20 January 2026
Labeling devices without writing secrets
Physical labels help households share custody of cold devices — as long as the label never hints at a PIN or recovery pattern.
Families who share responsibility for cold devices often invent labels under stress: “main,” “backup,” “do not touch.” Those labels age poorly. A clearer system uses neutral names that map to your binder, not to secrets.
Safe label content
- A short code that matches a binder tab (e.g. “CW-03”)
- The asset family if the device is single-purpose (“BTC only”)
- The year the device was commissioned
Unsafe label content
- Partial seed words
- PIN lengths or patterns
- Phrases like “inherits to…” with personal names on the device itself
Tie labels to paper
Your binder should hold the mapping from CW-03 to the public addresses associated with that unit. During an air-gapped reconciliation, we work from those public mappings — never from anything printed on a recovery card.