dice or not dice

 but if you then keep it on a sheet of paper... bad
 if you don't put the passphrase, bad
 it's a whole journey, not a single mega paranoid action
+Title: Re: dice or not dice
+Post by: Satofan44 on August 07, 2026, 12:13:21 PM
+Quote from: babo on Today at 08:05:49 AM
+These are all interesting discussions, and they are all more or less paranoid methods.
+However, as a cybersecurity expert I always remind people that the strength of a chain is always measured by weighing its weakest link.

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1. source content difference between 7 Aug 2026, 10:05 UTC and 7 Aug 2026, 13:00 UTC source content +15 -0

   New post by Satofan44 arguing that a good passphrase is the practical best setup for most users and that paranoid advanced setups are only warranted for hobbyists or very high values.

   seen 7 Aug 2026, 13:00 UTC · Captured here 20,729 chars
   What changed from the previous capture 15 lines

    but if you then keep it on a sheet of paper... bad
    if you don't put the passphrase, bad
    it's a whole journey, not a single mega paranoid action
   +Title: Re: dice or not dice
   +Post by: Satofan44 on August 07, 2026, 12:13:21 PM
   +Quote from: babo on Today at 08:05:49 AM
   +These are all interesting discussions, and they are all more or less paranoid methods.
   +However, as a cybersecurity expert I always remind people that the strength of a chain is always measured by weighing its weakest link.
   +that's the strength index of a chain
   +if you generated the seed using fairy farts which are random, good
   +but if you then keep it on a sheet of paper... bad
   +if you don't put the passphrase, bad
   +it's a whole journey, not a single mega paranoid action
   +Sure, but you need to think about it more simply and especially in the context of what happened recently. One should not invest $100k to create a vault that takes 5 days of verification to enter in order to protect $5000. Most users should neither do dice setups, nor multisignatures. The security setup must be as practical as it is safe in relation to the value that it is supposed to be protecting, everything else is wrong for one reason or another. A good passphrase solves:
   +1) Weak seed generation by the user.
   +2) Weak seed generation by the company.
   +3) Any other potential human error that could be introduced in these advanced setups.
   +It just works, and it does not need any special knowledge. The same knowledge regarding the backing up of your seed applies to the seedphrase, redundancy, avoid keeping the whole thing in a single place, etc. This is the best setup for most users.Being paranoid is never warranted, advanced setups should stay primarily for hobby users who are personally interested in them and those that are protecting very high values.
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   Extracted text as captured

   Bitcoin Forum
   Bitcoin => Bitcoin Discussion => Topic started by: babo on August 06, 2026, 07:25:08 AM
   Title: dice or not dice
   Post by: babo on August 06, 2026, 07:25:08 AM
   There's a lot of confusion about this and people are really going crazy after the COLDCARD issue, I just wanted to share with you the discussion I had with some people on Telegram
   On Telegram, as I was saying earlier, there's a lot of excitement in the serious Bitcoin groups and all they do is talk about dice and bullshit like that... always related to seed generation.
   There are people who are sick and overdo it and recommend the AAA grade dice from the casino because they are perfect and balanced.
   but could something like this ever be true?
   If they ask you, the answer is no.
   I had it calculated and the deviation would be 1% in the case of cheap commercial dice... that is to say a die that has a percentage on one face not of 16,..% but of 17/19% maximum... (otherwise it is rigged)
   Another user went to look through the statistical mathematics literature
   Quote
   I found a Harvard University study published in 1971, when Bitcoin didn't even exist. The researchers analyzed 219 commercial dice from four different brands, rolling each die 20,000 times, for a total of 4,380,000 rolls.
   The study found small statistical biases in some commercial dice, but if we translate those results into the entropy of a 24-word BIP39 seed, the loss is on the order of a few tenths of a bit, at most about 1 bit under the most pessimistic assumptions.
   In practice, a 256-bit seed would still be a seed with approximately 255-256 bits of effective entropy.
   This difference is theoretically measurable, but completely irrelevant from a security perspective: the search space remains astronomical and impossible to explore with any existing technology.
   so commercial dice are more than fine, this is the conclusion about dice
   Title: Re: dice or not dice
   Post by: pooya87 on August 06, 2026, 08:41:18 AM
   There is no such thing as perfect in this world. There will always be some flaw or bias in anything you can find. The real question is does it matter?
   In case of a 256-bit entropy, you are already overdoing it by 2x since you only needed 128 bits of entropy to be secure. So a little bias in it doesn't affect anything.
   I also think in this case people are overreacting to the news. Lets see some statistics... how many bitcoin keys were created so far? Some sources say 1.5 billion. How many of them were created using a dice? 10? 1000? I doubt it is any more than that. How many of the rest of the 99.9999% of the addresses that were created by a computer were vulnerable? 0 as long as the code didn't have bugs! The CSPRNG people are trying to replace by rolling a dice is safe enough as it has been proven by bitcoin for 17 years.
   Title: Re: dice or not dice
   Post by: Catenaccio on August 06, 2026, 09:54:00 AM
   Quote from: pooya87 on August 06, 2026, 08:41:18 AM
   There is no such thing as perfect in this world. There will always be some flaw or bias in anything you can find. The real question is does it matter?
   In case of a 256-bit entropy, you are already overdoing it by 2x since you only needed 128 bits of entropy to be secure. So a little bias in it doesn't affect anything.
   Could you explain why we only need 128 bits of entropy to be secure, please.
   Because I know that there are 24 seed words for 256 bits of entropy and it is available to use easily so why we don't use 24 seed words for better security?
   Between 12 seed words with 128 bits of entropy and passphrase, and 24 seed words with 256 bits of entropy without passphrase, which one is more secure?
   I am considering to create a new wallet with a passphrase to use but not sure I should use 12 seed words or 24 seed words.
   Title: Re: dice or not dice
   Post by: Zoomic on August 06, 2026, 10:46:15 AM
   One mistake we do sometimes is confusing "not perfect" with "not usable". The truth is there are some level of bias or imperfection in almost everything we use.
   What we should be concerned about is wether that bias actually reduce the entropy enough to make a brute force attack more practical.
   If the loss of entropy is very small, then it is still practically impossible for a 24-word BIP39 seed to crack.
   Instead of chasing mathematical perfection, why not we focus on real world security?
   Title: Re: dice or not dice
   Post by: babo on August 06, 2026, 11:42:36 AM
   Quote from: Zoomic on August 06, 2026, 10:46:15 AM

   Excerpt only. The complete copy is held offline and backs quotations on this site. The original publication remains the canonical public source.

2. Earliest copy held
   seen 7 Aug 2026, 10:05 UTC · Captured here 19,073 chars
   Extracted text as captured

   Bitcoin Forum
   Bitcoin => Bitcoin Discussion => Topic started by: babo on August 06, 2026, 07:25:08 AM
   Title: dice or not dice
   Post by: babo on August 06, 2026, 07:25:08 AM
   There's a lot of confusion about this and people are really going crazy after the COLDCARD issue, I just wanted to share with you the discussion I had with some people on Telegram
   On Telegram, as I was saying earlier, there's a lot of excitement in the serious Bitcoin groups and all they do is talk about dice and bullshit like that... always related to seed generation.
   There are people who are sick and overdo it and recommend the AAA grade dice from the casino because they are perfect and balanced.
   but could something like this ever be true?
   If they ask you, the answer is no.
   I had it calculated and the deviation would be 1% in the case of cheap commercial dice... that is to say a die that has a percentage on one face not of 16,..% but of 17/19% maximum... (otherwise it is rigged)
   Another user went to look through the statistical mathematics literature
   Quote
   I found a Harvard University study published in 1971, when Bitcoin didn't even exist. The researchers analyzed 219 commercial dice from four different brands, rolling each die 20,000 times, for a total of 4,380,000 rolls.
   The study found small statistical biases in some commercial dice, but if we translate those results into the entropy of a 24-word BIP39 seed, the loss is on the order of a few tenths of a bit, at most about 1 bit under the most pessimistic assumptions.
   In practice, a 256-bit seed would still be a seed with approximately 255-256 bits of effective entropy.
   This difference is theoretically measurable, but completely irrelevant from a security perspective: the search space remains astronomical and impossible to explore with any existing technology.
   so commercial dice are more than fine, this is the conclusion about dice
   Title: Re: dice or not dice
   Post by: pooya87 on August 06, 2026, 08:41:18 AM
   There is no such thing as perfect in this world. There will always be some flaw or bias in anything you can find. The real question is does it matter?
   In case of a 256-bit entropy, you are already overdoing it by 2x since you only needed 128 bits of entropy to be secure. So a little bias in it doesn't affect anything.
   I also think in this case people are overreacting to the news. Lets see some statistics... how many bitcoin keys were created so far? Some sources say 1.5 billion. How many of them were created using a dice? 10? 1000? I doubt it is any more than that. How many of the rest of the 99.9999% of the addresses that were created by a computer were vulnerable? 0 as long as the code didn't have bugs! The CSPRNG people are trying to replace by rolling a dice is safe enough as it has been proven by bitcoin for 17 years.
   Title: Re: dice or not dice
   Post by: Catenaccio on August 06, 2026, 09:54:00 AM
   Quote from: pooya87 on August 06, 2026, 08:41:18 AM
   There is no such thing as perfect in this world. There will always be some flaw or bias in anything you can find. The real question is does it matter?
   In case of a 256-bit entropy, you are already overdoing it by 2x since you only needed 128 bits of entropy to be secure. So a little bias in it doesn't affect anything.
   Could you explain why we only need 128 bits of entropy to be secure, please.
   Because I know that there are 24 seed words for 256 bits of entropy and it is available to use easily so why we don't use 24 seed words for better security?
   Between 12 seed words with 128 bits of entropy and passphrase, and 24 seed words with 256 bits of entropy without passphrase, which one is more secure?
   I am considering to create a new wallet with a passphrase to use but not sure I should use 12 seed words or 24 seed words.
   Title: Re: dice or not dice
   Post by: Zoomic on August 06, 2026, 10:46:15 AM
   One mistake we do sometimes is confusing "not perfect" with "not usable". The truth is there are some level of bias or imperfection in almost everything we use.
   What we should be concerned about is wether that bias actually reduce the entropy enough to make a brute force attack more practical.
   If the loss of entropy is very small, then it is still practically impossible for a 24-word BIP39 seed to crack.
   Instead of chasing mathematical perfection, why not we focus on real world security?
   Title: Re: dice or not dice
   Post by: babo on August 06, 2026, 11:42:36 AM
   Quote from: Zoomic on August 06, 2026, 10:46:15 AM

   Excerpt only. The complete copy is held offline and backs quotations on this site. The original publication remains the canonical public source.