SteelPhrase is an independent reference on cryptocurrency self-custody: recovery phrases, backups, hardware wallets, inheritance, and the scams built to take all of them.
It exists because most writing on this subject is produced by companies selling something, and because the failures that actually cost people money are dull ones — a backup nobody tested, a phrase typed into a convincing web page, a wallet nobody could find after a death. Those get far less attention than the failures that sound dramatic.
Who writes this
Vinoth Kanna. I am an engineer by profession, not a cryptographer or a security professional, and it would be dishonest to present this site as expert advice from a credentialled specialist.
What I do bring is an engineer’s habit of checking numbers before repeating them. Every quantitative claim here is either arithmetic you can reproduce from a published standard, or it carries a dated source. Where I could not verify something, the page says so rather than rounding the uncertainty away. That is the whole editorial proposition, and it is written down as a policy so you can hold me to it.
I also build things on-chain, which is the source of the conflict of interest declared below.
Disclosure: OZO Hub
I build OZO Hub, an independent project on Ozone Chain. One of its modules, PQ Vault, is a hash-based inheritance vault — which puts it squarely in this site’s subject area.
That is a real conflict of interest, and the way it is handled is the honest test of whether anything here is worth reading. The rule I hold myself to: Ozone Chain is scored at the strictest reading of its own claims, not the most flattering.
You can check that I keep it. On the post-quantum readiness page, Ozone is assessed on the same test as every other chain — what actually signs the transactions — and the answer is secp256k1, the same quantum-vulnerable curve as Ethereum, despite the “world’s first quantum resistant blockchain” marketing. Its network-layer quantum claims are labelled unverified, and noted as defending the wrong asset. My own PQ Vault is described as unaudited and a demonstration rather than somewhere to put savings.
If this site were written to promote that project, it would look very different. A page that cannot say inconvenient things about its author’s own work is not worth the time it takes to read.
What this site will never do
- Ask for your recovery phrase. No page, no tool, no form, ever — not even with a promise that it stays in your browser. Getting people comfortable typing a seed phrase into a web page is precisely the habit thieves depend on, and normalising it would do more harm than every article here does good.
- Sell you a product of our own. We make and sell nothing. No wallets, no backup plates, no courses, no newsletter upsell, no token.
- Tell you what to buy or hold. This is not investment advice and there are no price predictions here. What coin to own is not a question this site answers.
- Run advertising on pages for people who have just been robbed. Two pages state this in their own text; it is a promise, not a preference.
How it pays for itself
Some links to hardware wallets and backup products earn a commission. That never changes a recommendation, and the buying guides here contain sections arguing you may not need the product at all — which is the practical evidence, not a promise. Full detail on the affiliate disclosure page.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, I want to know, and I will fix it and say that I did. Get in touch.