oriented solution, and offers a balance of security and convenience features. It provides a small display and uncomfortable input, but with the advantages of a Secure Element and wireless connectivity options like Bluetooth.

    On the other hand, Exodus is free and simple, but provides fewer security capabilities. It's great for beginning users and suitable for relatively small amounts of crypto.

    The decision between the two will likely hinge on individual preferences for the target use case and balance, and should take into account the planned frequency of use.

    Given their convenient integration, the best of all worlds could be to use both wallets, holding larger amounts of crypto in your Ledger Nano X wallet while keeping a small, ready-to-transact "petty cash" stash in your Exodus wallet.

    Whichever you choose, remember to add crypto inheritance to your choice of wallet to ensure the long-term safety of your digital assets.


    Vault12 Guard: a decentralized solution for Crypto Inheritance

    Vault12 is the pioneer in Crypto Inheritance Management, and delivers an easy-to-use and secure method for assigning a legacy contact to your crypto wallets. This enables you to pass on your wallet seed phrases and private keys for all types of digital assets to future generations. Vault12 Guard is designed for everyday people, yet strong enough for Crypto OGs.

    Vault12 Guard has a uniquely-secure design. Utilizing advanced encryption and decentralized storage, it ensures that crypto assets are not only safe but also transferable under predefined conditions, filling a critical need unmet by most traditional hardware wallets. Vault12 Guard applies a hybrid approach of software fused with the hardware-based Secure Element of phone devices (The Secure Enclave for iOS devices, and Strongbox for Google devices). Vault12 Guard's decentralized design reduces possible points of failure. Nothing is stored on cloud servers or Vault12 servers, and no assets are stored on local devices, making them less of a target.

    From a user perspective, the Vault12 Guard app asks users to appoint one or more people (or mobile devices) as Guardians. The designated Guardians are entrusted to protect the user's comprehensive collection of wallet seed phrases and private keys, which are safely stored within a decentralized digital Vault. Its simple, user-friendly workflow removes the necessity for regularly revising wallet inventories or modifying instructions for your lawyers — a process that otherwise could lead to privacy breaches.

    Both the Ledger Nano X and Exodus are compatible with Vault12 Guard Inheritance. This addresses the seed phrase backup dilemma for any hardware wallet. It also makes less-secure backup methods, such as paper or steel plates, unnecessary.

    Ledger Nano X vs Exodus

    Quantum-safe Data Storage for App Developers with Open-Source Shamir Secret Sharing for Capacitor

    Production-proven Shamir’s Secret Sharing Capacitor Plugin now available for iOS, Android, and Web apps

    How to build quantum-resistant apps with the Shamir Secret Sharing plugin for Capacitor?

    The future of computing is knocking at our door. Quantum computers promise to revolutionize industries, solve impossible problems, and, unfortunately, break most of the encryption that protects our digital lives today.

    This is where the Shamir Secret Sharing plugin for Capacitor plugin becomes your secret weapon for building truly resilient and secure apps.

    What is Capacitor by Ionic?

    Capacitor is an open-source, cross-platform native runtime that lets developers build iOS, Android, and web apps from a single modern JavaScript/TypeScript codebase. Created by the team behind Ionic, it provides a consistent API layer that bridges web technologies (like React, Vue, Angular, or vanilla JS) with native device capabilities such as secure storage, biometrics, filesystems, and more. Through its plugin system, Capacitor allows both first-party and community plugins—like Shamir Secret Sharing plugin for Capacitor—to expose powerful native functionality in a way that feels natural to web developers, enabling high-performance, production-grade apps without sacrificing the speed and flexibility of a web-based stack.

    What are the challenges of Self-Custody?

    We're witnessing a fundamental shift in how people think about their digital assets and personal data. From crypto wallets to personal health records, users increasingly want control over their own information. They don't want to trust centralized services with their most sensitive data.

    But self-custody creates a terrifying problem: what happens when someone loses their phone, forgets their password, or worse—their device gets stolen? Traditional backup solutions force users to trust third parties or create single points of failure.

    The Shamir Secret Sharing plugin for Capacitor plugin solves this elegantly by eliminating the need for any single point of trust or failure.

    What is the mathematics behind Shamir's Secret Sharing?

    Shamir's Secret Sharing reads like something from a cryptography fairy tale. Invented by Adi Shamir (the "S" in RSA encryption), this algorithm takes any secret and mathematically divides it into pieces called shards.

    Here's where it gets beautiful: you can lose some shards and still recover your secret perfectly. Need 3 shards to reconstruct your data? Generate 5 shards and distribute them to trusted friends or devices. Even if 2 shards disappear forever, you can still recover everything.

    But the real magic happens in what cryptographers call "information-theoretic security." Each individual share reveals absolutely nothing about your secret. Not a single bit of information leaks, no matter how powerful the computer trying to crack it.

    This isn't just computationally difficult to break—its mathematically impossible. Even with unlimited processing power, an attacker with insufficient shards learns nothing. The mathematics guarantee this, not the limitations of current technology.

    How do you Future-proof against quantum threats?

    Most encryption today relies on mathematical problems that are hard for classical computers to solve. Factoring large prime numbers takes classical computers thousands of years. Quantum computers could solve these same problems in hours.

    Shamir's Secret Sharing takes a completely different approach. Its security doesn't depend on computational difficulty—it depends on mathematical impossibility. Think of it like trying to solve an equation with fewer values than unknowns. There are infinite equally valid solutions, making it impossible to determine which one is correct.

    This information-theoretic approach means quantum computers offer no advantage to attackers. The underlying mathematics remain just as secure whether facing classical computers, quantum computers, or hypothetical super-quantum computers that might emerge decades from now.

    Your applications built with the Shamir Secret Sharing plugin for Capacitor today will remain secure through whatever computing revolution comes next.

    How can you Fault-proof your apps through distribution

    Traditional security models create single points of failure. Lose your password manager database? Everything's gone. Company servers get compromised? Your data's exposed. Phone gets stolen? Access to your accounts vanishes.

    Shamir's Secret Sharing flips this model entirely. Instead of protecting one critical thing perfectly, you distribute security across multiple independent channels. Each share can live in a different place:

    • One share encrypted by your phone's secure enclave
    • Another with a trusted friend or family member
    • A third is stored in a safety deposit box
    • Additional shards distributed to other devices or locations

    The threshold system means you're protected against multiple simultaneous failures. Device breaks? Friend moves abroad? Safety deposit box becomes inaccessible? Your system keeps working because no single failure can compromise your security.

    This distributed approach creates applications that become more resilient as they scale, not more vulnerable.

    Diagram showing Shamir's Secret Sharing Capacitor Plug-in Stack

    What are Common Use Cases for the Shamir's Secret Sharing Capacitor Plug-in?

    The Shamir Secret Sharing plugin for Capacitor plugin provides the foundation, but imagination determines the possibilities. Consider these emerging use cases:

    Family digital inheritance becomes possible when crypto seeds or important documents are shared across trusted family members. Parents can ensure their digital assets transfer smoothly without exposing sensitive information during their lifetime. That's what the Vault12 Guard app does by using Shamir Secret Sharing plugin for Capacitor.

    Collaborative authentication allows teams to protect shared resources without any single administrator having complete control. Critical business systems require multiple people to authorize changes, preventing both external attacks and insider threats.

    Progressive disclosure enables applications that reveal information only when specific conditions are met. Legal documents that unlock automatically when multiple parties agree, or time-locked messages that require distributed consent to access early.

    Redundant backup systems can store encrypted application state across multiple cloud providers, user devices, and physical locations. Users never lose access to their data, but no single provider ever has complete information.

    The plugin's cross-platform nature—supporting iOS, Android, and web—means these experiences work seamlessly across all user devices and contexts.

    How has the Shamir's Secret Sharing Capacitor Plug-in been tried and tested in commercial apps?

    The convergence of quantum computing, increased privacy awareness, and demand for user-controlled applications creates unprecedented opportunities for developers who think ahead.

    Applications built with traditional security models will face obsolescence as quantum computers emerge. Centralized platforms will struggle as users demand true ownership of their data. Single points of failure will become unacceptable as digital stakes continue rising.

    But developers using Shamir Secret Sharing plugin for Capacitor can build applications that thrive in this new landscape. Your users get genuine self-custody without sacrificing usability. Your architecture becomes more resilient as it scales. Your security improves as computing power increases rather than becoming more vulnerable.

    The plugin abstracts away the complex mathematics and cross-platform implementation details. You get enterprise-grade Shamir's Secret Sharing through simple TypeScript interfaces, letting you focus on creating innovative user experiences rather than cryptographic implementation.

    How can you start using the Shamir's Secret Sharing Capacitor Plug-in?

    Quantum computers won't wait for our applications to catch up. User expectations for data ownership and privacy continue accelerating. The developers who start building quantum-resistant, fault-proof applications today will define the next generation of digital experiences.

    The Shamir Secret Sharing plugin for Capacitor plugin gives you the tools. The mathematical foundations are unshakeable. The production validation is complete. The cross-platform compatibility ensures a broad reach.

    What remains is the most exciting part: imagining and building the resilient, user-empowering applications that will define computing's next chapter. The future belongs to developers who understand that true security comes not from building higher walls, but from removing single points of failure entirely.

    Your users are ready for applications they can truly trust. The technology is ready to support your vision. The question is: what will you build?

    Using the Shamir Secret Sharing plugin for Capacitor - Github: https://github.com/vault12/capacitor-shamir

    What is Shamir's Secret Sharing?

    Shamir's Secret Sharing is a cryptographic algorithm that divides a secret into multiple parts (shards), where a minimum threshold of shards is required to reconstruct the original secret. This ensures that:

    • No single shard reveals any information about the secret
    • Any threshold number of shards can reconstruct the secret
    • Security through distribution - store shards separately for maximum security

    What are the Security Concepts behind Shamir's Secret Sharing?

    Shamir's Secret Sharing provides information-theoretic security, which means the algorithm is mathematically proven to be unbreakable regardless of computational power. Key security advantages:

    • Quantum Resistance: Security relies on mathematical impossibility rather than computational complexity, remaining secure against quantum computers
    • No Key Management: There is no single master key to rotate or protect; instead, security hinges on distributing and safeguarding the individual shards
    • Mathematical Foundation: Based on polynomial interpolation over finite fields, where reconstructing the secret without sufficient shards is mathematically impossible, not just computationally difficult

    What are the features of Shamir's Secret Sharing Capacitor Plug-in?

    • Secure Secret Splitting: Split sensitive data into encrypted shards using Shamir's Secret Sharing
    • Cross-Platform: Native support for iOS, Android, and Web
    • Flexible Storage: Memory-based and filesystem-based operations
    • Progress Tracking: Real-time progress callbacks for all operations
    • Performance Optimized: Efficient handling of large files and data
    • Recovery Options: Restore complete secrets or individual shards

    What are examples of Real-World Usage?

    This plugin has already been battle-tested in production for a decade on almost a million iOS and Android devices, as a core component of Vault12 Guard, a mobile app that provides decentralized backup, and inheritance for crypto wallets and other sensitive data.


    More information is at Github: https://github.com/vault12/capacitor-shamir

    Quantum-safe Data Storage for App Developers with Open-Source Shamir Secret Sharing for Capacitor

    Vault12 Guard now imports your iOS Credentials from Apple Password and other Password Managers

    Vault12 Guard now supports Apple’s new Credential Exchange Protocol (CXP), making it much easier to bring your existing credentials into your inheritance Vault.

    How to Move Your Passwords, Passkeys, and Codes Between Your Password Manager and Vault12 Guard?

    With the latest Vault12 Guard release, effortless password backups are no longer just for crypto and seed phrases — you can now bring in your logins, verification codes, passkeys, and even Wi-Fi credentials from Apple Passwords and major third-party managers (like Bitwarden), store them in your decentralized Vault, and export them back into any compatible app later if you ever need to move or recover. This works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac running iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26.

    Vault12 Guard now supports Apple’s new Credential Exchange Protocol (CXP), making it much easier to bring your existing credentials into your inheritance Vault. CXP is a new industry standard designed for the secure transfer of passkeys and passwords between compatible apps and platforms—so instead of manually copying details or re-creating accounts, you can move them directly and safely into Vault12 Guard.

    With iOS 26, Apple is the first major platform to roll out CXP, opening the door to real credential portability and user choice. Thanks to our integration, iPhone users now have a secure, standardized way to import passkeys from other password managers and platforms into Vault12 Guard, while keeping everything encrypted and under their control.

    Why back up your credentials in Vault12 Guard?

    When you bring credentials into Vault12 Guard, they’re protected like any other high-value asset:

    • Decentralized protection with Guardians
      Your credentials are encrypted, split, and stored across your chosen Guardians (trusted people or your own devices), not in a single cloud account or server.
    • Inheritance-ready by design
      Through Vault12 Digital Inheritance, your beneficiary can recover critical logins and keys when Guardians approve an inheritance request—using the same audited restore flow already documented for other assets.
    • No vendor lock-in
      Because Vault12 Guard uses the same system-level transfer mechanism as Apple Passwords and leading managers like Bitwarden, you can always export your credentials back into another app later.

    We strongly recommend having active Guardians configured before importing, so your credential backup is both secure and recoverable.

    What is needed to import your passwords into Vault12 Guard?

    1. Vault12 Guard updated to the latest version on iOS 26 / iPadOS 26 / macOS 26.
    2. A password manager that supports the new secure export flow, such as:
      • Apple Passwords
      • Bitwarden
      • Other compatible apps as they roll out support over time.
    Note: The list of supported apps is limited today but will expand as more managers adopt the same standard.

    How are Passwords transferred into and out of Vault12 Guard?

    Apple’s Credential Exchange capabilities in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26 introduce a standardized, OS-controlled way for credential apps to talk to each other securely.

    At a high level:

    • The export always starts in the app that currently holds your data (Apple Passwords, Bitwarden, etc.).
      You choose an option like “Export data to another app” / “Move to another password app”.
    • The system shows a list of compatible destination apps (including Vault12 Guard).
    • Once you select Vault12 Guard, the OS:
      • Packages the selected credentials (logins, passkeys, verification codes, and, where supported, Wi-Fi details),
      • Sends them directly and securely to Vault12 Guard,
      • Ensures only the chosen destination app can read them.

    No manual juggling, no generic file exports in this flow—just a controlled, encrypted handoff mediated by the operating system and the participating apps.

    Vault12 Guard simply plugs into this mechanism as a secure backup & inheritance destination (and as an export source), instead of inventing its own incompatible format.

    How do I import passwords into Vault12 Guard?

    Use this when you want Vault12 Guard to serve as your resilient backup for credentials stored elsewhere.

    On iPhone, iPad, or Mac (same pattern):

    • Open your password manager (e.g., Apple Passwords, Bitwarden).
    • Select the items you want to protect in Vault12 Guard:
      • Logins, passkeys, verification codes, Wi-Fi credentials.
    • Choose “Export to another app” / “Move to another password app”.
    • In the destination list, select “Vault12 Guard”.
    • Vault12 Guard opens:
      • Shows what’s being imported,
      • Lets you choose Asset Name,
      • Confirms and saves everything into your Vault.

    In Apple Password choose the Export option and select the credentials to export, then select the destination.

    Once exported open Vault12 and name your credential file and add to your inheritance Vault.

    How do I export from Vault12 Guard into another app?

    When a Vault is inherited and contains an imported password file, you can export the file to compatible password managers.

    Also, you can use this if you’re switching tools, rebuilding another manager, or validating portability.

    On iPhone, iPad, or Mac:

    • Open Vault12 Guard.
    • Navigate to the relevant Asset Details screen.
    • Open the context menu (⋯).
    • Tap “Export Credentials to Another App”.
    • Choose your target (e.g., Apple Passwords, Bitwarden, other supported managers).
    • Confirm the system prompt.

    The OS delivers those credentials straight into the chosen app using the same secure channel—so Vault12 Guard is both an endpoint for imports and a clean, standards-aligned source for exports.

    Export Passwords file

    What are the best practices for transferring credentials with Vault12 Guard?

    • Import only on trusted devices protected with biometrics and device passcodes.
    • Keep Guardians active & up to date to avoid recovery friction later.
    • Use Vault12 Guard as your neutral backup hub, not as a replacement for day-to-day autofill. Let your password manager handle sign-ins; let Vault12 Guard guarantee long-term recoverability.
    • Only export to apps you trust. The system dialog makes this explicit—if you don’t recognize the app, don’t send credentials there.
    Note:

    1) AppleID/iCloud Password and Passkey are NOT backed up during export from Apple Password

    2) Master passwords to password managers should be backed up manually

    Vault12 Guard now imports your iOS Credentials from Apple Password and other Password Managers

    How to generate a Seed Phrase.

    Here are five ways to generate a seed phrase, with an in-depth discussion on the importance of randomness in ensuring security.

    Your seed phrase is the very foundation of a modern digital wallet, and it is no exaggeration to say that seed phrases are at the heart of the cryptocurrency universe generally. But what is it? A seed phrase is a mnemonic code consisting of 12-24 words used to create or recover your crypto wallet. You may have heard it referred to as a backup phrase, recovery phrase, or mnemonic sentence.

    Where do they come from? This article explains some common ways to generate seed phrases.

    Key Points on How To Generate A Seed Phrase

    When you have your own crypto wallet, you have a few choices for how to generate your seed phrase:

    • The Vault12 Guard app can generate a secure seed phrase for you.
    • You could let your digital wallet generate a seed phrase for you.
    • Or for very high security, you could "roll your own" seed phrase with dice or a calculator as offline methods.

    It is extremely important that your seed phrase be randomly generated, so that it cannot be guessed or reverse-engineered.

    1. How to generate a seed phrase with Vault12

    Vault12 can help you to easily create an encrypted and distributed digital vault. The Vault12 Guard app secures all sorts of digital assets including cryptocurrency seed phrases, and can also generate your seed phrase for you. You can be absolutely sure that your seed phrase is generated safely and automatically backed up in a secure manner. To learn more about it, please read our guide.

    2. How to generate a seed phrase with a calculator

    Generating a seed phrase by using a calculator is done offline, which requires a bit of extra effort but eliminates the risk of some classes of potential online attacks. This introduces a small number of new risks, however: instead of using one device to generate your seed phrase, you'll need to use two devices: the calculator and an air-gapped computer. To create a seed phrase this way, you'll need a calculator that has a RANDOM function (for generating entropy). Learn more about generating a seed phrase using an offline calculator here.

    3. How to generate a seed phrase with dice

    A humble pair of dice can be used for a non-digital and completely offline method of seed phrase generation. To do this, you'll need dice, a pen and paper, and the BIP39 word list. This method is not for the faint-hearted - be prepared to do some math! You can use a single die if you want, but it is recommended to use multiple dice. You'll be creating entropy by generating a large set of random numbers by using the dice. Learn how to generate a seed phrase with dice here.

    4. How to generate a seed phrase with software crypto wallets

    With very few exceptions, most modern wallets will create your seed phrase for you when you create your wallet. This process is usually automatic, with limited options for setting the parameters of your seed phrase. For most users this one-time approach is sufficient, and it won't be thought of again.

    Please take a look at the article, "Using crypto wallets to generate seed phrases" to get an overview of how seed generation is done inside wallets during the set up phase.

    Optionally refer to our Crypto Wallet Guides for step-by-step instructions on how specific wallets accomplish this.

    Please keep in mind, that in any potentially high net-worth use case, generating seed phrases manually on your own - especially offline - is an excellent choice since it offers much higher security and greater control over the process.

    5. How to generate a seed phrase with hardware wallets

    Hardware wallets provide an extra level of security compared to software wallets, and provide methods to generate a seed phrase locally (within the wallet itself). Hardware wallets strike an excellent compromise between usability and high security. Feel free to check out Vault12's "How-to" wallet guides to bring you through the steps needed to securely generate and back up seed phrases using hardware wallets.

    Here are some hardware wallets that we recommend:

    • Ledger Nano X
    • Ledger Nano S
    • Trezor One
    • Trezor Model T
    • KeepKey
    • ColdCard MK3
    • BitBox 01/02

    What goes on behind the scenes of generating a seed phrase?

    In a nutshell, the process of generating a seed phrase starts with generating random data, called entropy. The entropy is then run through a hashing function - specifically SHA256 - to generate a checksum. Part of the checksum is then added to the random data. The resulting output is then split into chunks of 11 bits, where each 11-bit chunk maps to a single word on the BIP39 word list.

    Confused about anything in the above paragraph? Don't worry, each step will be explained in an easy to understand format below. You can also get a higher-level understanding of seed phrase construction by checking out the article "What is BIP39?".

    How much entropy should your seed phrase have? 

    Generating a seed phrase HAS to begin with a RANDOM SOURCE OF DATA, otherwise an attacker could possibly steal funds by guessing or regenerating your seed phrase. Entropy is a measure of how random a set of data is.

    Which offers more randomness: rolling 1 die, or rolling 2 dice? Since 2 dice have more possible outcomes, the randomness is higher. It is the same for your seed phrase. The more words that are in your seed phrase, the higher the entropy.

    To successfully generate a seed phrase, the entropy generated has to fit certain parameters. The random data must be between 128 bits and 256 bits of entropy, and divisible by 32.

    128 bits of entropy maps to a 12 word seed phrase

    160 bits of entropy maps to a 15 word seed phrase

    192 bits of entropy maps to an 18 word seed phrase

    224 bits of entropy maps to a 21 word seed phrase

    256 bits of entropy maps to a 24 word seed phrase

    How are SHA256 and BIP39 word lists used to generate a seed phrase?

    A hash function is a computer program that takes an input of data and returns a verifiable result, called a checksum. The input can be any source of data. Running the same hash function again on the same input data will always return the same checksum as the result.

    For example, running your randomized source data of 128 bits of entropy through a hash function will always return the same result, so it can be used as a checksum. If the source data changes, you will get a different result from the hash function.

    In this step, the random source data is run through the SHA256 hash function. The first X digits of the checksum are then added to the random source data/entropy, where X is equal to: (amount of bits of entropy / 32).

    256 bits of entropy (256/32 = 8) - add the first 8 bits of the checksum to the random data

    224 bits of entropy (224/32 = 7) - add the first 7 bits of the checksum to the random data

    192 bits of entropy (192/32 = 6) - add the first 6 bits of the checksum to the random data

    160 bits of entropy (160/32 = 5) - add the first 5 bits of the checksum to the random data

    128 bits of entropy 128/32 = 4) - add the first 4 bits of the checksum to the random data

    It's important to note that BIP39 generates the seed phrase from binary code, which is made up of 0's and 1's. However, the SHA256 hash function returns the checksum as a sequence of numbers and letters, called a hexadecimal. So in order to get the seed phrase, you have to convert the checksum from hexadecimal format to binary format.

    Here's the next step: We slice the result into 11-bit chunks of data. Each 11-bit chunk of data will map to a word from the BIP39 word list

    You have seen the word "bit" used a few times in this article. A bit represents 0's and 1's. It is the smallest representation of data we have, and it is expressed in a language our computers understand.

    Your original source of random data (or entropy) plus the SHA256 checksum is divisible by 11. The BIP39 word list contains 2048 words, and each word on the list maps to 11 bits of data. In this next step, you break your entropy+checksum combo into sequential chunks of 11 bits.

    It is important that you slice the 11-bit chunks in sequential order. This means going from left to right, every 11 bits is grouped together. Every 11 bits represents a word in your seed phrase, and the order of the words has to be correct.

    The next step is to convert your 11-bit sequence into decimal format. This will give you a number that maps to the BIP39 word list. Now, in the correct order, map each 11-bit sequence to the matching word in the BIP39 word list. Finally, this is your seed phrase!

    It's important to highlight that some word lists for BIP39 might start with 1. In code, the first number is always 0. This means that 2048 words are listed as 0-2047, not 1-2048. If your BIP39 word list starts with 1 instead of 0, you will need to subtract 1 from the word list numbers to get the correct word.

    What are some different ways to perform Random Number Generation (RNG)?

    Going back to generating your initial source of randomness: Once you generate the needed entropy, the remaining process of getting the seed phrase is simply math and cryptography. In practice, this means that when generating a seed phrase, the initial source of entropy is both the most important step, and also the step in which you have the most control over the result.

    There are many ways to generate entropy: flipping a coin, rolling dice, dealing a deck of cards, recording ambient sound, and many more. The goal here is to get as close to true randomness as possible. If you are using a process that is not sufficiently random, an attacker could possibly recreate your seed phrase.

    In the following sections of this article, we will cover different approaches for how to generate entropy, and thus generate your seed phrase.

    What are the security considerations of generating your own seed phrase?

    Taking control over the generation of your seed phrase provides an opportunity to increase the entropy of your seed phrase, thus increasing the security of your entire wallet. This does not come without risks - a single mistake can result in a less secure wallet, or even lost funds.

    When generating your own seed phrase, security must be top-of-mind throughout the whole process. The most crucial part of generating your seed phrase rests with the generation of entropy, which is the first step of generating your seed phrase.

    Your seed phrase can have 12, 15, 18, 21, or 24 words. Remember that the more words in your seed phrase, the higher the entropy, which results in higher security. A correctly generated 24-word seed phrase will ALWAYS produce a wallet that is more secure than a 12-word seed phrase. Many wallets today only produce 12-word seed phrases in their built-in wallet creation workflow - and given today's technology, 12-word seed phrases are still very secure. But a key concept here is 'correctly generated.' The only parameter that can be changed is the source of entropy. This is very important because if the source of entropy is corrupted, an attacker could potentially regenerate your wallet and steal your funds.

    Generating entropy can be done manually or with a computer. Both methods have pros and cons, but when generating entropy, care must be taken to ensure that the process is done correctly and is free from outside manipulation or observation.

    One example of manually generating entropy would be flipping a coin. But if an attacker gives you a coin that is weighted slightly in favor of heads, your initial source of entropy will have been corrupted.

    When using a computer to generate entropy, the attack vectors (or corruption attempts) could be both over the internet and physically in-person. The computer being used should not be connected to the internet, as that could offer an opportunity for attackers to compromise the process. However, even if the device was ever connected to the internet, it could allow the possibility for this process to be compromised.

    Part of being in a security mindset means limiting opportunities available for bad actors. A device not connected to the internet is considered to be air-gapped, and an attacker generally would have to be physically present at the device to be successful at manipulating its entropy generation capabilities.

    Lastly, if you don't have a spare device that you can airgap, don't worry - you could use a "live" Linux environment. Many Linux operating systems are able to be run off of a portable USB stick or flash drive. These are called `live` distributions and they're released with verification signatures, so you can easily verify that the operating system has not been tampered with. We recommend Tails OS - a portable OS that protects against surveillance and censorship. To run the operating system, just plug in the flash drive and boot it up. When you're done, simply remove the flash drive and return to your normal operating system. This very temporary lifecycle of a "live" Linux distribution reduces the window of opportunity for even the cleverest bad actor to access and compromise it.

    How to access your Seed Phrase or asset stored in Vault12.

    If you need to access your Seed Phrase or other assets from your Vault, this article shows how you can ask your Guardians to unlock them to grant you access.

    There are many ways to generate and back up seed phrases, and a superb choice is to use Vault12 Guard.

    If you used Vault12 Guard to back up your seed phrase, this guide describes how you can access that seed phrase by unlocking your asset.



    To access a seed phrase that you have stored in your Vault, you will follow these steps:

    1. Confirm that your seed phrase is backed up in your Vault, and that your Guardians are active.
    2. In the Vault12 Guard app, request that the asset be Unlocked.
    3. Wait for Guardians to confirm your request.
    4. View the asset.

    1. How to confirm your Digital Vault setup?

    In order to access your seed phrase or backup code that has been stored in your Vault, first check that you have a working Vault in your Vault12 Guard app, and that your Guardians are available. In general, it is a recommended practice to do a Vault "health check" regularly.

    If you don't have a Vault because you changed phones, then you can recover your entire Vault - see instructions for Vault recovery. After recovery, your Vault and its stored assets will again exist on your phone, and you can proceed with these instructions to unlock the stored seed phrase or other asset.

    If you have not created a Digital Vault and assigned Guardians to protect it, please follow these instructions (since you did not have a Digital Vault, the new Vault created will be empty).

    Are your Guardians active?

    Once you have confirmed that your assets are stored in the Vault installed on your phone, ensure that your Vault Guardians are available. You can do this by switching to the "My Guardian" tab from the bottom navigation pane. If all of your Guardians are shown as active, you can proceed to request an Unlock.

    If not enough of your Guardians are shown as active, you may want to call your inactive Guardians in advance and ask them to open the Vault12 Guard app on their phone, to refresh the encrypted connection between your apps.

      

    Image of Guardians with active status

    2. How to use Guard to request that your asset be Unlocked?

    First, jump to the Vault section of your Guard app by using the bottom navigation pane.

    On the "My Vault" screen, you will see your asset inventory, with the current state of each asset shown below its name. As you can see, there may be a variety of different states for the same asset:

    • Blue icon - asset has a local copy on the device
    • Grey icon - asset only saved with Guardians
    • Recovering badge - the asset is requested for Unlock, and Guardians' responses are pending.
    • Recovered badge - the asset was unlocked by Guardians, and a local copy is temporarily available.
    • Sent to Guardians badge - the newly-created asset is in the process of backup and distribution to Guardians.

       

    Image of asset inventory in Guard

     

    To Unlock an asset, choose the asset that you wish to unlock from the inventory list, and tap to open the Asset Details screen.

    Then click on the "Recover from Guardians" button.

    In the image above, there are two assets in a locked state (with grey icons). Let's unlock one of them (Metamask-wallet.txt) for illustrative purposes.

     

    Image of Asset Details for metamask-wallet.txt

    How do Guardians confirm recovery requests?

    When the "Recover from Guardians" button is pressed, all of your Guardians will be notified with your Vault unlock request.

    You have significant privacy even from your Guardians, since none of your Guardians can see which assets you are accessing. Your Guardians only see that you requested them to identify you, and they are asked to confirm that you made such a request.

      

    Image of an asset unlock request to a Guardian

    Guardian's in-app notification of your request

     

    As the Vault owner, to see the progress of Guardians' responses, and of your overall recovery request, tap "View Status" in your Vault app.

      

    Image showing recovery request status

    How do Guardians approve your recovery of the asset?

    Here you can see all the details of the Guardians' confirmations progress and the recovery:

    • The total number of Guardians requested (by default 3)
    • Number of confirmations you need to receive from Guardians to recover (by default 2)
    • Guardians' names, and status of their responses.
    Remember that even though your Guardians will receive a notification in their Guard app with your request, it is expected that you will contact them directly through your preferred means of communication so that they can validate that you are of sound mind, with free will, and in a safe place to access your valuable digital assets. (Unless, of course, it is your own secondary device that you set up as your Guardian.)

     

    Image showing asset recovery in progress

    How to view the recovered seed phrase?

    As soon as you have been positively identified by the required number of Guardians, and they confirmed your restore request, your asset will be recovered and available for you to view. You can then tap on "View Recovered Asset" to interact with it. Be careful not to expose your asset unintentionally to observers or cameras!

    Do not hesitate to learn more about how to maintain your crypto safely and easily at SecureMyCrypto.org.

     

    Image showing "Recovered Asset Available" status

     

    Image showing recovered seed phrase

    .

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    Wallet Guides

    Articles on crypto security how to's e.g how to secure, back up, and inherit all your cryptoassets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, crypto, private keys, seed phrases, NFTs, digital art, DAOs, and DeFi tokens. Start here to learn the basics about security risks in Web3, and where to learn more about keeping your cryptoassets secure.

    View all articles

    Comparison of Ledger Nano X and Trezor Safe 5

    Your choice will likely depend on your preferences for UI, portability, and integrations.

    When choosing the best hardware wallet for cryptocurrency security, you may wonder:

    • Which is better, the Ledger Nano X or the Trezor Safe 5?
    • How easy to use are these wallets?
    • How do their security features compare?
    • Do these wallets have vulnerabilities, and have they been hacked?
    • What happens if your wallet is lost or stolen?
    • How do these wallets handle Crypto Inheritance Management?

    This article compares important characteristics for these two popular wallets. We’ll break down the strengths and weaknesses of each, focusing on security, ease of use, and backup methods.

    Additionally, we’ll explore the fundamental topic of inheritance and backup for crypto assets — a crucial aspect of long-term planning. By the end of this comparison, you’ll clearly understand which wallet is right for you, and how to address the often-overlooked safety issue of recovering your crypto assets in case of loss.

    How easy are these crypto wallets to use?

    Let's compare the key aspects of both wallets side by side, and then summarize what really stands out for user convenience:

    Ledger Nano X

    Trezor Safe 5

    Display

    1” Monochrome OLED,
    128 x 64 pixels

    1.54" Color LCD,
    240 x 240 pixels

    Input interface

    2 click buttons

    Touchscreen, Haptic feedback

    Cable

    USB-C

    USB, MicroSD card slot

    Wireless

    Bluetooth 5.2

    No

    Companion Apps

    macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS

    macOS, Windows, Linux, Android
    iOS (View-only)

    3rd party wallets and dapps support

    50+

    9+

    Password manager & 2FA

    FIDO2 2FA & Passkeys,
    Password Manager

    FIDO2 2FA

    Product size & weight

    72 x 19 x 12 mm / 34g

    66 x 40 x 8 mm / 23g

    Convenience features

    Battery (Up to 5 hours in use)

    Magnetic dock

    Number of supported coins

    5,500+

    1,600+

    Price

    $149

    $165

    Crypto wallet user experience (UX) differences

    Image of Trezor Safe 5 wallet and desktop software Trezor Safe 5 wallet and desktop software

    Ledger Nano X Disadvantages:

    • The display is literally the size of a coin: very uncomfortable to use.
    • Requires two-handed operation, making it difficult to use with a phone simultaneously — contrary to some misleading ads.
    • The buttons are stiff, making operations cumbersome.

    Ledger Nano X Advantages:

    • Offers Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable, at least with smartphones.
    • Wide support for third-party wallets and dapps, allowing the Ledger Nano X to sign transactions directly in MetaMask, Uniswap, and other platforms without relying on Ledger Live software. This is a huge advantage for DeFi users.

    Trezor Safe 5 Disadvantages:

    • No wireless connectivity: you always have to use a cable.
    • iOS integration is a view-only, you can only watch balance and can't send transactions from iOS app.

    Trezor Safe 5 Advantages:

    • The display is convenient to work with on a regular basis, and easy to read.
    • The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences on Trezor Safe 5 — you can use it without any discomfort.
    Ledger Nano X with Smartphone UXLedger Nano X with Smartphone UX

    How do these wallets' security features compare?

    Now, we dive deeper into the core specification of every hardware wallet: security features.

    Ledger Nano XTrezor Safe 5
    PIN-code 4 - 8 digits up to 50 digits
    BIP39 Passphrase Yes Yes
    Open-source Partial Full
    Secure Element Yes Yes, and it's NDA-free
    Multisignature Yes Yes

    Crypto wallet security feature differentiators

    Ledger Nano X Disadvantages:

    • Critical components like the Secure Element and its operating system are closed-source. This has raised concerns, especially after the controversial introduction of the Ledger Recover backup service, which challenged the assumption that the Secure Element could never transmit the recovery seed phrase outside the hardware wallet.

    Ledger Nano X Advantages:

    • Includes a Secure Element, giving Ledger devices a strong reputation for withstanding physical attacks. This is important for users who prefer not to complicate their security with BIP39 passphrases (prioritizing ease of use).

    Trezor Safe 5 Disadvantages:

    • The hardware and software are not not fully open-source, but Trezor mitigates this limitation architecturally, so that the seed phrase is not touched by closed source software. The Secure Element chip is responsible for secure boot only, and it is NDA-free: Trezor is not bound by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) that would restrict them from publicly disclosing any security flaws.

    Trezor Safe 5 Advantages:

    • With its new flagship product, Trezor raises the security bar by incorporating Secure Elements into their products. Further, its Secure Element chips are NDA-free.
    • Allows for longer PIN codes, which might appeal to particularly cautious users.

    Have there been vulnerabilities or hacks of these wallets?

    There have been vulnerabilities and hacks associated with both the Ledger and Trezor products. Let's review the history of hacks for the manufacturers, which is more representative than for individual models.

    Far from delivering uncompromised security, these wallets are routinely subject to malware, supply chain, and firmware vulnerabilities. Here are some recent notable incidents:

    Ledger Vulnerabilities:

    1. The Connect Kit Attack (2023): The Connect Kit breach was discovered by the security teams of Ledger.
    2. Ledger User Data Breach (2020): A major data breach exposed the personal information of thousands of customers, leading to phishing attacks.
    3. Another User Data Breach (2021): Ledger announced on Twitter that it has been targeted by rogue Shopify team members who exported over 200 merchants’ customer databases.
    4. Ledger Live (2020): Users were exposed to basic double spending attacks, amplified double spending attacks, and DoS attacks without user consent.
    5. Potential Supply Chain Attack Vulnerability (2020): Kraken Security Labs Identifies Supply Chain Attacks Against Ledger Wallets.

    Trezor Vulnerabilities:

    1. Ability to Physically Hack Trezor T Wallet (2023): Crypto Security Firm Unciphered Claims Ability to Physically Hack Trezor T Wallet
    2. Five Reported Vulnerabilities in Two Models of Trezor Hardware Wallets (2019): Ledger’s Attack Lab has found five vulnerabilities in hardware wallets of its direct competitor Trezor.
    3. Kraken Identifies Critical Flaw in Trezor Hardware Wallets (2020): Kraken Security Labs has devised a way to extract seeds from both cryptocurrency hardware wallets offered from industry leader Trezor, the Trezor One and Trezor Model T.
    No software is perfect, and no wallet is ideal. However, some designs have been more compromised than others.

    What happens if your wallet is lost or stolen?

    Security is essential, but in the world of crypto, the degree to which backup and recovery solutions are foolproof for users is equally important. Here are the backup and recovery options for these two wallets:

    Ledger Nano X

    Trezor Safe 5

    Backup & Recovery methods

    Recommend Recovery Seed Phrase be written on paper, or engraved onto metallic plates.

    Recommend Recovery Seed Phrase be written on paper, or engraved onto metallic plates.

    Optional paid subscription

    Ledger Recover, a centralized 3rd-party cloud service, highly criticized by the crypto community. Clouds are not safe — especially when operated by multiple 3rd parties.

    No.

    Backup and recovery differentiators

    Ledger Nano X Recover service Disadvantages:

    • The optional Ledger Recover backup service is a paid service provided by three corporations that each hold parts of the user’s seed phrase in a Cloud. This introduces risks, as the seed phrase could potentially be accessed via subpoena; business partners could terminate agreements or become involved in lawsuits that result in locked data or resources (like, for example, Gemini and Genesis); and there are multiple potential points of failure.

    Ledger Nano X Recover service Advantages:

    • People have different preferences. If a user is comfortable trusting a bank with their assets, they might also feel confident using Ledger Recover for securing their seed phrase backup (even though Ledger is not providing the complete cloud backup solution).

    Trezor Safe 5 backup Disadvantages:

    • Trezor has a Multishare backup service, but it is fully manual, and challenging to maintain. The user is responsible for generating, distributing, and keeping track of the encrypted shards.

    Trezor Safe 5 backup Advantages:

    • Trezor does offer a Multishare backup option for those who are able and willing to set it up.

    How do these wallets handle Crypto Inheritance Management?

    Crypto Inheritance Features

    Currently, most hardware wallets, including the Ledger Nano X and Trezor Safe 5, lack any features for establishing and managing crypto inheritance. This gap presents a challenge for users who want to be sure that their crypto assets can be transferred to their heirs.

    Ledger Nano X

    Trezor Safe 5

    Backup

    - Written only
    - Optional 3rd party KYC-based cloud

    - Written only

    - Manual sharing of shards

    Inheritance

    No

    No

    Decentralized backup with Vault12

    Yes

    Yes

    Inheritance Management with Vault12

    Yes

    Yes

    Summary of Ledger Nano X and Trezor Safe 5 Comparison

    The Ledger Nano X and Trezor Safe 5 both provide a variety of security measures, and support a broad spectrum of cryptocurrencies, making them suitable for diverse crypto portfolios.

    The Ledger Nano X is more mobile-friendly, and offers a balance of security and convenience features. It offers a small display and uncomfortable input, but with the advantages of a Secure Element and wireless connectivity options like Bluetooth.

    On the other hand, the Trezor Safe 5, at the same price, boasts more open-sourced and NDA-free framework, reasonably sized display with colors, and touchscreen interface for enhanced user interaction, but with reduced convenience features working only with USB connections and missing iOS integration.

    The decision between the two will likely hinge on individual preferences for the target platform (mobile or desktop), and should take into account the planned frequency of use.

    Whichever you choose, remember to add crypto inheritance to your choice of wallet to ensure the long-term safety of your digital assets.


    Vault12 Guard: a decentralized solution for Crypto Inheritance

    Vault12 is the pioneer in Crypto Inheritance Management, and delivers an easy-to-use and secure method for assigning a legacy contact to your crypto wallets. This enables you to pass on your wallet seed phrases and private keys for all types of digital assets to future generations. Vault12 Guard is designed for everyday people, yet strong enough for Crypto OGs.

    Vault12 Guard has a uniquely-secure design. Utilizing advanced encryption and decentralized storage, it ensures that crypto assets are not only safe but also transferable under predefined conditions, filling a critical need unmet by most traditional hardware wallets. Vault12 Guard applies a hybrid approach of software fused with the hardware-based Secure Element of phone devices (The Secure Enclave for iOS devices, and Strongbox for Google devices). Vault12 Guard's decentralized design reduces possible points of failure. Nothing is stored on cloud servers or Vault12 servers, and no assets are stored on local devices, making them less of a target.

    From a user perspective, the Vault12 Guard app asks users to appoint one or more people (or mobile devices) as Guardians. The designated Guardians are entrusted to protect the user's comprehensive collection of wallet seed phrases and private keys, which are safely stored within a decentralized digital Vault. Its simple, user-friendly workflow removes the necessity for regularly revising wallet inventories or modifying instructions for your lawyers — a process that otherwise could lead to privacy breaches.

    Both the Ledger Nano X and Trezor Safe 5 are compatible with Vault12 Guard Inheritance. This addresses the seed phrase backup dilemma for any hardware wallet. It also makes less-secure backup methods, such as paper or steel plates, unnecessary.

    Comparison of Ledger Nano X and Trezor Safe 5

    Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X Wallets: Which is right for you?

    The right wallet for you depends on your design preferences and price sensitivity

    When choosing hardware wallets, many crypto users base their decisions on day-to-day asset management needs and perceived device security. However, savvy crypto users first consider a wallet's ability to handle long-term security scenarios. Long-term security includes expected essentials like backup and recovery tools, and also often-overlooked features related to secure and fault-proof third-party recovery. You can think of third-party recovery as your ability to allow crypto assets to be inherited by successors. Successful crypto users require a comprehensive security strategy for the full life cycle of crypto assets. This article will help you achieve that.

    Let's jump into helping you understand the pros and cons of the Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X hardware wallets for day-to-day activities, as well as their potential to safeguard the long-term security and longevity of your assets.

    Overview

    The Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X both provide a wide variety of reliable security features and support a broad spectrum of cryptocurrencies, making them suitable for diverse crypto portfolios. However, several differences are clear:

    Ledger Stax

    • Mobile-Centric Usability: Designed with mobility in mind, the Ledger Stax features wireless connectivity options like Bluetooth and NFC, making it highly compatible with mobile platforms. Stax also has a longer battery life (up to 10 hours versus Nano X's 5).
    • Premium Design: Its unconventionally large display enhances readability, though it comes with slightly slower responsiveness.
    • Price Point: Positioned as a premium product, its cost reflects its advanced features and sleek design.

    Ledger Nano X

    • Mobile-Centric Usability: Offers Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable, at least with smartphones.
    • Design: A bit more compact than Stax. User input is via buttons, not touchscreen.
    • Price Point: Not so overpriced.

    In terms of crypto asset longevity features, such as backup, recovery, and crypto inheritance, both devices provide industry-standard and proprietary options with certain trade-offs, as well as compatibility with third-party solutions like Vault12 Guard for succession planning scenarios.

    The decision between the two will likely hinge on individual preferences for the target platform (mobile or desktop), and should take into account the planned frequency of use.

    Approach to comparison

    When choosing the best hardware wallet for cryptocurrency security, you may wonder:

    • Which is better, the Ledger Stax or the Ledger Nano X?
    • How easy to use are these wallets?
    • How do their security features compare?
    • Do these wallets have vulnerabilities, and have they been hacked?
    • What happens if your wallet is lost or stolen?
    • How do these wallets accomodate user errors, and complex scenarios like inheritance of crypto assets?

    This article compares important characteristics for these two popular wallets. We’ll break down the strengths and weaknesses of each, focusing on security, ease of use, and backup and recovery methods.

    By the end of this comparison, you’ll clearly understand which wallet is right for you, as well as how to recover your crypto assets in case of accidents.

    What happens if your wallet is lost or stolen?

    Wise wallet owners recognize the critical importance of crypto recovery before they find themselves in an unexpected bind! That's why it's important to understand the fundamental topic of crypto asset longevity, including features such as backup, recovery, and inheritance for crypto assets. These considerations are central to long-term planning.

    Technical security is paramount, but in the world of crypto, the degree to which backup and recovery solutions are foolproof for users is at least equally important. Here are the backup and recovery options for these two wallets:

    Ledger Stax

    Ledger Nano X

    Backup & Recovery methods

    Recommends Recovery Seed Phrase be written on paper, or engraved onto metallic plates.

    Recommends Recovery Seed Phrase be written on paper, or engraved onto metallic plates.

    Optional paid subscription

    Ledger Recover, a centralized 3rd-party cloud service, highly criticized by the crypto community. Clouds are not safe — especially when operated by multiple 3rd parties.

    Ledger Recover, a centralized 3rd-party cloud service, highly criticized by the crypto community. Clouds are not safe — especially when operated by multiple 3rd parties.

    How do these wallets handle Crypto Inheritance?

    Crypto Inheritance Features

    Currently, most hardware wallets, including the Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X, lack any features for establishing and managing crypto inheritance. This gap presents a challenge for users who want to be sure that their crypto assets can be transferred to their heirs.

    Ledger Stax

    Ledger Nano X

    Backup

    - Written only
    - Optional 3rd party KYC-based cloud

    - Written only

    - Optional 3rd party KYC-based cloud

    Inheritance

    No

    No

    Decentralized backup with Vault12

    Yes

    Yes

    Inheritance Management with Vault12

    Yes

    Yes

    Backup and recovery differentiators

    Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X both have similar recovery service Disadvantages:

    • The optional Ledger Recover backup service is a paid service provided by three corporations that each hold parts of the user’s seed phrase in a Cloud. This introduces risks, as the seed phrase could potentially be accessed via subpoena; or business partners could terminate agreements or become involved in lawsuits that result in locked data or resources (like, for example, Gemini and Genesis). These scenarios contain multiple potential points of failure, and should be taken into account.
    • Very important detail: The terms of the optional Ledger Recover service do not mention support for inheritance, meaning any unfortunate accident related to the user will make crypto assets unrecoverable for his or her successors. Ledger itself suggests using 3rd-party crypto inheritance services for those purposes.

    Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X both have similar recovery service Advantages:

    • People have different preferences. If a user is comfortable trusting a bank with their assets, they may also feel confident using Ledger Recover for securing their seed phrase backup (even though Ledger is not providing the entire cloud backup solution).
    Image of user holding a mobile phone and using Ledger Stax as FIDO U2F security keyUser holding a mobile phone and using Ledger Stax as FIDO U2F security key

    How easy are these crypto wallets to use?

    Let's compare the key aspects of both wallets side by side, and then summarize what really stands out for user convenience:

    Ledger Stax

    Ledger Nano X

    Display

    3,7” black and white E Ink,
    672 x 400 pixels

    1” Monochrome OLED,
    128 x 64 pixels

    Input interface

    Touchscreen

    2 click buttons

    Cable

    USB-C

    USB-C

    Wireless

    Bluetooth,
    NFC

    Bluetooth

    Companion Apps

    macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS

    macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS

    3rd party wallets and dapps support

    50+

    50+

    Password manager & 2FA

    FIDO2 2FA & Passkeys,
    Password Manager

    FIDO2 2FA & Passkeys,Password Manager

    Product size & weight

    85 x 54 x 6 mm / 45g

    72 x 19 x 12 mm / 34g

    Convenience features

    Battery (Up to 10 hours in use)

    Battery (Up to 5 hours in use)

    Number of supported coins

    5,500+

    5,500+

    Price

    $399

    $149

    Crypto wallet user experience differences

    Ledger Nano X with Smartphone UXLedger Nano X with Smartphone UX

    Ledger Stax UX Disadvantages:

    • The display has a noticeable response delay due to the "E Ink" touchscreen technology, and could be irritating.
    • Not all apps are ported to Stax yet. Even the native Passwords app still has no release date identified as of this article's publish date, so check in advance whether your favorite network/coin is supported.
    • Extremely expensive. The value in Stax is more about design, rather than practical aspects.

    Ledger Stax UX Advantages:

    • Huge informative display and "Clear Signing" allows you to review and confirm all transaction details directly on Ledger Stax and in a human-readable language before they are signed and sent. This enhances security and ensures that you see exactly what you are approving in a secure and tamper-proof manner.
    • Offers Bluetooth connectivity as well as NFC — works with or without a cable, at least with smartphones.
    • Wide support for third-party wallets and dapps, allowing the Ledger Stax to sign transactions directly in MetaMask, Uniswap, and other platforms without relying on Ledger Live software. This is a huge advantage for DeFi users.

    Ledger Nano X Disadvantages:

    • The display is literally the size of a coin: very uncomfortable to use.
    • Requires two-handed operation, making it difficult to use with a phone simultaneously — contrary to some misleading ads.
    • The buttons are stiff, making operations cumbersome.
    • No NFC.

    Ledger Nano X Advantages:

    • A bit more compact than Stax while also offering Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable, at least with smartphones.
    • Wide support for third-party wallets and dapps, allowing the Ledger Nano X to sign transactions directly in MetaMask, Uniswap, and other platforms without relying on Ledger Live software. This is a huge advantage for DeFi users.
    • Not so overpriced.

    How do these wallets' security features compare?

    Now, we dive deeper into the core specification of every hardware wallet: security features.

    Ledger StaxLedger Nano X
    PIN-code 4 - 8 digits 4 - 8 digits
    BIP39 Passphrase Yes Yes
    Open-source Partial Partial
    Secure Element Yes Yes
    Multisignature Yes Yes

    Crypto wallet security feature differentiators

    Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X both have similar security feature Disadvantages:

    • Critical components like the Secure Element and its operating system are closed-source. This raises concerns, especially after the controversial introduction of the Ledger Recover backup service, which challenged the previous assumption that the Secure Element could never transmit the recovery seed phrase outside the hardware wallet.

    Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X both have similar security feature Advantages:

    • Includes a Secure Element, giving Ledger devices a strong reputation for withstanding physical attacks. This is important for users who prefer not to complicate their security with BIP39 passphrases, prioritizing ease of use.
    • Clear Signing is also a security feature.

    Have there been vulnerabilities or hacks of these wallets?

    There have been some vulnerabilities and hacks associated with Ledger products in the past — let's consider their "hack history." While relatively secure, most crypto wallets — even hardware wallets — can not provide perfect security, and are routinely subject to malware, supply chain, and firmware vulnerabilities. Here are some recent notable incidents:


    Ledger Vulnerabilities:

    1. The Connect Kit Attack (2023): The Connect Kit breach was discovered by the security teams of Ledger.
    2. Ledger User Data Breach (2020): A major data breach exposed the personal information of thousands of customers, leading to phishing attacks.
    3. Another User Data Breach (2021): Ledger announced on Twitter that it has been targeted by rogue Shopify team members who exported over 200 merchants’ customer databases.
    4. Ledger Live (2020): Users were exposed to basic double spending attacks, amplified double spending attacks, and DoS attacks without user consent.
    5. Potential Supply Chain Attack Vulnerability (2020): Kraken Security Labs Identifies Supply Chain Attacks Against Ledger Wallets.

    No software is perfect, and no wallet is ideal. However, some designs have been compromised more than others.

    Summary of Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X Comparison

    The Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X both provide a respectable set of security measures, and support a broad spectrum of cryptocurrencies, making them suitable for diverse crypto portfolios.

    The Ledger Stax is more mobile-friendly, and offers a balance of security and convenience features at a very premium price. It offers an unconventionally large display with delayed response, with the advantage of wireless connectivity options like Bluetooth.

    On the other hand, the Ledger Nano X, at a lower price point, is still mobile-friendly and offers a balance of security and convenience features. It offers a small display and uncomfortable input, but still has the advantages of a Secure Element and wireless connectivity options like Bluetooth.

    The decision between the two will likely hinge on individual preferences for the target user interface with screen, and should take into account the planned frequency of use.

    Whichever you choose, remember to add crypto inheritance to your choice of wallet to ensure the long-term safety of your digital assets. Both the Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X are compatible with Vault12 Guard Inheritance planning.


    Vault12 Guard: a decentralized solution for Crypto Inheritance

    Vault12 is the pioneer in Crypto Inheritance Management, and delivers an easy-to-use and secure method for assigning a legacy contact to your crypto wallets. This enables you to pass on your wallet seed phrases and private keys for all types of digital assets to future generations. Vault12 Guard is designed for everyday people, yet strong enough for Crypto OGs.

    Vault12 Guard has a uniquely-secure design. Utilizing advanced encryption and decentralized storage, it ensures that crypto assets are not only safe but also transferable under predefined conditions, filling a critical need unmet by most traditional hardware wallets. Vault12 Guard applies a hybrid approach of software fused with the hardware-based Secure Element of phone devices (The Secure Enclave for iOS devices, and Strongbox for Google devices). Vault12 Guard's decentralized design reduces possible points of failure. Nothing is stored on cloud servers or Vault12 servers, and no assets are stored on local devices, making them less of a target.

    From a user perspective, the Vault12 Guard app asks users to appoint one or more people (or mobile devices) as Guardians. The designated Guardians are entrusted to protect the user's comprehensive collection of wallet seed phrases and private keys, which are safely stored within a decentralized digital Vault. Its simple, user-friendly workflow removes the necessity for regularly revising wallet inventories or modifying instructions for your lawyers — a process that otherwise could lead to privacy breaches.

    Both the Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X are compatible with Vault12 Guard Inheritance. This addresses the seed phrase backup dilemma for any hardware wallet. It also makes less-secure backup methods, such as paper or steel plates, unnecessary.

    Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X Wallets: Which is right for you?

    MetaMask browser extension

    Browser extension, Version 1.0.10

    Welcome to this guide on securely setting up a MetaMask wallet. This guide focuses on the security choices you can make when setting up your MetaMask wallet; if you are looking for the official setup guide, please click here.

    MetaMask is your entry point to the world of Ethereum - a blockchain platform designed for running apps and smart contracts.

    This guide is focused on the MetaMask browser extension. Read our iOS and Android guides.

    Keep reading...Show less
    MetaMask browser extension

    Ledger Stax and Trezor Model T: two strong wallets compared

    The right wallet for you depends on your usage patterns and design preferences

    When choosing hardware wallets, many crypto users base their decisions on day-to-day asset management needs and perceived device security. However, savvy crypto users first consider a wallet's ability to handle long-term security scenarios. Long-term security includes expected essentials like backup and recovery tools, and also often-overlooked features related to secure and fault-proof third-party recovery. You can think of third-party recovery as your ability to allow crypto assets to be inherited by successors. Successful crypto users require a comprehensive security strategy for the full life cycle of crypto assets. This article will help you achieve that.

    Let's jump into helping you understand the pros and cons of the Ledger Stax and Trezor Model T for day-to-day activities, as well as their potential to safeguard the long-term security and longevity of your assets.

    Overview

    The Ledger Stax and Trezor Model T both provide a wide variety of reliable security features and support a broad spectrum of cryptocurrencies, making them suitable for diverse crypto portfolios. However, several differences are clear:

    Ledger Stax

    • Mobile-Centric Usability: Designed with mobility in mind, the
    • Ledger Stax features wireless connectivity options like Bluetooth and
    • NFC, making it highly compatible with mobile platforms.
    • Premium Design: Its unconventionally large display enhances readability, though it comes with slower responsiveness included.
    • Price Point: Positioned as a premium product, its cost reflects its advanced features and sleek design

    Trezor Model T

    • Mobile-Centric Usability: No Bluetooth connectivity. iOS app is view-only.
    • General Usability: Smaller set of wallets, coins, and apps.
    • Design: The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences.
    • Price Point: More affordable.

    In terms of crypto asset longevity features, such as backup, recovery, and crypto inheritance, both devices provide industry-standard and proprietary options with certain trade-offs, as well as compatibility with third-party solutions like Vault12 Guard for succession planning scenarios.

    The decision between the two will likely hinge on individual preferences for the target platform (mobile or desktop), and should take into account the planned frequency of use.

    Approach to comparison

    When choosing the best hardware wallet for cryptocurrency security, you may wonder:

    • Which is better, the Ledger Stax or the Trezor Model T?
    • How easy to use are these wallets?
    • How do their security features compare?
    • Do these wallets have vulnerabilities, and have they been hacked?
    • What happens if your wallet is lost or stolen?
    • How do these wallets accomodate user errors, and complex scenarios like inheritance of crypto assets?

    This article compares important characteristics for these two popular wallets. We’ll break down the strengths and weaknesses of each, focusing on security, ease of use, and backup and recovery methods.

    By the end of this comparison, you’ll clearly understand which wallet is right for you, as well as how to recover your crypto assets in case of accidents.

    What happens if your wallet is lost or stolen?

    Wise wallet owners recognize the critical importance of crypto recovery before they find themselves in an unexpected bind! That's why it's important to understand the fundamental topic of crypto asset longevity, including features such as backup, recovery, and inheritance for crypto assets. These considerations are central to long-term planning.

    Technical security is paramount, but in the world of crypto, the degree to which backup and recovery solutions are foolproof for users is at least equally important. Here are the backup and recovery options for these two wallets:

    Ledger Stax

    Trezor Model T

    Backup & Recovery methods

    Recommends Recovery Seed Phrase be written on paper, or engraved onto metallic plates.

    Recommends Recovery Seed Phrase be written on paper, or engraved onto metallic plates.

    Optional paid subscription

    Ledger Recover, a centralized 3rd-party cloud service, highly criticized by the crypto community. Clouds are not safe — especially when operated by multiple 3rd parties.

    No.

    How do these wallets handle Crypto Inheritance?

    Crypto Inheritance Features

    Currently, most hardware wallets, including the Ledger Stax and Trezor Model T, lack any features for establishing and managing crypto inheritance. This gap presents a challenge for users who want to be sure that their crypto assets can be transferred to their heirs.

    Ledger Stax

    Trezor Model T

    Backup

    - Written only
    - Optional 3rd party KYC-based cloud

    - Written only

    - Manual sharing of shards

    Inheritance

    No

    No

    Decentralized backup with Vault12

    Yes

    Yes

    Inheritance Management with Vault12

    Yes

    Yes

    Backup and recovery differentiators

    Ledger Stax Recovery service Disadvantages:

    • The optional Ledger Recover backup service is a paid service provided by three corporations that each hold parts of the user’s seed phrase in a Cloud. This introduces risks, as the seed phrase could potentially be accessed via subpoena; business partners could terminate agreements or become involved in lawsuits that result in locked data or resources (like, for example, Gemini and Genesis); and there are multiple potential points of failure.
    • Very important detail: The terms of the optional Ledger Recover service do not mention support for inheritance, meaning any unfortunate accident related to the user will make crypto assets unrecoverable for his or her successors. Ledger itself suggests using 3rd-party crypto inheritance services for those purposes.

    Ledger Stax Recovery service Advantages:

    • People have different preferences. If a user is comfortable trusting a bank with their assets, they may also feel confident using Ledger Recover for securing their seed phrase backup (even though Ledger is not providing the complete cloud backup solution).

    Trezor Model T backup Disadvantages:

    • Trezor has a Multishare backup service, but it is fully manual, and challenging to maintain. The user is responsible for generating, distributing, and keeping track of the encrypted shards.

    Trezor Model T backup Advantages:

    • Trezor does offer a Multishare backup option for those who are able and willing to set it up.

    How easy are these crypto wallets to use?

    Let's compare the key aspects of both wallets side by side, and then summarize what really stands out for user convenience:

    Ledger Stax

    Trezor Model T

    Display

    3,7” black and white E Ink,
    672 x 400 pixels

    1.54" Color LCD,
    240 x 240 pixels

    Input interface

    Touchscreen

    Touchscreen

    Cable

    USB-C

    USB, MicroSD card slot

    Wireless

    Bluetooth 5.2,
    NFC

    No

    Companion Apps

    macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS

    macOS, Windows, Linux, Android
    iOS (View-only)

    3rd party wallets and dapps support

    50+

    9+

    Password manager & 2FA

    FIDO2 2FA & Passkeys,
    Password Manager

    FIDO2 2FA

    Product size & weight

    85 x 54 x 6 mm / 45g

    64 x 39 x 10 mm / 22g

    Convenience features

    Battery (10 hours of use),
    Magnetic dock

    Magnetic dock

    Number of supported coins

    5,500+

    1,600+

    Price

    $399

    $149

    Crypto wallet user experience differences

    User holding a mobile phone and using Ledger Stax as FIDO U2F security key

    User holding a mobile phone and using Ledger Stax as FIDO U2F security key

    Ledger Stax Disadvantages:

    • The display has a noticeable response delay due to the "E Ink" touchscreen technology, and could be irritating.
    • Not all apps are ported to Stax yet. Even the native Passwords app still has no release date identified as of this article's publish date, so check in advance whether your favorite network/coin is supported.
    • Extremely expensive. The value in Stax is more about design, rather than practical aspects.

    Ledger Stax Advantages:

    • Huge informative display and "Clear Signing" allows you to review and confirm all transaction details directly on Ledger Stax and in a human-readable language before they are signed and sent. This enhances security and ensures that you see exactly what you are approving in a secure and tamper-proof manner.
    • Offers Bluetooth connectivity as well as NFC — works with or without a cable, at least with smartphones.
    • Wide support for third-party wallets and dapps, allowing the Ledger Stax to sign transactions directly in MetaMask, Uniswap, and other platforms without relying on Ledger Live software. This is a huge advantage for DeFi users.

    Trezor Model T Disadvantages:

    • No wireless connectivity: you always have to use a cable.
    • iOS is a balance view-only app, so you can't send transactions from iOS.

    Trezor Model T Advantages:

    • The display is much more convenient to work with on a regular basis, and easy to read.
    • The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences on Trezor Model T — you can use it without any discomfort.

    How do these wallets' security features compare?

    Now, we dive deeper into the core specification of every hardware wallet: security features.

    Ledger StaxTrezor Model T
    PIN-code 4 - 8 digits up to 50 digits
    BIP39 Passphrase Yes Yes
    Open-source Partial Full
    Secure Element Yes No
    Multisignature Yes Yes

    Crypto wallet security feature differentiators

    Ledger Stax security Disadvantages:

    • Critical components like the Secure Element and its operating system are closed-source. This has raised concerns, especially after the controversial introduction of the Ledger Recover backup service, which challenged the assumption that the Secure Element could never transmit the recovery seed phrase outside the hardware wallet.

    Ledger Stax security Advantages:

    • Includes a Secure Element, giving Ledger devices a strong reputation for withstanding physical attacks. This is important for users who prefer not to complicate their security with BIP39 passphrases, prioritizing ease of use.
    • Clear Signing is also a security feature.

    Trezor Model T security Disadvantages:

    • Lacks a Secure Element, making it resistant to physical attacks only if a BIP39 passphrase is used. This is a significant drawback in both convenience and its ability to be fault-proof.

    Trezor Model T security Advantages:

    • Fully open-source software and hardware. This minimizes third-party risks, and avoids any need to rely on trust.
    • Allows for longer PIN codes, which might appeal to particularly cautious users.

    Have there been vulnerabilities or hacks of these wallets?

    There have been vulnerabilities and hacks associated with both the Ledger and Trezor products, however given Stax is very new we will cover it's manufacturer's hacks history.

    Far from delivering uncompromised security, these wallets are routinely subject to malware, supply chain, and firmware vulnerabilities. Here are some recent notable incidents:

    Ledger Vulnerabilities:

    1. The Connect Kit Attack (2023): The Connect Kit breach was discovered by the security teams of Ledger.
    2. Ledger User Data Breach (2020): A major data breach exposed the personal information of thousands of customers, leading to phishing attacks.
    3. Another User Data Breach (2021): Ledger announced on Twitter that it has been targeted by rogue Shopify team members who exported over 200 merchants’ customer databases.
    4. Ledger Live (2020): Users were exposed to basic double spending attacks, amplified double spending attacks, and DoS attacks without user consent.
    5. Potential Supply Chain Attack Vulnerability (2020): Kraken Security Labs Identifies Supply Chain Attacks Against Ledger Wallets.

    Trezor Model T Vulnerabilities:

    1. Ability to Physically Hack Trezor T Wallet (2023): Crypto Security Firm Unciphered Claims Ability to Physically Hack Trezor T Wallet
    2. Five Reported Vulnerabilities in Two Models of Trezor Hardware Wallets (2019): Ledger’s Attack Lab has found five vulnerabilities in hardware wallets of its direct competitor Trezor.
    3. Kraken Identifies Critical Flaw in Trezor Hardware Wallets (2020): Kraken Security Labs has devised a way to extract seeds from both cryptocurrency hardware wallets offered from industry leader Trezor, the Trezor One and Trezor Model T.
    No software is perfect, and no wallet is ideal. However, some designs have been compromised more than others.

    Summary of Ledger Stax and Trezor Model T Comparison

    The Ledger Stax and Trezor Model T both provide a respectable set of security measures, and support a broad spectrum of cryptocurrencies, making them suitable for diverse crypto portfolios.

    The Ledger Stax is very mobile-friendly, and offers a balance of security and convenience features at a very premium price. It offers a big, but unconventional display and with delayed input, but with the advantages of a Secure Element and wireless connectivity options like Bluetooth.

    On the other hand, the Trezor Model T, at a much lower price, boasts a fully open-source framework, larger display with colors, and touchscreen interface for enhanced user interaction, but with reduced security and convenience from not having a Secure Element and working only with USB connections the offer sounds non-attractive.

    The decision between the two will likely hinge on individual preferences for the target platform (mobile or desktop), and should take into account the planned frequency of use.

    Whichever you choose, remember to add crypto inheritance to your choice of wallet to ensure the long-term safety of your digital assets.


    Vault12 Guard: a decentralized solution for Crypto Inheritance

    Vault12 is the pioneer in Crypto Inheritance Management, and delivers an easy-to-use and secure method for assigning a legacy contact to your crypto wallets. This enables you to pass on your wallet seed phrases and private keys for all types of digital assets to future generations. Vault12 Guard is designed for everyday people, yet strong enough for Crypto OGs.

    Vault12 Guard has a uniquely-secure design. Utilizing advanced encryption and decentralized storage, it ensures that crypto assets are not only safe but also transferable under predefined conditions, filling a critical need unmet by most traditional hardware wallets. Vault12 Guard applies a hybrid approach of software fused with the hardware-based Secure Element of phone devices (The Secure Enclave for iOS devices, and Strongbox for Google devices). Vault12 Guard's decentralized design reduces possible points of failure. Nothing is stored on cloud servers or Vault12 servers, and no assets are stored on local devices, making them less of a target.

    From a user perspective, the Vault12 Guard app asks users to appoint one or more people (or mobile devices) as Guardians. The designated Guardians are entrusted to protect the user's comprehensive collection of wallet seed phrases and private keys, which are safely stored within a decentralized digital Vault. Its simple, user-friendly workflow removes the necessity for regularly revising wallet inventories or modifying instructions for your lawyers — a process that otherwise could lead to privacy breaches.

    Both the Ledger Stax and Trezor Model T are compatible with Vault12 Guard Inheritance. This addresses the seed phrase backup dilemma for any hardware wallet. It also makes less-secure backup methods, such as paper or steel plates, unnecessary.

    How to choose between the Ledger Stax and Trezor Safe 5 Wallets

    The right wallet for you depends on your mobility needs, design preferences, and price sensitivity

    When choosing hardware wallets, many crypto users base their decisions on day-to-day asset management needs and perceived device security. However, savvy crypto users first consider a wallet's ability to handle long-term security scenarios. Long-term security includes expected essentials like backup and recovery tools, and also often-overlooked features related to secure and fault-proof third-party recovery. You can think of third-party recovery as your ability to allow crypto assets to be inherited by successors. Successful crypto users require a comprehensive security strategy for the full life cycle of crypto assets. This article will help you achieve that.

    Let's jump into helping you understand the pros and cons of the Ledger Stax and Trezor Safe 5 hardware wallets for day-to-day activities, as well as their potential to safeguard the long-term security and longevity of your assets.



    Overview

    The Ledger Stax and Trezor Safe 5 both provide a wide variety of reliable security features and support a broad spectrum of cryptocurrencies, making them suitable for diverse crypto portfolios. However, several differences are clear:

    Ledger Stax

    • Mobile-Centric Usability: Designed with mobility in mind, the Ledger Stax features wireless connectivity options like Bluetooth, making it highly compatible with mobile platforms.
    • Premium Design: Its unconventionally large display enhances readability, though it comes with slightly slower responsiveness.
    • Price Point: Positioned as a premium product, its cost reflects its advanced features and sleek design.

    Trezor Safe 5

    • Open-Source Transparency: Built on an NDA-free framework (full disclosure), Trezor Safe 5 emphasizes trust through transparency, appealing to users who value open-source security.
    • Simplified Connectivity: Limited to USB connections, it offers reliable functionality for desktop and Android users only.
    • Affordable Access: At a much lower price point, it delivers solid security and usability without the premium cost.

    In terms of crypto asset longevity features, such as backup, recovery, and crypto inheritance, both devices provide industry-standard and proprietary options with certain trade-offs, as well as compatibility with third-party solutions like Vault12 Guard for succession planning scenarios.

    The decision between the two will likely hinge on individual preferences for the target platform (mobile or desktop), and should take into account the planned frequency of use.

    Approach to comparison

    When choosing the best hardware wallet for cryptocurrency security, you may wonder:

    • Which is better, the Ledger Stax or the Trezor Safe 5?
    • How easy to use are these wallets?
    • How do their security features compare?
    • Do these wallets have vulnerabilities, and have they been hacked?
    • What happens if your wallet is lost or stolen?
    • How do these wallets accomodate user errors, and complex scenarios like inheritance of crypto assets?

    This article compares important characteristics for these two popular wallets. We’ll break down the strengths and weaknesses of each, focusing on security, ease of use, and backup and recovery methods.

    By the end of this comparison, you’ll clearly understand which wallet is right for you, as well as how to recover your crypto assets in case of accidents.

    What happens if your wallet is lost or stolen?

    Wise wallet owners recognize the critical importance of crypto recovery before they find themselves in an unexpected bind! That's why it's important to understand the fundamental topic of crypto asset longevity, including features such as backup, recovery, and inheritance for crypto assets. These considerations are central to long-term planning.

    Technical security is paramount, but in the world of crypto, the degree to which backup and recovery solutions are foolproof for users is at least equally important. Here are the backup and recovery options for these two wallets:

    Ledger Stax

    Trezor Safe 5

    Backup & Recovery methods

    Recommends Recovery Seed Phrase be written on paper, or engraved onto metallic plates.

    Recommends Recovery Seed Phrase be written on paper, or engraved onto metallic plates.

    Optional paid subscription

    Ledger Recover, a centralized 3rd-party cloud service, highly criticized by the crypto community. Clouds are not safe — especially when operated by multiple 3rd parties.

    No.

    How do these wallets handle Crypto Inheritance?

    Crypto Inheritance Features

    Currently, most hardware wallets, including the Ledger Stax and Trezor Safe 5, lack any features for establishing and managing crypto inheritance. This gap presents a challenge for users who want to be sure that their crypto assets can be transferred to their heirs.

    Ledger Stax

    Trezor Safe 5

    Backup

    - Written only
    - Optional 3rd party KYC-based cloud

    - Written only

    - Manual sharing of shards

    Inheritance

    No

    No

    Decentralized backup with Vault12

    Yes

    Yes

    Inheritance Management with Vault12

    Yes

    Yes

    Backup and recovery differentiators

    Ledger Stax Recovery Disadvantages:

    • The optional Ledger Recover backup service is a paid service provided by three corporations that each hold parts of the user’s seed phrase in a Cloud. This introduces risks, as the seed phrase could potentially be accessed via subpoena; or business partners could terminate agreements or become involved in lawsuits that result in locked data or resources (like, for example, Gemini and Genesis). These scenarios contain multiple potential points of failure, and should be taken into account.
    • Very important detail: The terms of the optional Ledger Recover service do not mention support for inheritance, meaning any unfortunate accident related to the user will make crypto assets unrecoverable for his or her successors. Ledger itself suggests using 3rd-party crypto inheritance services for those purposes.

    Ledger Stax Recovery Advantages:

    • People have different preferences. If a user is comfortable trusting a bank with their assets, they may also feel confident using Ledger Recover for securing their seed phrase backup (even though Ledger is not providing the entire Cloud backup solution).

    Trezor Safe 5 Recovery Disadvantages:

    • Trezor has a Multishare backup service, but it is fully manual, and challenging to maintain. The user is responsible for generating, distributing, and keeping track of the encrypted shards.

    Trezor Safe 5 Recovery Advantages:

    • Trezor offers the Multishare backup option for those who are able and willing to set it up.

    How easy are these crypto wallets to use?

    Image of user holding a mobile phone and using Ledger Stax as FIDO U2F security key

    User holding a mobile phone and using Ledger Stax as FIDO U2F security key

    Let's compare the key aspects of both wallets side by side, and then summarize what really stands out for user convenience:

    Ledger Stax

    Trezor Safe 5

    Display

    3,7” black and white E Ink,
    672 x 400 pixels

    1.54" Color LCD,
    240 x 240 pixels

    Input interface

    Touchscreen

    Touchscreen, Haptic feedback

    Cable

    USB-C

    USB, MicroSD card slot

    Wireless

    Bluetooth 5.2

    No

    Companion Apps

    macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS

    macOS, Windows, Linux, Android
    iOS (View-only)

    3rd party wallets and dapps support

    50+

    9+

    Password manager & 2FA

    FIDO2 2FA & Passkeys,
    Password Manager

    FIDO2 2FA

    Product size & weight

    85 x 54 x 6 mm / 45g

    66 x 40 x 8 mm / 23g

    Convenience features

    Battery (Up to 10 hours in use)

    Magnetic dock

    Number of supported coins

    5,500+

    1,600+

    Price

    $399

    $165

     

    Image of Trezor Safe 5 wallet and desktop software

    Trezor Safe 5 wallet and desktop software

    Crypto wallet user experience differences

    Ledger Stax UX Disadvantages:

    • The display has a noticeable response delay due to the "E Ink" touchscreen technology, and could be irritating.
    • Not all apps are ported to Stax yet. Even the native Passwords app still has no release date identified as of this article's publish date, so check in advance whether your favorite network/coin is supported.
    • Extremely expensive. The value in Stax is more about design, rather than practical aspects.

    Ledger Stax UX Advantages:

    • Huge informative display and "Clear Signing" allows you to review and confirm all transaction details directly on Ledger Stax and in a human-readable language before they are signed and sent. This enhances security and ensures that you see exactly what you are approving in a secure and tamper-proof manner.
    • Offers Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable, at least with smartphones.
    • Wide support for third-party wallets and dapps, allowing the Ledger Stax to sign transactions directly in MetaMask, Uniswap, and other platforms without relying on Ledger Live software. This is a huge advantage for DeFi users.

    Trezor Safe 5 UX Disadvantages:

    • No wireless connectivity: you always have to use a cable.
    • iOS integration is view-only: you can watch your balance, but can't send transactions from iOS apps.

    Trezor Safe 5 UX Advantages:

    • The display is easy to read and convenient to use on a regular basis.
    • The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences on Trezor Safe 5 — you can use them without any discomfort.

    How do these wallets' security features compare?

    Now, we dive deeper into the core specification of every hardware wallet: security features.

    Ledger StaxTrezor Safe 5
    PIN-code 4 - 8 digits up to 50 digits
    BIP39 Passphrase Yes Yes
    Open-source Partial Full
    Secure Element Yes Yes, and it's NDA-free
    Multisignature Yes Yes

    Crypto wallet security feature differentiators

    Image of Trezor Safe 5 with a void sticker on it - security seal of genuineness

    Trezor Safe 5 with a void sticker on it - security seal of genuineness

    Ledger Stax Security Disadvantages:

    • Critical components like the Secure Element and its operating system are closed-source. This raises concerns, especially after the controversial introduction of the Ledger Recover backup service, which challenged the previous assumption that the Secure Element could never transmit the recovery seed phrase outside the hardware wallet.

    Ledger Stax Security Advantages:

    • Includes a Secure Element, giving Ledger devices a strong reputation for withstanding physical attacks. This is important for users who prefer not to complicate their security with BIP39 passphrases, instead prioritizing ease of use.
    • Clear Signing is also a security feature.

    Trezor Safe 5 Security Disadvantages:

    • Trezor does not fully rely on open-source software and hardware, but mitigates this limitation architecturally, so that the seed phrase is not touched by any closed-source software on the device.

    Trezor Safe 5 Security Advantages:

    • Along with this new flagship product, Trezor introduces Secure Element chips, raising the security bar. More importantly, its Secure Elements are "NDA-free," which is good: the chips are not bound by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) that could restrict Trezor from publicly discussing any security flaws.
    • The Secure Element is responsible for verifying device authenticity via secure boot protection, and for storing a part of the secret that is used to decrypt the recovery seed (but it never actually knows what your recovery seed is).
    • Allows for longer PIN codes, which might appeal to particularly cautious users.

    Have there been vulnerabilities or hacks of these wallets?

    Given that both of these products under review are very new, we will examine their manufacturers' histories of hacks. There have been vulnerabilities and hacks associated with both the Ledger and Trezor products.

    While relatively secure, most crypto wallets — even hardware wallets — can not provide perfect security, and are routinely subject to malware, supply chain, and firmware vulnerabilities. Here are some recent notable incidents:

    Ledger Vulnerabilities:

    1. The Connect Kit Attack (2023): The Connect Kit breach was discovered by the security teams of Ledger.
    2. Ledger User Data Breach (2020): A major data breach exposed the personal information of thousands of customers, leading to phishing attacks.
    3. Another User Data Breach (2021): Ledger announced on Twitter that it has been targeted by rogue Shopify team members who exported over 200 merchants’ customer databases.
    4. Ledger Live (2020): Users were exposed to basic double spending attacks, amplified double spending attacks, and DoS attacks without user consent.
    5. Potential Supply Chain Attack Vulnerability (2020): Kraken Security Labs Identifies Supply Chain Attacks Against Ledger Wallets.

    Trezor Vulnerabilities:

    1. Ability to Physically Hack Trezor T Wallet (2023): Crypto Security Firm Unciphered Claims Ability to Physically Hack Trezor T Wallet
    2. Five Reported Vulnerabilities in Two Models of Trezor Hardware Wallets (2019): Ledger’s Attack Lab has found five vulnerabilities in hardware wallets of its direct competitor Trezor.
    3. Kraken Identifies Critical Flaw in Trezor Hardware Wallets (2020): Kraken Security Labs has devised a way to extract seeds from both cryptocurrency hardware wallets offered from industry leader Trezor, the Trezor One and Trezor Model T.
    No software is perfect, and no wallet is ideal. However, some designs have been compromised more than others.

    Summary of Ledger Stax and Trezor Safe 5 Comparison

    The Ledger Stax and Trezor Safe 5 both provide a respectable set of security measures, and support a broad spectrum of cryptocurrencies, making them suitable for diverse crypto portfolios.

    The Ledger Stax is more mobile-friendly, and offers a balance of security and convenience features at a very premium price. It offers an unconventionally-large display with delayed response, with the advantage of wireless connectivity options like Bluetooth.

    On the other hand, the Trezor Safe 5, at a much lower price, boasts a more open-source and NDA-free framework, a reasonably-sized display with colors, and a touchscreen interface for enhanced user interaction. However, it has fewer convenience features: it works only with USB connections, and is missing iOS integration.

    The decision between the two will likely hinge on individual preferences for the target platform (mobile or desktop), and should take into account the planned frequency of use.

    Whichever you choose, remember to add crypto inheritance to your choice of wallet to ensure the long-term safety of your digital assets. Both the Ledger Stax and Trezor Safe 5 are compatible with Vault12 Guard Inheritance planning.


    Vault12 Guard: a decentralized solution for Crypto Inheritance

    Vault12 is the pioneer in Crypto Inheritance Management, and delivers an easy-to-use and secure method for assigning a legacy contact to your crypto wallets. This enables you to pass on your wallet seed phrases and private keys for all types of digital assets to future generations. Vault12 Guard is designed for everyday people, yet strong enough for Crypto OGs.

    Vault12 Guard has a uniquely-secure design. Utilizing advanced encryption and decentralized storage, it ensures that crypto assets are not only safe but also transferable under predefined conditions, filling a critical need unmet by most traditional hardware wallets. Vault12 Guard applies a hybrid approach of software fused with the hardware-based Secure Element of phone devices (The Secure Enclave for iOS devices, and Strongbox for Google devices). Vault12 Guard's decentralized design minimizes possible points of failure. Nothing is stored on Cloud servers or Vault12 servers, and no assets are stored on local devices, making them less of a target.

    From a user perspective, the Vault12 Guard app asks users to appoint one or more people (or mobile devices) as Guardians. The designated Guardians are entrusted to protect the user's comprehensive collection of wallet seed phrases and private keys, which are safely stored within a decentralized digital Vault. Its simple, user-friendly workflow removes the necessity for regularly revising wallet inventories or modifying instructions for your lawyers — a process that otherwise could lead to privacy breaches.

    Both the Ledger Stax and Trezor Safe 5 are compatible with Vault12 Guard Inheritance. This addresses the seed phrase backup dilemma for any hardware wallet. It also makes less-secure backup methods, such as paper or steel plates, unnecessary.

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