TL;DR
You’ll buy three hardware wallets from three different makers, straight from their own shops, and decide where the three backups will live. This page is the shopping list and the reasoning behind it.
Why 2-of-3
With a single hardware wallet, one seed controls everything. If someone gets hold of it, your bitcoin is gone. If you lose it, your bitcoin is also gone. Every extra copy you make against loss is one more copy a thief can find.
A 2-of-3 multisig breaks that link. The coins are locked behind a rule on the blockchain itself: two signatures out of three specific keys, or nothing moves. One stolen key is useless to a thief. One lost key is a hassle, not a disaster. It now takes two things going wrong at once to lose your coins.
What multisig doesn’t fix: lose two of the three keys and you’re locked out, same as losing a single seed.
Why three different brands
Hardware wallets have bugs like any other product. On 30 July 2026, bitcoin started disappearing from Coldcard wallets in waves. The cause turned out to be a build error: for years, some Coldcard devices had generated seeds with a weak software fallback instead of their hardware random number generator, and attackers could work those seeds out (BlockSec’s write-up).
If all three of your keys come from one maker, one bug like that hits all three at once. With three makers, an attacker has to break two unrelated products. That’s the whole point, so don’t save money here by buying three of the same.
The three I use
- Trezor Safe 5. Colour touchscreen that shows a full address in one go, so this is the device I check addresses on.
- BitBox02 (Bitcoin-only edition). Fully open-source firmware with reproducible builds. Small screen, very easy to live with.
- Ledger Nano S Plus. Cheap, and since Bitcoin app 2.1 it handles multisig properly. Its closed-source secure element is the weak spot, which matters a lot less when it can’t sign anything on its own.
Other combinations work too. A Blockstream Jade is a common third device. What matters is three different makers, and that each one works with Sparrow, the wallet software this guide uses.
Shopping list
- Three hardware wallets, each from a different maker
- Three metal seed backups, stainless steel or titanium (not aluminium or brass)
- A laptop you’ll use for nothing else (step 2)
- Two or three USB sticks
- Three small airtight boxes, silica gel, zip bags and access to a printer
Where the keys will live
Think about this now, before anything arrives. The rule is simple: any place that can disappear in one event gets at most one seed backup. One fire, one flood, one burglary. Your home, a family member’s home and a third place is the usual answer. A shed next to your house doesn’t count as a second place, because it burns in the same fire.
The devices themselves matter less. They’re protected by a PIN and can be rebuilt from their seed. Keeping all three at home, in different rooms, is fine.
Buy from the maker, never second-hand
Order each device from the manufacturer’s own website. Not from a marketplace seller, not from an auction, not from a friend. A device that arrives with a seed already on it, or with a recovery sheet already filled in, goes straight back.
Common mistakes
- Buying three devices of the same brand because it’s easier.
- Buying from a marketplace seller to save a few dollars.
- Planning two backups in the same building.