How do you store your Bitcoin? Why not paint your private keys

Because turning your seed phrase into a color palette is possibly the silliest, least secure way to store your private keys invented so far

OPINION
article-image

LesyaD/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Bitcoin is code and code is law. 

It used to be that possession made up nine-tenths of the law. But in the age of immutable blockchains, the holder of the private keys is all that matters. 

Please don’t store that private code as colors on your wall.

Keeping private keys safe from thieves (both online and real-world) is annoying. After all, a sizable chunk of our industry is dedicated to lightening that load.

Like supermarkets separating society from the grim realities of factory farming, hordes of crypto wallet startups are hellbent on abstracting away private keys from the user experience in the cleanest way possible.

Private keys are a garbled mess too ugly and scary for normies the general public to handle. Seed phrases have been the best way crypto has found so far to make these keys more accessible: by turning those 64 characters into a 12-strong sequence of words and storing those instead.

Smart storage typically boils down to either:

  • Writing your seed phrase down on a piece of paper and hiding it (kept in a deposit box or worse, an old book).
  • Storing your seed phrase on an air-gapped machine (although even cold wallets carry risks).
  • Remembering your seed phrase (the trusty brain wallet can’t be hacked).

But what about encoding private keys into color art and hanging it on your wall?

A new open-source tool allows Bitcoin users to paint their seed phrases. It maps the 2,048 words that make up the BIP39 mnemonic system to a key of hex codes. 

Plugging in any set of those 12 words will generate a series of eight color blocks (almost) as unique as their corresponding seed phrase.

A seed phrase is encoded in these colors. Why not paint your room in this exact palette?

For instance, a BIP39 seed phrase generated at random: “abandon, lonely, leopard, make, amateur, music, mystery, bless, ocean, odor, swamp, sunset,” translates to: #00006E #26C5E3 #3EADB4 #6507F0 #7BDBD1 #A656E8 #B8F9F9 #DDE3AD.

It’s a key for encoding the 12 words into eight strings of six characters. Every hex code translates to a different unique color, of which there are almost 16.8 million (256³).

The tool is so simple that you could even transform seed phrases into hex codes manually (it only takes a passing familiarity with computing basics). 

With some finesse, the same system could even be applied to public keys and hashes for blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Or any series of characters at all for that matter. They may not always be divisible into six-character strings — which map to hex codes — but you could always add zeros to pad them out.

In this case, your crypto net worth can be unlocked using the little eyedropper in Photoshop — the one that identifies the hex codes of colors — in the right order.

“face, muscle, muffin, movie, cheese, chef, dilemma, thank, proof, pudding, pumpkin, pulp”

Security-minded folk probably wouldn’t keep one of these swatches — or even artwork featuring only these shades — on their internet-facing machines any sooner than they’d keep their seed phrase on their Notes app.

As for real-life representations — unless you are literally painting your walls with these colors — it’s very difficult for hex codes to be printed exactly on paper, and they may fade over time in either case. 

Most likely, you’d be left with a faded poster of some other seed phrase (very likely unused), if anything. (“Someone else’s keys, not your crypto?”)

Seed phrases transmogrifying into bits and out to something as digitally tangible as a palette swatch, like what you’d see at Home Depot, makes up some of the magic that is modern computing. 

But next time you’re renovating your apartment, pick your color palette from, say, a magazine — not from your Bitcoin wallet.

It may be cool to see what your bitcoin looks like as a rainbow, it’s probably best to keep that particular bit of fun internet magic to yourself. 

You don’t want to be the first person in crypto who gets their savings stolen because they got over-excited about sharing how beautiful their seed phrase looks on Reddit.



Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

  • Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
  • Empire: Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross.
  • Forward Guidance: Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin.
  • 0xResearch: Get alpha directly in your inbox — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.
  • Lightspeed: All things Solana, in your inbox, every day from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.
  • The Drop: The newsletter for crypto collectors and traders, covering games, tokens, apps, memes and more.
Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

monad ecosystem report graphic.png

Research

Monad's testnet launch has shown promise with 57 geographically distributed validators and over 20 live applications on day one. However, the ecosystem's true test will come with mainnet as it transitions from testing to real economic activity alongside the launch of the native gas token.

article-image

VC activity was slightly down month over month, according to TIE data

article-image

Here’s what we know about the bitcoin strategic reserve and the digital asset stockpile ahead of today’s summit

article-image

Liam Heeger was a core Solana Firedancer developer. Now, he’s building his own L1.

article-image

This crypto fund issuer is “looking for the rising stars” to put into the ETF wrapper

article-image

Ongoing tariff dynamics are being complemented by DOGE’s federal government employee layoffs

article-image

The chat function is still in beta for now