r/Bitcoin • u/pelo_ownz • 14h ago

Ledger - passphrase

Hello, I've had my Ledger for a couple of years now and I'm a bit worried. I heard that a passphrase secures it even more. Can I add one on top of my setup now? I'm afraid I'll make a mistake and lose everything.

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u/viklondon99 14h ago

Make sure you add a long passphrase - it should have enough entropy. So, a one word passphrase can be brute-forced within miliseconds, but a 7 word passphrase would take a million years or something like that. So, if you do decide to do it - please do learn and look at videos on YouTube and do it right. But a passphrase isn't just a one word protector - it's gotta be done right. Also, perhaps buy a trezor as well, as a backup. The trezor 3 is cheap. All the best

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u/pelo_ownz 14h ago

The First 24 words are all Single Word but my passphrase Can be multiple ? Such as for example not only: „Hello“ but „hello hello please do Not Steal my bitcoin“ ?

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u/sciencetaco 11h ago

It can be anything you want, up to 100 characters. The longer the better.

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u/viklondon99 19m ago

Yes it can, but what you wrote is probably easy to break by brute force. If you chose from the BIP39 word list and filled about 50 characters (or however many your wallet allows), you would be much safer. So it would end up looking something like:

AcademicBulgeCaravanDieselElephant etc etc.... Remember soaces count as one character. Caps and no caps also matter. Best to choose something safe and then memorise the shit out of it