Wallets, seed phrases, and what a key really is

A wallet doesn't hold your coins the way a real wallet holds cash. Your coins never leave the blockchain — the wallet just holds the keys that prove an address is yours and lets you sign transactions from it. Think of it less as a piggy bank and more as a keychain.

Your seed phrase — 12 or 24 plain words — is the master key. It regenerates every private key in the wallet. Anyone who has those words has full, permanent control of everything the wallet touches, no matter what device or app you originally used.

There's no undo button here, and no support line to call. No company issued the wallet, so no company can reverse a transaction or reset a password. Guard the words like they're the only copy of something irreplaceable, because they are.