So you're hitting the road and starting to travel, or even moving permanently to another country. You want to take your Crypto cold wallet with you, but are worried about theft or intrusive actions by state, airport officials or anybody else, that if they discover your hard wallet, may require that you to disclose the contents of it. At the current time, Crypto is not considered to be money by many governments, and while just like bringing credit or debit cards with you to access your bank accounts anywhere is not illegal, the hard wallet should be considered the same, as it doesn't have the Crypto in it, just the address's to the blockchain. (somewhat like a debit card) but the rules are changing constantly. A few things that you can do to protect your assets on the road in your hard wallet are:
- when first setting up your Hard Wallet, create a hidden wallet. You can set up additional wallets for all the supported cryptocurrencies that have a unique private key. This feature is great, because the hidden wallets are invisible when your device get unlocked with the pincode or backup seed.
This means that someone that forces you to unlock your wallet or steals your backup seed won’t see your hidden wallets and will not be able to know or prove that you have any. Also when your device get seized you can unlock your default wallet and there is no way to prove that you have more funds in your hidden wallets. if it confiscated or held, just make a new one with your seeds (quickly!) This is a way to make your Crypto really unseizable!
How does it work?
The backup seed on a hardware wallet is a row of 24 english words. this seed is created by encryption of the private key. When you create a hidden wallet, you simply add one word (the pass phrase) to the default backup seed and a new private key is created.
What you can do is create a hidden wallet with the bulk of your Crypto in it, and have your front wallet have only lets say, $800 in it. if you are forced to open it up to be viewed, that's all that would be seen.
you can also create duplicates of your hard wallet, leave one at home (hidden safely!) and take your spare with you. In order to make two or more hardware wallets duplicates of each other, all you have to do is import the recovery seed from one hardware wallet into another hardware wallet.
have a wallet on your phone with just enough Crypto to not be an issue, but take your hard wallet seed with you, and pick up another cold wallet when you get to your location and create a duplicate of your original.
Traveling with your seeds, here are some of the ways to protect them.
write them down and split it up into 3 or 4 parts that you distribute around your person & luggage
keep half on your phone, half on paper ( hiding it in plain sight, like in a novel or magazine)
create a blockplate it's a bit confusing at first, but it does make some sense.
an if you're really good, memorize them ( me--not a chance!)
Hope this helps and if there are any other methods or systems out there let me know!
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