The website assumes I know how a set of ball bearings can result in my private key.
I don't know.
The text and photo from the BTCPay shopping cart provided more info:
2048 chrome steel 6.35mm diameter BIP39 balls in a bottle. 32 bags of 64 balls for ease of verification. 0-indexed numbering (0000-2047). Numbers only (words do not fit nicely). 1.25kg approx ball weight (approx 39g/bag). Note: for full entropy, you must replace each ball and reshake before pulling next one -- however, if my math is correct (don't trust me), you only get about an 11% drop in entropy by pulling 23 at once, which is pretty negligible.
So I need 23 values (balls) each of the 2048 (i.e., range from 0 to 2047) and that somehow gives me what I need for a private key? If so, how? I don't compute.
The final word is a checksum that you need a computer, typically a signing device ("hardware wallet") to generate.
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What I mean is ...
Can't the site be a bit more forgiving and simply help out the noobs and say something to the effect of:
"Each ball corresponds to one of the 2048 seed words from BIP-39, which is used with any wallet or cold storage device that supports BIP-39."
(or whatever the procedures are to go from shaking this thing to sleeping peacefully because your keys were generated with a exceptional randomness).
I.e., ELI5
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Yeah, I agree it is worth adding an ELI5 section... tbh, I just did this because I thought it was neat and made the website in a few hours. Not expecting anyone to get this who doesn't have a pretty good understanding of what it is, but since I've only sold 2 so far, and I do want to recoup mfg costs, I'll probably get around to it.
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