1. What this page is

Hodler's Handbook is a content site about crypto wallet security. It covers storing seed phrases, hardware wallets, token approvals and what to do when something goes wrong, and it is run by me (writing under the pen name Frost Kim). What you read here is reference material, not a financial service, investment advice or a legal opinion. This page sets out how far what I write can be relied on.

This site takes part in Binance's referral program; that relationship is explained on the Disclosure page. For how this site handles reader data, cookies, and Google Analytics, see the Privacy Policy.

2. Not investment, financial, legal, or tax advice

Every article, FAQ answer, glossary entry, comparison table and checklist on this site is educational. Any phrasing such as "I recommend wallet X", "BIP-39 works like this" or "this backup setup is worth considering" is my own view and write-up, not investment advice, financial planning advice, legal advice, or tax advice for you.

How crypto assets are handled under law varies wildly by jurisdiction. Your location, your tax residency, the size of your holdings, your family situation — all of these affect what is "right" for you. This site has no knowledge of your specific situation and cannot judge it on your behalf.

If you are about to make a decision involving meaningful sums, tax reporting, estate planning, or cross-border transfers, consult a licensed financial advisor, tax advisor, or attorney.

3. The real risks of crypto assets

  • Price risk. Crypto asset prices are highly volatile. Long-term holding does not eliminate the psychological stress of short-term swings or the risk of forced liquidation.
  • Compliance and regulatory risk. Local policy can change without notice, restricting trading, holding, transfer, or withdrawal. This site does not predict regulatory direction.
  • Exchange risk. Even centralized exchanges that publish reserves and run insurance funds can still be hacked, run aground on internal fraud, fail operationally, suffer liquidity crunches, or get frozen by regulators. Mt. Gox and FTX both failed this way.
  • Wallet and private key risk. A seed phrase lost, phished, stolen by malware, or extracted under physical coercion cannot be "recovered through customer support". Once on-chain assets are moved, in the vast majority of cases they cannot be retrieved.
  • Smart contract risk. DeFi protocols can go to zero through code bugs, oracle failures, cross-chain bridge exploits, or stablecoin depegs. Even multi-audited protocols carry no guarantee of safety.
  • Approval risk. Once an on-chain signature (approve / permit / setApprovalForAll) lands in a malicious contract, the assets in your wallet can be drained in bulk. This site cannot revoke those approvals for you.
  • Personal safety risk. Once the size of your holdings becomes visible, it can invite SIM swap attacks, in-person robbery, or coercion of family members. Technology does not help with this kind of risk; careful habits and keeping details of your holdings to yourself do.

Nothing on this site eliminates these risks, and nothing guarantees any investment outcome. Understand the risks thoroughly before deciding whether to participate.

4. Who I am not affiliated with

Hodler's Handbook is not the official site of any cryptocurrency exchange, wallet project, foundation, or regulator. No ownership, employment, holding, or agency relationship exists between this site and:

  • Any exchange mentioned in articles, including Binance and Bybit.
  • Any wallet project mentioned in articles, including but not limited to Ledger, Trezor, Coldcard, Keystone, OneKey, MetaMask, Rabby, Trust Wallet.
  • Any failed platform mentioned in articles, including Mt. Gox and FTX.
  • Any regulator, court, or government body mentioned in articles.

The only tie between this site and any entity above is that the site takes part in Binance's referral program. Which pages carry the referral code and link, and what the site and the reader each get, are set out on the Disclosure page.

5. Third-party links and third-party content

Articles on this site include links to third-party websites (specification texts, makers' official pages and help centers, Revoke.cash, Etherscan and others). These links exist to make sources verifiable; they are not an endorsement of those sites' content, privacy practices, security, or availability.

Figures, accounts of events and official documents cited in articles carry source attributions wherever possible. If you find a citation error, write to the email address on the Corrections page. Confirmed errors are corrected and recorded there.

6. Content copyright and reuse

Copyright in all original articles, FAQ answers, glossary entries, comparison tables and checklists on this site belongs to this site, and they may not be used commercially without permission. Personal, non-commercial citation and reposting is permitted, provided the source and original link are attributed. Not permitted:

  • Using site content to train models that are then offered as commercial services (outside the standard robots.txt rules).
  • Editing or rewriting site content and publishing it as your own.
  • Removing the byline, source link, or citation markers from reposts.
  • Inserting commercial promotion that conflicts with this site's positioning (such as referrals to other exchanges or investment products) into reposts.

The fonts used on this site (Crimson Pro, Caveat, JetBrains Mono) come from Google Fonts under their respective public licenses. OG images and article art are custom or used with permission.

7. The self-audit checklist and the tools that were removed

The only interactive page on this site now is the self-audit checklist. Your ticks are saved only in your own browser and are not uploaded. How many items you tick is not an assessment of how safe your assets are.

The online seed phrase checker has been taken down, and the other small tools have been removed as well. Do not type a real seed phrase that is still in use into any web page. To check a seed phrase, use the offline method described in this section of Private Key vs Seed Phrase.

8. Governing law and disputes

This site is operated on the public internet for a global readership. Disputes about copyright, trademarks, or with readers are, in principle, governed by the law of where the site is operated from (the People's Republic of China). The site does not guarantee compliance boundaries across all jurisdictions.

If you believe content on this site infringes your rights (copyright, privacy, trademark, etc.), contact the email below and the matter will be reviewed and addressed within a reasonable time.

9. Contact

Corrections, citation issues and copyright matters, as well as compliance, privacy and data requests, all go to one address: [email protected]. Corrections are recorded on the Corrections page, and how data requests are handled is set out in the Privacy Policy.

Security reports: see /.well-known/security.txt.