Field Notes · 12 March 2026
When a travel wallet should re-enter the rotation queue
Courier trips and conference weekends leave hardware wallets in a grey zone. Here is how we mark them on the checklist.
A hardware wallet that left the building for a courier drop or a weekend conference is no longer in the same trust posture as the unit that never moved. On our fleet reviews we treat “returned to the safe” as a trigger, not a non-event.
What we ask on the day
- Date the device left and returned
- Whether it powered on outside your secure room
- Whether a passphrase was entered in a hotel or office that is not yours
- Whether the spare mapping still points to a unit that remained offline
If any of those answers are unclear, the travel wallet lands on the rotation candidate list even when firmware looks current.
A practical rule of thumb
Teams that dislike automatic retirement after every trip can adopt a softer rule: any travel device must complete a recovery drill on a test seed within fourteen days of return, with the date written on the checklist. Skipping the drill keeps the device marked amber until the next fleet review.