Setup guide

This is the whole setup, split into ten pages. Each page is one job you can finish in a sitting. Do them in order. Later steps assume the earlier ones are done. Two of them, the backups in step 5 and step 7, are the ones people skip, and they’re what you’ll need on the day something goes wrong.

At the end you have a 2-of-3 multisig wallet: three hardware wallets from three different makers, and any two of them can move your bitcoin. If you lose one, the other two can still move your coins. A thief who takes one can’t move anything.

Plan for a weekend. Most of the time goes into the metal backups, not into the software.

The ten steps

1. 01Plan your quorum and gearWhy 2-of-3, why three different brands, and the shopping list for a bitcoin multisig setup.About 30 minutes
2. 02Prepare your signing computerSet up a dedicated laptop for your bitcoin multisig: fresh install, updates, and nothing else on it.1 to 2 hours
3. 03Install and verify SparrowDownload Sparrow Wallet, check its PGP signature and hash on Windows, and connect it to a server.About 30 minutes
4. 04Initialize the three devicesSet up a Trezor Safe 5, BitBox02 and Ledger Nano S Plus for multisig: PIN, 24-word seed and an optional passphrase.1 to 2 hours
5. 05Back up your seeds on metalPut each 24-word seed on stainless steel, check it on the device and store the three backups in three places.2 to 3 hours
6. 06Create the multisig walletCombine the xpubs of three hardware wallets into a 2-of-3 Native SegWit multisig wallet in Sparrow.About 20 minutes
7. 07Back up the wallet configurationExport the output descriptor of your multisig wallet and store a copy with every seed backup.30 to 60 minutes
8. 08Verify an address on each deviceRegister your multisig on the hardware wallets and check a receive address on the device screen.About 20 minutes
9. 09Send a test transactionReceive a small amount into your multisig and spend it with two hardware wallets to test the whole chain.About 1 hour
10. 10Rehearse a recoveryRebuild your multisig from the descriptor backup, check your passphrase and only then fund the wallet.About 1 hour

Want to keep track on paper? The checklist has every step on one sheet, as a web page or a PDF to print.

What it costs

• Three hardware wallets: roughly $80 to $170 each, bought from the maker or from Amazon.com itself, never from a reseller.
• Three metal seed backups: $30 to $100 each, depending on the type.
• A laptop that does nothing else. A used business laptop is fine.
• A few USB sticks, a printer and some zip bags.

Before you start

Wallet software changes its menus every so often. If a button isn’t where a step says it is, look for the same idea under a different name. What you never change to make things fit: 2-of-3, Native SegWit (P2WSH) and the derivation path m/48'/0'/0'/2'. Those are the parts your recovery depends on.

Nothing on this site is financial advice. It’s a description of a setup that works, written down as carefully as I could.