Crypto Bro Discovers His Hardware Wallet Seed Phrase Was Actually Grocery List

A cryptocurrency investor who stored his hardware wallet recovery seed phrase on a handwritten note has discovered, after two years of safeguarding the document in a fireproof safe, that the twelve words he preserved were not his seed phrase but a grocery list his wife wrote in 2022.

Brandon Nonce, 34, realized the error when he attempted to restore his Ledger Nano after it was damaged in a minor kitchen fire caused by an unrelated incident involving a Bitcoin mining rig and a toaster oven sharing a power strip.

"I typed in the words very carefully," Nonce recounted. "Avocado. Turkey. Bread. Mustard. Tomato. Lettuce. Swiss. Pickle. Mayo. Onion. Chips. Napkins. The wallet software said the phrase was invalid. I tried it four more times before I read the words out loud and realized I was describing a sandwich."

Nonce's wife, who prefers not to be named, confirmed that she had placed the grocery list on the kitchen counter on the same afternoon that Nonce was initializing his new hardware wallet. Both documents were written on identical yellow sticky notes.

"He was so proud of himself for writing down the seed phrase immediately," she said. "He grabbed it off the counter and marched straight to the safe. I spent twenty minutes looking for my grocery list. I ended up buying the wrong cheese."

The actual seed phrase, which Nonce now believes was thrown away during a kitchen cleaning, represented the sole backup for approximately $87,000 in mixed cryptocurrency holdings.

Nonce has since adopted a new security protocol that involves tattooing seed phrases on the inside of his forearm, a decision his dermatologist has described as "medically fine but existentially concerning."