What is a brain/hash wallet?

Input anything into a hash calculator), and use that output as your crypto seed. More can be explained in this video.

The problem:

People lose their crypto all the time despite the careful precautions they take like this one redditor. Brain/hash wallets get a bad rep, but I believe they are a superior storage solution than conventional methods. People generally don't commit to memory the randomly generated 12-24 word seed phrases that their wallet spits out to them. It's unrealistic to do so when you own crypto from multiple blockchains. I have found it is easier to memorize something complex I create rather than the long set of random words given to me. Here are some of my issues with current storage solutions:

1. Paper wallet: A paper wallet is writing your seed in plain text on a piece of paper or etched on steel. This storage is great in that it's separated from the internet, but it's prone to be lost, stolen, or damaged. They can get tedious when you have multiple wallets and they are easily identifiable as a crypto wallet if found. It is difficult to memorize the entire phrase as they are usually a set of random and unrelated words.

2. Hardware Wallet: A hardware wallet is a single seed for all your crypto stored on an offline external device. They are great until the device is lost, stolen, or damaged. As a fail-safe, you can back up your crypto by using the seed phrase on another device of the same brand, but then you have the issue of keeping that seed phrase secure with another means of storage. They have the added benefit of requiring a password for use, so it offers decent theft protection. To use your crypto, you need to have the physical device on hand unless you export the individual private keys from the device. It's uncertain if they are completely future-proof as software and hardware changes might prove difficult to use the device in the future. Hardware wallets are also easily identifiable as crypto wallets if found.

3. Password Manager/Cloud Storage: A convenient way to access your crypto seed phrases from any online device. Since it is online, it is prone to hacks, keyloggers, spyware, broken encryption, and seizures. This is actually how the couple that hacked bitfinex in 2016 had their crypto wallets seized. The FBI managed to decrypt a file saved on their cloud storage account that contained the private keys to 94k BTC. The cloud storage provider most likely provided the login information to the FBI by lawful seizure.

Why are brain/hash wallets better?

I would rather rely on my brain than a piece of paper, steal, hardware wallet, central server, or hard drive. If you are afraid of forgetting your brain wallet, you can write down the input of your hash and it has the benefit of not looking like a crypto wallet. Humans are bad at randomness, but if your hash input is complex, is something never written before, is offline, has misspellings or special characters, and is reasonably long, it can be secure. Examples of bad hash wallets can be found here.

A brain/hash wallet allows you to have access to your crypto anytime and anywhere with the only requirements being your memory and a computer. Common hashing algorithms are available pre-installed in windows, mac, and linux terminals to be used offline and they will most likely remain so for the foreseeable future. If you own multiple cryptos, your hash can be used as the seed for multiple blockchains or your same input can be hashed using different functions. One can even get creative and encode or encipher their text prior to hashing.

How to make a hash wallet?

Preferably these steps are done offline. Take the hash of a complex and not easily guessed input, and use the output as your seed. A simple tool like cyberchef) can be downloaded for generating your hashes.

Bitcoin and Ethereum: Use Ian Coleman's BIP39 tool. Check "show entropy details" and paste in your 64-character hash. You've now created a wallet. For an Ethereum wallet, switch the coin to ETH to view your addresses.

Monero: Download Cryptnote's "addresstests" tool. Paste in your 64-character hash in box 2 and click "Gen 1" to generate your seed.

Nano: Use Nault to configure a new wallet and click "Import Seed." Paste in your 64-character hash and you've now created your wallet.