Dice Rolls for Bitcoin Seeds: A Slow but Secure Method

Using dice rolls to create a secure Bitcoin wallet is technically sound, but it's not a realistic default for most new users. According to Claude Shannon's formula, a standard six-sided die produces about 2.6 bits of unpredictable information with every roll.

Coinkite recommends at least 50 dice rolls to meet the 128-bit standard for a Bitcoin wallet seed, while using more than 99 rolls can give the generated secret a much larger mathematical security margin.

However, even if users supply their own entropy through dice rolls, they may still be vulnerable to attacks. Security researcher Kevin Loaec pointed out that even users who imported or generated a seed with dice are at risk if they use certain features on Coldcard devices.

Coldcard owners should verify the firmware version installed on their device and review which features they used while running older firmware, as installing an update only prevents new secrets from being affected by the issue.