12 June 2025
A client brought in a card written with a gel pen in 2020. By 2025, the ink on the folded crease had faded to grey. Words six and eleven were guessable only with magnification and good light.
Graphite versus ink
Pencil graphite bonds mechanically with paper fibres. It does not fade with UV exposure the way dye-based inks do. For recovery material intended to sit in a drawer for fifteen years, pencil on acid-free paper is the conservative choice.
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3 April 2025
Holders often ask whether two copies in the same safe count as redundancy. Our answer: it depends on what failure you are protecting against.
Fire and flood versus theft
Two copies in one fire-rated safe protect against a single house fire but not against a burglary where the entire safe is taken. Conversely, splitting copies between home and a bank safe-deposit box protects against local disaster but introduces access delays and a third party in the chain of custody.
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18 February 2025
BIP39 words were chosen to be distinct in sound, but human ears are imperfect. In our sessions, homophone errors appear more often than random typos.
Common pairs we encounter
- “alien” / “align” — clients who dictate to a partner while writing
- “barely” / “barrel” — especially over phone calls
- “jelly” / “jealous” — the case that inspired our three-notebook client story
- “piece” / “peace” — English-first holders writing quickly
Why checksums do not always save you
An invalid checksum flags an error somewhere in the phrase. But if you swap one valid BIP39 word for another valid one, the checksum may still fail — which tells you something is wrong but not which word. Word-by-word comparison across copies is the only reliable method.
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