[hackingforfun]

Trezor [1] and Ledger [2] are both hardware wallets that can have a passphrase which would generate any number of wallets, each derived from the user's private key, but each generating a different public key. If someone has say 20 different passphrases, how would the people with guns know which wallet they are getting? There can be wallets without the entirety of funds stored in them, i.e. give away some to save the rest, and the people with guns think they got it all.

Even not considering passphrases, anytime you set up a crypto wallet there is a 12 or 24 word mnemonic seed which could be memorized and not written down anywhere, and which could be used to restore a wallet at a later time. So, how exactly does seizing work in this case?

[1] https://wiki.trezor.io/Passphrase

[2] https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005214529-Ad...

[dragonwriter]

Yes, with any form of money you can try to convince the authorities that a different, incomplete, or empty cache of funds is the thing they are trying to seize, or that you simply don't have what they are trying to seize.

Whether the authorities believe you and whether they decide to inflict the alternative consequences implicitly or explicitly threatened as part of the seizure mechanism ... depends on the information that forms the basis of the seizure, the personality and nature of the individuals involved and the regime they serve, and other factors.

Features that make it harder for authorities to be certain you are lying when you are also make it harder for the authorities to be certain you are telling the truth when you are. This is not universally beneficial.

[hackingforfun]

Personally, I don't think I'll ever need to hide crypto from the government and I pay my taxes. However, I figure that it could be regular thieves with guns, too. I get that this thread was going in the direction of government, but I think people with guns can be pretty general. What I think is cool is that technology like this has never existed. Banks were the only way to have this level of security. You don't get that with physical gold or physical cash. How do people not see how innovative this is? It's a way to store money outside of the traditional financial system, just like gold, except it's much harder to seize, much easier to transfer, is much more divisible, etc. You can literally store a million dollars in your head by memorizing a 12 word mnemonic seed, or hand a million dollars to someone via a paper or hardware wallet. How do people not think that is cool?