Duress Wallet
A duress wallet is a decoy wallet containing a small, sacrificial amount of bitcoin that you can surrender under physical threat. It protects your main holdings by giving an attacker something to take while your real funds remain hidden behind a passphrase or separate seed.
How It Works
Most hardware wallets support BIP39 passphrases, which function as a "25th word" added to your seed phrase. Your base seed phrase (without passphrase) opens one wallet, while the seed phrase plus passphrase opens a completely different wallet. This is the foundation of a duress wallet setup. You keep a small but believable amount of bitcoin in the base wallet (no passphrase) and your real holdings behind the passphrase-protected wallet.
If an attacker forces you to reveal your seed phrase or unlock your hardware wallet, you provide the base seed and open the duress wallet. The attacker sees a balance, takes it, and has no way to know another wallet exists. There is no technical indicator that a passphrase wallet is in use — the base wallet looks like the only wallet.
The balance in your duress wallet must be credible. An empty wallet or a trivially small amount will make a sophisticated attacker suspicious that you're hiding more. Keep enough to be convincing — what "enough" means depends on what the attacker might expect based on their knowledge of you. Some people maintain regular transaction activity in their duress wallet to make it look like an actively used primary wallet. This is one reason why minimizing public knowledge of your holdings is paramount.
Key Points
- Uses BIP39 passphrase feature to create a hidden wallet behind your visible base wallet
- The duress wallet should contain a believable balance — too little raises suspicion
- No technical evidence exists that a passphrase-protected wallet is in use
- Practice accessing both wallets so you can calmly demonstrate the duress wallet under pressure
- Combine with multisig and geographic distribution for comprehensive physical threat defense