Backup Adequacy as an Interpretation Problem
Seed Phrase Backup Adequacy and Verification Gaps
This memo is published by CustodyStress, an independent Bitcoin custody stress test that produces reference documents for individuals, families, and professionals.
What Good Enough Asks
A person writes down a seed phrase during wallet setup. The words go onto paper. The paper goes into storage. Time passes. A question appears: is my seed phrase backup good enough? The person has a backup. The person does not know if the backup meets some standard of adequacy. The person searches for clarity on a question that has no clear answer.
What follows covers how doubt about seed phrase adequacy emerges after setup when correctness cannot be independently proven. The backup exists. Whether it is good enough depends on interpretations that the backup itself cannot provide. Adequacy becomes a belief rather than a measurable state.
What Good Enough Asks
The question is my seed phrase backup good enough contains several questions inside it. Is the backup correct? Is the backup complete? Is the backup stored in the right way? Is the backup protected from the right threats? Will the backup work when needed?
Each of these questions points to a different concern. Correctness asks whether the words were written accurately. Completeness asks whether all necessary information was captured. Storage asks whether the physical medium and location serve the purpose. Protection asks whether relevant risks are addressed. Function asks whether recovery will succeed.
The phrase good enough implies a threshold. Below the threshold, the backup fails. Above the threshold, the backup succeeds. But no standard defines where the threshold sits. Different people with different holdings, different life situations, and different risk tolerances would draw the line in different places.
The question seeks an external judgment that the backup meets some standard. The standard does not exist in any fixed form. The backup cannot answer whether it is good enough because adequacy is not a property of the backup itself.
Correctness Without Confirmation
A seed phrase backup is correct if the words written down match the words generated by the wallet. The person wrote the words during setup. The person believes they wrote them correctly. But the act of writing does not include confirmation of correctness.
The wallet showed words on a screen. The person copied them to paper. The wallet did not verify that the paper matches the screen. Some wallets ask the person to confirm words by selecting them from a list. This confirms the person saw the words correctly in that moment. It does not confirm the paper record matches.
A person could have made an error while copying. A letter could be wrong. A word could be misspelled. Two words could be swapped. The error would not be visible by looking at the backup. The backup shows words on paper. It does not show whether those words match what the wallet generated.
The doubt about correctness has no natural resolution. The person believes the backup is correct because they tried to write it correctly. Belief is not the same as proof. The backup sits in storage carrying the person's belief but not the person's certainty.
Completeness and Missing Context
A seed phrase backup may be incomplete even when all the words are present. The words generate keys. But the words alone may not generate the right keys for the specific wallet configuration in use.
Some wallets use a passphrase in addition to the seed words. The passphrase changes which keys the words produce. A backup with all twenty-four words but no passphrase is incomplete for a wallet that uses a passphrase. The backup looks complete. It is not.
Some wallets use non-standard derivation paths. The same seed words can produce different addresses depending on which derivation path the wallet uses. A backup that records the words but not the derivation path may be incomplete for recovery purposes.
Some setups involve multiple pieces. A multisignature wallet may require multiple seeds. A backup of one seed is incomplete for a wallet that requires two or three. The single backup looks like a backup. It cannot recover the wallet alone.
The person asking is my backup good enough may not know what completeness requires. The backup looks like a backup. Whether it contains everything needed for recovery depends on details the person may not remember or may never have recorded.
Storage as an Open Question
A backup stored on paper in a drawer is stored. Whether that storage is good enough depends on questions the storage itself does not answer.
Is the paper durable? Paper degrades over time. Humidity, heat, sunlight, and insects can damage paper. A backup that is readable today may not be readable in ten years. The person looking at the backup now cannot see how it will age.
Is the location stable? A drawer in a home is accessible. It is also subject to whatever happens to the home. Fire, flood, theft, or simply moving to a new residence all affect what happens to items in drawers. The backup's adequacy depends on the location's future, which cannot be known.
Is the location findable? The person knows where the backup is stored. Whether others can find it depends on whether the location is documented or obvious. A backup in an unexpected place may be unfindable to someone who does not know to look there.
Storage adequacy is not a property of the backup. It is a property of the relationship between the backup, its environment, and time. The backup cannot tell the person whether its storage is good enough because storage adequacy unfolds across years that have not happened yet.
Threats Without Boundaries
A backup can be good enough against some threats and not good enough against others. The question is my backup good enough does not specify which threats matter.
A paper backup in a fireproof safe addresses fire risk. It may not address flood risk if the safe is in a basement. It may not address theft risk if someone knows the safe exists and can access it. It may not address the risk of the person forgetting the safe combination.
Different people face different threats. A person in a flood zone faces different risks than a person in a fire-prone area. A person who lives alone faces different risks than a person with many visitors. A person who travels frequently faces different risks than a person who rarely leaves home.
The backup cannot know which threats the person faces. The backup exists as a physical object. Whether that object is adequately protected depends on a threat model the backup does not contain. The person asking about adequacy may not have a clear threat model either.
Confidence Decay Over Time
A person finishes setting up a wallet and writing down the backup. In that moment, the person has confidence. The backup is fresh. The memory of writing it is clear. The person knows what they did and why.
Time passes. The confidence begins to decay. The person has not looked at the backup in months. The memory of the setup process fades. Small doubts appear. Did I write it correctly? Did I include everything? Is it still where I put it?
The backup has not changed. The paper sits in storage exactly as it was placed. But the person's relationship to the backup has changed. Certainty has become uncertainty. Confidence has become doubt.
The question is my seed phrase backup good enough often emerges during this decay period. The backup was good enough when the person created it, or at least the person believed so. Now the person is not sure. The doubt is not about the backup. The doubt is about the person's fading memory of the backup.
Scenarios That Surface Adequacy Doubt
A person reads a news story about someone losing bitcoin because their backup failed. The person thinks about their own backup. The person does not know if their backup would have the same problem. The story creates doubt without creating information. The person now wonders if their backup is good enough without knowing what good enough means.
A person's life circumstances change. A new child is born. A marriage happens or ends. A move to a new home occurs. The person realizes the backup was created under different circumstances. The backup was good enough for the old situation. Whether it is good enough for the new situation is unclear.
A person learns something new about bitcoin custody. The person discovers that passphrases exist, or that derivation paths matter, or that paper can degrade. The person realizes their backup may not account for things they did not know when they created it. The backup was good enough given what the person knew then. It may not be good enough given what the person knows now.
A person tries to help a family member with bitcoin and realizes they cannot explain how their own backup works. The attempt to explain exposes gaps in understanding. The person believed their backup was good enough. The attempt to articulate why reveals that the belief rested on incomplete understanding.
Adequacy as Belief Rather Than Fact
A backup is a physical object. It has words on it. It sits in a location. These are facts that can be observed.
Adequacy is not a physical property. Adequacy is a judgment about whether the backup will serve its purpose under conditions that have not occurred. The judgment depends on assumptions about the future. The judgment depends on a threat model that may not be explicit. The judgment depends on standards that are not universal.
When a person asks is my seed phrase backup good enough, the person asks for a fact. But adequacy is not a fact. Adequacy is a belief formed by combining information about the backup with assumptions about what the backup needs to survive.
The backup cannot answer whether it is adequate. The backup can only be what it is: words on a medium in a location. The adequacy question lives in the person's mind, not in the backup itself.
What Others See
When someone other than the creator encounters a backup, they see words on a medium. They do not see the adequacy beliefs the creator held.
An executor finds a seed phrase backup in a deceased person's files. The executor does not know if the deceased considered this backup adequate. The executor does not know if the backup is correct, complete, or current. The executor sees an artifact. The executor does not see the confidence or doubt the deceased felt about it.
A spouse finds backup words during an emergency. The spouse does not know if these words are the only backup or one of several. The spouse does not know if additional information is needed. The spouse sees what looks like a backup. Whether it is good enough for the current emergency is a question the backup cannot answer.
The adequacy judgment the creator made does not transfer with the backup. The backup travels from creator to finder as a physical object. The beliefs about its adequacy stay behind in the creator's mind, inaccessible to everyone who comes after.
Conclusion
The question is my seed phrase backup good enough asks for a judgment that the backup itself cannot provide. Adequacy depends on correctness that cannot be confirmed by looking, completeness that may require information not recorded, storage conditions that unfold over time, and threat models that vary by person and circumstance.
Confidence in a backup tends to decay as time passes and memory fades. The backup remains unchanged while the person's certainty about it diminishes. The adequacy question often emerges during this decay, when the person no longer feels sure about what they once believed.
Adequacy is a belief rather than a property of the backup. The backup is words on a medium in a location. Whether that is good enough depends on interpretations and assumptions that exist in the person's mind, not in the backup. Others who encounter the backup later inherit the artifact without inheriting the beliefs about whether it was ever good enough.
System Context
Wallet Verification as Post-Setup Uncertainty
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