> Basically, you just need to write down the 12 or 24 seed words generated by your hardware wallet
Why is that in any way more secure than writing down the private key itself? (inb4 "need to find both the hardware and the written seed words" that's equivalent to writing down the private key and then cutting the paper in half)
BIP39 seed words are used to deterministically generate all of your private keys in your wallet. You don't have to store the private keys themselves. Remember that each address has its own private/public key pair, and addresses shouldn't be reused. BIP39 has been the standard for many years.
Hardware wallet is assumed to generate BIP39 seed words securely. If you don't trust the RNG, some hardware wallets also support adding your own entropy with dice rolls. [0]
In some ways it's less secure, because seed phrases are usually master private keys, versus a single private key.
The point is that you can decide what to do with it... be your own bank. You can also add a password to a seed phrase backup if that makes more sense for your threat model.
how much BTC are you willing to bet that you'll remember 24 randomly generated seed words? probably not much.. that's why parent was advocating "you just need to *write down* the 12 or 24 seed words generated by your hardware wallet"
How much are you willing to bet that you transcribed a string of gibberish correctly (including case variations). Isn't a sequence of real words more fault tolerant?
Why is that in any way more secure than writing down the private key itself? (inb4 "need to find both the hardware and the written seed words" that's equivalent to writing down the private key and then cutting the paper in half)