Backing Up My Hive Keys

I've been on Hive about 2.5 years and I finally got around to backing up my keys in a more substantial way than on a piece of paper hidden away somewhere. I now have everything backed up on a medium that will be a bit more resilient to water and fire: steel.

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While steel isn't completely impervious to fire, it does have a high melting point of about 2200-2500 degrees Fahrenheit. (Source)

Your average house fire ranges from 1000-2000 degrees Fahrenheit, so while it's not a guarantee these will survive there's a very high probability they will. (Source)

The plates come sold as a pair with an etching pen. They're intended to store seed phrases for Bitcoin wallets, so I ended up buying three sets in order to back up my password and keys. The biggest downside is the etching pen makes small, shallow marks and will tire your hand out quickly. The tip of the pen will also wear down fairly quickly, making it progressively harder to etch into the plate.

Fortunately for me, I bought a Dremel engraving pen years ago. These only cost around $25 and are worth every penny for this kind of project.

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I found the stencils aren't that great. With a little bit of practice, you can write with it almost like you would with a pen. It ended up taking me about an hour to an hour and a half between all of the plates, but I got it done!

The plates have holes drilled in them and come with screws. Since I wanted to stack more than two plates together, I ended up having to find longer screws on Amazon. The screws are designed to keep the plates together so they aren't separated.

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It was a fun little project. Between everything, I think the total cost was about $70, which includes the engraving pen and extra screw sets. Now I have a little more peace of mind knowing I have a hard backup for everything.

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