A Duress Wallet is a wallet prepared to be revealed when someone forces its owner to surrender access to bitcoin. Depending on the implementation, a special PIN or a different passphrase—an additional secret text—opens it. The intention is to expose this wallet instead of the main one. Its bitcoin is real and can really be spent. The feature may limit the access just disclosed; it cannot guarantee that another person believes the displayed balance or stops making threats.
A wallet is an application or device for receiving and sending bitcoin. Private keys are secret numbers that let you authorize spending bitcoin. Imagine Peter keeps his main savings in one wallet and a separate wallet for a coercion scenario. A supported device can open only the second wallet after a special PIN: it makes that wallet’s keys available for signing payments. The main wallet cannot be accessed from this mode. This is not a fake screen displaying imaginary money. A payment from the second wallet enters the Bitcoin network normally. The name Duress Wallet alone says neither how the keys were derived nor what else the PIN triggers. Peter needs to understand his device’s exact behavior, not just its menu label. [1] [6] [7]
A PIN usually unlocks a Hardware Wallet, a device that protects keys. A BIP39 passphrase has another role: together with the Seed Phrase, the word backup, it is used to calculate the seed, the starting data from which keys are derived. Even a mistyped passphrase is accepted as input and usually opens a different, empty wallet. BIP39 standardizes character representation before calculation through normalization. To return, you need the correct backup and original passphrase; Trezor cannot recover it for you. Changing it is therefore unlike changing an email password: bitcoin does not move to the new wallet. Support for passphrases does not itself imply support for a special Duress PIN. [2] [3]
Suppose another person has already seen Peter’s main wallet or knows its addresses. A smaller balance on a newly opened screen does not erase that prior knowledge. BIP39 permits different valid wallets; it does not prove that no other wallet exists. COLDCARD illustrates this with SSSP, a setting for single-signer spending rules: someone with the main PIN can export an XPUB, an extended public key that allows the relevant addresses and balance to be monitored. An XPUB cannot sign payments by itself, but it can reveal information. Purchase records and earlier app access matter too. A transaction connection on the blockchain alone, however, does not prove the owner’s identity. [2] [5]
Some Trick PINs merely open another wallet; others erase secrets or permanently disable the device. These are different consequences. Bitcoin outputs—the amounts assigned to spending conditions—remain recorded on the blockchain. With a complete backup, they may remain accessible through another device. If the only usable copy of the keys disappears, the owner may lose access too. Erasure does not control the threatening person’s reaction either. Describing this feature is therefore not advice to activate it in a dangerous situation. [1] [6]
Writing down “backup PIN” is not enough for Peter. He needs to know which information restores the main wallet and which restores the separate one: a Seed Phrase, any passphrase and derivation parameters when required. Backup words alone cannot replace a forgotten BIP39 passphrase. A rehearsal with separate test data should compare known receiving addresses and check what opens after a restart. Seeing some valid wallet in an app does not yet confirm successful recovery of the intended one. Destructive options should not be tried on the sole copy of a real backup. [3] [4]
A stolen powered-off wallet, a stolen backup and direct coercion of a person are three different situations. The adversary has different knowledge and capabilities in each. A Duress Wallet may form part of carefully planned Self-custody, where you control your own keys, but it offers no universally reliable script. Nor is there a technically verifiable “safe amount” for the second wallet. Personal safety, people close to you, recovery and your own mistakes all matter. Testing a device establishes what its software does, not how an attacker will behave. EFF therefore bases security planning on specific threats and regular reassessment. [6] [5]
With BIP85, one main set of secrets can repeatedly recreate other wallets. The starting point is the BIP32 master extended private key: a private key together with the data needed to derive further keys. The calculation follows a fully hardened path, with private-key material required at every step. HMAC, a keyed hash function, then processes the result. In this hierarchy, the derived wallets are called children and the main starting point is the root. A child is not meant to let someone calculate the root; someone who obtains the root and required parameters can, however, recreate the children. Separate addresses therefore do not guarantee independent backups. Distinguish a wallet derived from a shared root, one using another passphrase and one with a genuinely separate seed. Recovery still depends on the correct path and index, the number selecting a particular child. [4]
COLDCARD documentation distinguishes Duress Wallet without erasing the main seed from Wipe → Wallet, which erases that seed and then opens the selected wallet. It lists three BIP85 variants and an older Legacy Wallet. For a main word backup containing 24 words, the BIP85 variants use indices 1001–1003; for 12 words, 2001–2003. Legacy uses m/2147431408h/0h/0h; h marks a hardened step. These details describe one implementation, not Bitcoin consensus rules. Another device or firmware version—the software inside the device—cannot be assumed to behave identically because its label looks similar. Recovery also requires knowing the exact mode. [1]
For the clearest picture, read this entry together with BIP85, BIP39 passphrase, Hardware Wallet, Self-custody, Secure Element, Seed Phrase.