0 sats \ 0 replies \ @frostdragon 7 Nov 2023 \ on: How would you move your stack abroad? bitcoin
Traveling with all of your backups at once seems to be the focus of the challenge here, because a stolen or confiscated hardware wallet isn’t likely to be drained of funds before you’re able to transfer to a new wallet via your backup.
In the end, if it were me, I’d need to move funds to a new wallet.
My process would be: securely encrypt the seed phrase, store the seed phrase in a password manager, memorize the decryption key, and (possibly stenographically) store the decryption key in something physical I’m traveling with. Then, once I arrive safely, transfer funds to a new wallet and store the backup as I did before so that none of my funds are currently touching the internet in any way.
In other words, temporarily trust in cyber security but still air gap the decryption key (essentially enforcing a kind of MFA), and then go back to a pure air gapped set up.
I typically advise against keep any seed phrase in any digital form - but that's for long term storage. Using solid cyber security practices is an acceptable short term risk
If you use collaborative custody multisig, this is all significantly easier, and you don’t have to set up a new wallet - you’ll just have to take more than one trip. There’s literally ZERO risk in traveling with one wallet and backup at a time.