In 10 years, you won’t remember your seed phrase — or where you stored your wallet

“Why Your Bitcoins Will Disappear in 10 Years, and How We Fixed It”

A dialogue between Mitilena Wallet CEO and an old friend at a café in central Helsinki


Friend: Hey, I saw your NFC card project. Why all this when there are popular hardware wallets?

CEO: Oh, you’re our crypto trader! But you only bought for short terms, right? Now imagine you decided to take $10,000 and invest it in cryptocurrency for 5-10 years. Really long-term, buy and forget.

Friend: Yeah, I held for a month or two max. Well, I’d diversify the portfolio and leave it on Binance.

CEO: On Binance? (laughs) You know what happened to Binance’s CEO? CZ went to jail! Four months he served, and that’s with a plea deal. Now imagine – if the CEO of the world’s largest exchange got jailed, what could happen to the exchange itself in 10 years?

Friend: Well, that’s an isolated case…

CEO: Isolated? Let’s remember FTX. A week before the crash, it was the SECOND largest exchange in the world! Sam Bankman-Fried was on magazine covers, sponsored the Super Bowl, everyone loved him. Then BAM – and $8 billion of client money vanished. In ONE WEEK! Nobody could believe it.

Mt.Gox in 2014 – the largest exchange of its time, 70% of all Bitcoin trading. QuadrigaCX – the founder “died,” took passwords to $190 million with him. Celsius, BlockFi, Voyager – all went bankrupt in 2022.

And that’s if you can even log into the exchange in 10 years! Imagine – they change the auth system, add biometrics you don’t have, require expired documents, introduce mandatory video verification. Or just say: “Sorry, your account was inactive for 5 years, we deleted it per new rules.” The classic login scheme you’re used to might just disappear.

 

Friend: Damn, didn’t think about that. Okay, I’ll withdraw to a wallet, write down the seed phrase.

CEO: Seed phrase? (shakes head) Bro, a seed phrase isn’t a panacea. You know what it is? Just entropy from which private keys are generated according to certain rules. But everyone has different rules!

Yes, there’s the BIP44 standard, but every wallet implements it differently. See these confusing things – /0’/0’/0/0? For most developers, it’s a dark forest. One misunderstood what hardened derivation with an apostrophe means, another decided account should always be 0, a third made up their own path entirely.

And I’ll tell you more – say you bought some coin from the top 500, not Bitcoin or Ethereum, something smaller. Know the joke? Most of these coins don’t even have an official number in the BIP44 standard! Developers just take any free number or generate addresses however they please. In 10 years, try guessing which path they used!

(pulls out phone)

Look. Here I’m entering the same seed phrase into three different wallets. See? Three different addresses!
– Bitcoin Legacy: m/44’/0’/0’/0/0
– Bitcoin SegWit: m/49’/0’/0’/0/0
– Bitcoin Native SegWit: m/84’/0’/0’/0/0

In 10 years, you’ll enter the seed into a new wallet – get an empty balance. Because the wallet only checked the first 20 addresses on the default path, and your money is on a different derivation path.

Friend: Wait, so what does the blockchain actually understand?

CEO: Great question! The blockchain knows only one thing – PRIVATE KEY = POWER. That’s it! Nothing else exists. Seed phrases, HD wallets, derivation paths – these are all human abstractions for convenience. At the blockchain level, there’s only: private key → signature → transaction valid.

 

Friend: Then I’ll buy a hardware wallet, the private keys are stored securely there.

CEO: (pulls a box from his bag) Look what I found in the attic. iPod Classic from 2007, iPod Mini from 2004, Creative Zen, Sony Walkman. Know what they have in common? All dead! And these are just music players.

– iPod Classic – hard drive seized up after 4 years
– iPod Mini – battery swelled and burst the case
– Creative Zen – memory controller died
– Sony Walkman – buttons stuck, screen shows lines

And a popular hardware wallet is the same MP3 player, just for 200 bucks. Same battery that will swell. Same flash memory that loses data without power. Same contacts that will oxidize.

Friend: But manufacturers give warranties…

CEO: A 2-year warranty! And in the instructions they write – we recommend updating the device every 3-5 years. They KNOW the hardware isn’t eternal!

Imagine: 2034, you pull out your device with 100 bitcoins. Screen won’t turn on. USB not recognized. Go to the manufacturer’s website – company closed in 2028. Software doesn’t work on new systems. 100 BTC = $50,000,000 locked in a dead piece of plastic. Imagine you bought an ancient MP3 player and put a million dollars in bitcoin on it. How thoughtless would that be?

 

Friend: Harsh… Okay, I’ll engrave the private key on metal!

CEO: And how will you use it? Sit down to transcribe: L1aW4aubDFB7yfras2S1mN3bqg9nwySY8nkoLmJebSLD5BWv3ENZ. One error in 64 characters – money lost forever. Neighbor looks over your shoulder – money stolen. Café camera records it – goodbye millions. Keylogger on the computer – everything’s gone.

Friend: Damn, there must be a way! Bank safety deposit box?

CEO: Store 10 grand and pay the bank 3 thousand in rent over 10 years? The bank could close, merge, open it by court order.

Friend: Shamir’s Secret Sharing? Split the key into parts…

CEO: Part with a friend, part with a notary? Bro, in 10 years your friend will divorce his wife, move 5 times, have kids, a mortgage, his own pile of problems. And then you call him: “Remember, I gave you some envelope 10 years ago when we were young and believed in crypto?” He’ll say: “Are you crazy? What envelope? I barely remember where my toothbrush is. I’ve moved 3 times, married twice, all my junk burned in the garage on the second move!”

Friend: I’ll hide a metal plate at home?

CEO: You’ll lose it faster than one sock from a pair.

Friend: Steganography? Hide it in a book?

CEO: “Steganography”? In 10 years you won’t just not remember that word – you can barely pronounce it now!

Friend: So crypto can’t be stored reliably long-term? It’s a dead end?

CEO: (pulls out three NFC cards and a handful of stickers) That’s why we created Mitilena. Look – cards and stickers. Each has encrypted private keys.

Friend: And how is this better than everything else?

CEO: (sticks a sticker under the table) I just hid potential millions under your table. This sticker will work for 20+ years – no battery, no screen, no buttons. It’s a passive NFC chip, like in your bank card.

Friend: But anyone can read it!

CEO: They can. But without the PIN code, it’s just a piece of plastic. Even if burglars clear out the whole apartment – they need the PIN! The cleaning lady can dust your millions every day and not know it.

 

Friend: Where will I store these cards for 10 years? Same problem again!

CEO: (laughs) First, there are three cards by default – you’d have to really try to lose ALL of them. But the trick isn’t even the cards, it’s the stickers!

Look – stick one on your parents’ wardrobe, they haven’t changed it in 30 years. Second – behind the fridge, nobody looks there even when cleaning. Third – on the back of the TV. Fourth – in your car’s trunk, under the lining.

Friend: What if I sell the car?

CEO: If you sell the car, the new owner would need about 300,000 years to crack your sticker. And it would use more electricity than all the crypto in the world is worth! It’s like finding a specific grain of sand on all the beaches on the planet. You can sell the car without even removing the sticker – let them drive your crypto-millions in the trunk without knowing!

Friend: How do you use it yourself?

CEO: I have two stickers in regular places – one right on my laptop, another on the guitar processor near my computer. These are for quick access. And two backup ones – one under a table in the storage room I put there 5 years ago, another at relatives’ place on their 90s Hi-Fi system they turn on once a year for New Year’s.

Plus I have three cards, but honestly, I don’t remember where they are – need to check my bag. (laughs) See, even I “lost” them, but I’m calm – the stickers are in place!

I haven’t seen burglars who carry out wardrobes! They take tech and jewelry at most. Even movers barely drag furniture for money.

 

Friend: How will I use it?

CEO: (taps card on phone) Like this. Tap, enter PIN, send transaction. No transcribing 64-character keys. The private key appears in phone memory for milliseconds to sign and immediately erases.

Friend: What if I’m paranoid and milliseconds is too much?

CEO: For the paranoid, we have fully offline mode. One device creates the transaction, shows a QR code. A second device WITHOUT INTERNET signs it, shows QR back. Full air-gap, like a nuclear briefcase. The private key never touches a device with internet.

Friend: How much does this solution cost?

CEO: A set of 3 cards and 10 stickers – less than one popular device. But unlike it, this solution will actually work for 10+ years.

Friend: Wait, so you solved all problems at once? Doesn’t fear time like electronics, won’t get lost like a single plate, PIN protected, convenient to use…

CEO: Exactly! And in 10 years, when Bitcoin costs a million dollars, you’ll just come to your parents, tap your phone on the wardrobe, enter the PIN – and voila, you’re a millionaire. No “device not recognized,” no “battery dead,” no “format not supported.”

This isn’t cold storage anymore, it’s the furniture safe of the future. Built into life, built into home, built into memory. Your crypto-millions are literally integrated into your life – into furniture that will survive any moves, any crises, any technological changes.

Friend: Damn, that’s actually genius. Simple, reliable, and most importantly – really for 10 years. Where to buy?

CEO: 🔥 Order the Mitilena kit — before it’s too late.

https://shop.mitelena.com/shop/

In 10 years you’ll thank your fridge 😄


End of dialogue


Seed kelimeleri unutulur, cihazlar bozulur. Kriptonuzu yıllarca güvenle saklamak için Mitilena’nın NFC tabanlı çözümünü keşfedin. Kriptonuzu Kaybetmemek İçin Ne Yapmalısınız? Soğuk Cüzdanların Gizli Tehlikeleri

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