Note: It is not necessary to write down your recovery words as you have already created a wallet backup onto a microSD card when you initialised your BitBox02. This is an advanced feature.
Continue reading if you want to display your wallet recovery words (also called “mnemonic seed”) on your BitBox02 in order to write it on paper or punch it into metal.
What is a wallet backup & what are recovery words?
Modern cryptocurrency wallets calculate all keys from a single secret, the master seed. From that, an unlimited number of currencies, accounts and addresses can be derived. This means that you only need to back up the master seed once, and the whole wallet, including all future transactions, can be recovered from this backup.
This single secret is a very long random number. To make it easier to write it down, the secret number is encoded into 24 English recovery words:
- Words from a fixed and well-known list of 2048 words are used.
- The first four characters already identify each word uniquely, but writing the whole word adds better readability.
- An integrated consistency check during set-up of the wallet helps to detect mistakes.
How should I handle my recovery words?
To make sure that your recovery words are safe, follow these recommendations:
- Work in a private environment, don’t let anyone else see your recovery words and don’t spell them out loud.
- No digital picture, especially not with your smartphone.
- No online backup, like in a key manager or a cloud service.
- No photocopy, as all modern printers and copy machines are digital, store copies and print an identifying watermark every time they photocopy or print something.
- Never enter your recovery words on a computer.
- Also see: Where should I store my wallet backup?
How to display my recovery words?
- In the BitBoxApp sidebar click "Settings", then navigate to "Manage device" and click on "Show recovery words".
- You will then see the following warning, which you need to confirm in order to display your recovery words on your BitBox02.
- Next you will be asked to confirm that you want to display your recovery words by typing in your device password on the BitBox02.
- Once you have typed in your correct device password, your recovery words will be displayed on your BitBox02. You can use the touch buttons to navigate through the words.
- Please write down each word carefully.
- Next you will be asked to confirm your recovery words by selecting the correct word for each position from a choice of five (5) words.