This is a utility to generate seed phrases and to generate crypto currency wallets from a seed phrase. This way, you only need to remember one seed phrase and can generate wallets from it for multiple currencies. A password can be added in the generation step so that you need both the seed phrase and the password to generate the wallets and access your funds. We support both BIP39 and scrypt for generating the keys from the mnemonic (see details further below) and use BIP32/BIP44 for derivation. Keys can be derived for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Monero (XMR) wallets at the moment, further coins could be added relatively easily.

Generating a wallet from a seed phrase is a good way to secure your funds. You can, for example, print out the seed phrase (or etch it into metal cards for extra durability) and store it offline. With this seed phrase (and the chosen password, if any), you can always restore access to your funds if the hard drive with your crypto money happens to die. Or you carry it with you to get access to your funds from somewhere else.

$ crypto-wallet-gen -c BTC
Password: 
Repeat Password:
Mnemonic: acid employ suggest menu desert pioneer hard salmon consider stuff margin over bus fiction direct useful tornado output forward wing cute chicken ladder hockey
Password: [omitted]
Private Key: xprv9yUdDyYgknA92Cb4xfsqSXxQzGtELBm1kvXVvmp5MpW3UwjevPGEX29pjR9MAL13UTE1ZDfCwZ7Y3Uwpqv5BGP4cvdkS6DSTbvdYK7RicHk

The "mnemonic" is the seed phrase you need to remember or print. The WIF can be entered to import the bitcoin wallet in your favourite bitcoin client.

$ crypto-wallet-gen -c XMR --from-mnemonic "acid employ suggest menu desert pioneer hard salmon consider stuff margin over bus fiction direct useful tornado output forward wing cute chicken ladder hockey"
Password: 
Repeat Password: 
Mnemonic: acid employ suggest menu desert pioneer hard salmon consider stuff margin over bus fiction direct useful tornado output forward wing cute chicken ladder hockey
Password: [omitted]
Address: 4295Lfg8n2pJiN5eC6YHMGGR4oZ1PuaGJNyNo24wNjrdNPLBSVFFHVEay83fFwJBCWPVumE8xW6wKB6Udj8ttmZoNLDTgsn
Private View Key: c2e6e8597bb5050e57a98d284faf27edc3587d57cccd8a2b3edfd38cdd23af0b
Private Spend Key: 4d93d393f0f2c4a9837524f9d740fa85af54c464864aa8c16d39ef3409781802

That's it. The address, private spend key and private view key can be used to import the wallet into the Monero client.

Now say you loose access to your Bitcoin or Monero wallet, using the phrase and step 2 above, you can always recover the Monero wallet again, and similarly you can recover your bitcoin wallet:

$ crypto-wallet-gen -c BTC --from-mnemonic "acid employ suggest menu desert pioneer hard salmon consider stuff margin over bus fiction direct useful tornado output forward wing cute chicken ladder hockey"
Password: 
Repeat Password: 
Mnemonic: acid employ suggest menu desert pioneer hard salmon consider stuff margin over bus fiction direct useful tornado output forward wing cute chicken ladder hockey
Password: [omitted]
Private Key: xprv9yUdDyYgknA92Cb4xfsqSXxQzGtELBm1kvXVvmp5MpW3UwjevPGEX29pjR9MAL13UTE1ZDfCwZ7Y3Uwpqv5BGP4cvdkS6DSTbvdYK7RicHk

You can use this one-step install command.

You might have to call this afterwards, or alternatively just restart your bash session:

$ source $HOME/.cargo/env

Also make sure, you have openssl and a linker installed, for example by running the following:

$ sudo apt install libssl-dev pkg-config gcc

$ git clone https://github.com/smessmer/crypto-wallet-gen
$ cd crypto-wallet-gen
$ cargo install --path .

This tool uses BIP39 for the mnemonic and BIP32/BIP44 derivation from your seed phrase and password with the derivation path m/44'/{coin}'/{address}'. That is, for bitcoin with address 0 (which is the default) we use m/44'/0'/0' and for monero m/44'/128'/0'. For bitcoin, the derived key can be directly used as a bitcoin wallet. If such a key is imported into a bitcoin client like electrum, electrum derives m/{change}/{index} from the key it is given, so the full derivation path will match the BIP44 scheme of m/44'/{coin}'/{address}'/{change}/{index}. For monero, we follow the algorithm described here, which means we interpret the private key part of the derived BIP32 extended key as a monero private key.

The example from that site is one of the integration tests in this repository. Also some examples generated at https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ .

There is an optional --scrypt parameter that replaces the PBKDF2 hash function of BIP39 with scrypt. This has three effects:

1. Somebody knowing your mnemonic but not the password who is trying to brute force the password will have a significantly harder time.
2. Generating a key from your mnemonic isn't instant anymore, it now takes several seconds (or minutes, depending on your hardware).
3. You're leaving BIP standards territory, there is no BIP standard for this. You cannot switch to a different tool and will be dependent on having this tool available when you want to generate keys from your mnemonic. Better keep a copy of the source code around just to be safe.