How to remember private key and seed phrase

It’s a common myth that humans only use 10 percent of their brains. In an increasingly digitized world, however, memory skills are increasingly being untrained: the Internet creates a comfort zone in which the brain slumbers in permanent standby mode. There is always room for a seed phrase or maybe even the private key. Just a question of practice – and the right technique. Crypto as a brain teaser, so to speak.

Better safe than sorry

Those who invest in cryptocurrencies are usually also responsible for their access data. The top priority: Not your keys, not your coins – no coins without a key. The lifeline for crypto investors is the seed phrase, a random combination of 12 or 24 words that restores access to a wallet in an emergency. The words should be kept accordingly safe.

The basic rule is: double is better. The password is safe on a piece of paper, in a Word file or on a piece of metal. But to be on the safe side, it can’t hurt to use your own head.

Brain Wallet: The Art of Memorization

The art of memory, also known as mnemonics, offers various strategies for remembering words, numbers or letters. One of the most proven techniques: the loci method. Concepts are linked to a familiar place in the imagination, such as a shopping list with one’s own bathroom. The words on the shopping list are placed in the room one after the other: Bananas lie smashed in the sink, milk drips from the shower head, the packet of butter lies in the toilet. The weirder the better. This sets effective stimuli for long-term memory. With this method, it is important to set a specific route and always follow it in the same order.

If you have several wallets, the loci method can be extended to the entire apartment: each room for a seed phrase. Or one relies on a further development of the technology that Sherlock Holmes already knew how to use in his trickiest cases: the memory palace. A fictional “palace” is imagined with one or more corridors. Each corridor can lead past numerous rooms, with a term placed behind each door. Here, too, strong images anchor the concepts better in the mind: behind the first door, a monkey throws bananas, milk is raining behind the second, and the third doorknob is smeared with butter. For more abstract words or names, mnemonic help. The memory palace only works if you always walk the same path.

Supreme discipline: private key

As a sequence of 64 digits and letters, the private key is a particularly tough nut to crack, but it can be cracked bit by bit using the number-rhyme system, also known as the PEG method, and the alphabet method. The combination of letters and numbers is converted into a memorable story that can then be decoded again as a private key.

A rhyme is assigned to each digit. There are no limits to the imagination: rubbish for zero, leg for one, porridge for two – associations that come to mind first are suitable. Alternatively, the shapes of the numbers can also be assigned to specific images and symbols, 0 as an ice ball, 1 as a candle, 2 as a swan. You just have to choose a system. Finally, in the alphabet method, each letter is associated with an image: A for car, B for letter, C for cello.

If the beginning of a private key is E2163, a mnemonic could be: A donkey (E) and a swan (2) smoking a pipe (6) by candlelight (1) on a stool (3). The same applies here: abstruse stories are easier to remember. In the best case, all mnemonic sentences make up a coherent story. The method takes some practice, but once the system and history have been internalized, even a private key can be completely retrieved if necessary.