We are used to being told we need to keep our crypto secure. Metal stamp your seed word, split your seed word on 3 different bits of paper, laminate them, put each one in a safe and bury each safe 100 miles apart, memorize it and don't write it anywhere at all...

All of these pieces of advice are theoretically good, but extreme. We are still very early. Those that get robbed at gunpoint for their crypto get robbed because people know they have crypto. The key word is 'know'. People aren't going to target what they don't know you own, and the beauty of digital assets are they are so easy to hide. It isnt a shiny new car in the driveway or a fancy extension on the house for the world to see. No. Crypto is a wonderful little asset that can live on your phone with everyone around you being none the wiser.

So if I'm so critical of all the extreme ways to hide a seed, what alternative do I offer?

I am a fan of cheap and cheerful ways to hide a seed, that don't include safes, bunkers or buried treasure. I believe the best place to hide a seed is somewhere conspicuous, somewhere so simple it wouldn't flag as suspicious to any thief, crypto-focused or otherwise.

Some simple ideas:

• In a book. Yes, literally a piece of paper, write it down, put it in the pages of a book that lives on a bookshelf amongst many other books
• Behind photos, picture frames are pretty much the opposite of suspicious
• In a toolbox. Not the expensive fancy drill set toolbox, no, the toolbox full of nuts and bolts and washers and screws, that tool box.

So how do these ideas work?

In a book or behind a picture is easy, write it down, put it in the chosen hiding place and just forget about it. People look at pictures with polite interest, the only person who cares enough to look at a picture in detail is the person who put it there. Similar with books, choose something you know no ones going to bother read and there you go, easy.

The toolbox? Thats a bit more fun, take a nut, a bolt and 12-24 washers. Carve you words into each washer and thread it onto the bolt, once youre done tighten the nut and voila! Seed words, in metal, mixed in with lots of other non-suspicious metal.

The important thing to remember is you must keep these words offline, every piece of advice will tell you no word documents, no txt files. Write it down.

The best protection you can offer your crypto is not letting others know its there in the first place. It is the easiest asset to hide, so hide it.