For Customers Log in
Contact Us

Seed Phrase Meaning

A seed phrase (also known as a Recovery Phrase or Mnemonic) is a list of 12 to 24 simple words that can be used to recover a cryptocurrency wallet. It is the Master Key to your digital life.

Because of the way Deterministic Wallets work, this one phrase can generate an infinite number of private keys and public addresses, meaning that as long as you have these words, you can never Lose your money, even if your phone or computer is destroyed.The phrase is a human-readable representation of a 256-bit random number (the Entropy). The software uses a standard called BIP-39, which maps that random number to a specific list of 2,048 English words.

When you type those words into a new wallet, the math reconstructs the original random number and recreates your entire wallet history. This is why Backing Up your seed phrase is the single most important step in the crypto Onboarding process.The greatest danger of a seed phrase is that it is Offline and Non-revocable.

If a hacker sees a photo of your seed phrase, they can Import your wallet and drain all your funds in seconds. Conversely, if you lose your seed phrase and your device breaks, your funds are Lost Forever to the Burned supply of the network.

This has led to the rise of Metal Seed Plates (to protect against fire/water) and Multi-sig setups (where you need 2-of-3 phrases to move money) for high-value users.

← Back to Glossary

Explore our services
Providing liquidity in the cryptocurrency market?
Authorize on our platform and do it smarter with FM Pulse.
pic

FM Marketplace

A reliable and high-performance crypto liquidity marketplace for institutions and businesses.

Learn more
pic

FM White Label

Launch your fully branded B2B crypto trading platform in under one week.

Learn more
pic

FM Liquidity Match

Crypto OTC-as-a-Service infrastructure for enhanced monetization and trade control.

Learn more

Scale your business, leave the hard work of your trading needs to us

Reduce your integration costs and operational risk across multiple access points with our platform

Get started