Bitcoin Forum

Greetings Earthlings,

Who is interested in having their Bitcoin savings offline?  I am thinking along the lines of paper wallets where the private key has never been exposed to the Internet.

Paper wallets are pretty weak, let's be honest.  If someone were to offer you a superior way to keep Bitcoin in offline (PHYSICAL) form, would that interest you?  How much do you think you'd pay for an awesome physical Bitcoin storage product?  I'd like to launch such a product on the market soon.   ;)

I know all about physical Bitcoins such as Casascius Coins.  They seem like a novelty, but not really practical.  What I am asking is: would you be interested in a practical, cheap, superior way of storing Bitcoin physically?

Please be brutally honest!

BTCBTCBTCBTCBTC

i find my usb doing a good job as a cold storage, so unless this thing is not much more expensive than a usb, i'll stick with my pen drive

in my case i don't need to do a offline transaction, because i have a good way to know if my pc is safe

Who wouldn't be storing their coins in such a way? Having it cheap and practical is what most of us look for.
You could laminate your paper wallet( well you're supposed to) and drop it off at your vault and have multiple copies saved with you.
Something else like the ledger wallet is pretty practical as well, unfortunately it only supports chrome. So you can't always use it on the go
when needed urgently.

A cheap reliable hardware wallet hw-1 goes for 0.07btc, how cheap and how much better is your solution? If your physical storage is cheaper and more convenient to use, a lot of bitcoiners would be interested.

Anyone holding a decent amount of BTC is going to be interested in ways ot keep their coins safe outside the menace of the internet. Haven said so, I dont think its really necessary to own anything else beyond a paper wallet and a couple isolated .dat wallet files encrypted and spread across a couple US pendrivers and hard drivers.- Should do the job just fine.

I'm very much interested, but unless you have an amazing idea and quite a bit of funds to make it happen, I can't see what have you got up your sleeve... But I'm open to new ideas, so let's see what comes out of this! :)

Also, what kind of physical thing are you thinking about? Physical like coins, or physical like a small machine/storage media?

It's actually pretty easy to generate a paper wallet offline so that the private key is never exposed to the Internet. You could use a paper wallet generator from a trusted website and run it offline or you could do what I did and run a copy of Vanitygen (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25804) on an offline computer and either write down or print the private key onto a piece of paper. If you would prefer to keep your coins on something more durable then paper then you could alternatively choose to engrave the private key onto a piece of wood or metal:

http://s3.postimg.org/qp2mfuuc3/nook.jpg

There are also devices out there which can print paper wallets (http://www.cryptographi.com/) and hardware wallets like the Trezor (http://www.bitcointrezor.com/) which offer offline storage of bitcoins, as well as the ability to verify transactions and even sign transactions offline without the need to expose your private keys.


Flash media might work well for a few years but exceptions aside (http://www.sandisk.com/go/preserve/), I wouldn't trust it for extended long term cold storage. The electrons can slowly leak over time. Most pen drives will lose some of their data after one or two decades without being powered up.

I'm not so keen on this first generation of hardware wallets myself due to the need to trust the hardware wallet company.  I'd be more comfortable if there was companion software that could be used to verify that the device is not manipulating the RNG as you use it to create private keys.  Perhaps we'll see more robust approaches with a second generation of hardware wallets.

In this light, whitslacks graphical calculator program (https://vimeo.com/123798651) has an advantage.

You could also use a raspberry pi, provided that it does not connect to the internet after you generate the private keys on it.

Paper wallets / hardware wallets + services like SuredBits (https://suredbits.com) make it impossible to lose your private key. Cheap & effective IMO.

Brutally honest?  Ok.

How is paper not physical?

Agree, it can't be more expensive than average USB.
In reality truecrypt + usb is good enough and actually best security there is.

You can engrave your private key on a metal plate if you want to but there's always a better option such as using a hardware wallet. Works as great as a paper wallet, the only downside is you have to pay for it. I already have one with me right now and good thing is you don't need third party services as it already have its own built-in program to guide you through.

How about if you lost your usb, or your usb is damaged? If that happen, your wallet is gone forever.

If thieves are clever enough, they may steal your money, and know btc wallet.  :D

i predicted that(not that hard to predict :d ) and in fact i have more than 1 usb, exactly 3 to be precisely

it's impossible that all 3 will be damaged at the same time

And let me add to that:
How are they weak?

If you create a paper wallet on an offline computer, then completely erase all data from that computer (hell, even get a cheap old pc and destroy it afterwards),
how is that weak?

Please enlighten me.

/Advocate of the devil here;

-You could loose the paper
-You could loose the password of the wallet number
-You could have ur house and/or the paper burned
-And it could get unreadable after a year or so depending on the printer and or inkt cartridge.

I can't help but get paranoid when I use paper wallets.
I always do a virus check first & then disconnect from the internet but I just can't help always thinking what if.......

I am much interested in a BETTER physical storage if it is not expensive. Actually, I am using a cheap (but good quality) USB for this purpose and it does its job well. However, if you have a reliable idea of a mobile, quick and easy to use alternative, I am open-minded to read about it in case it does not necessitate special reader since I can use my current USB almost anywhere.

Dude, yes I would be interested. I frequently do a google search to see if new physical bitcoins or wallets are available. If you have an idea to begin a Bitcoin startup company of any sort, by all means, go for it!

Engraving is good if you have the professional equipment to do it. I hand-engraved wallets onto silver bullets once, but when the people I gifted them to wanted to redeem them, we went through great torture trying to figure out the print (on such a small bullet).
If you get your local jeweler to do the job, he could take a pic of the private key or retrieve it later from the CCTV footage.

Amazing response, I am happy with the interest people have shown regardless.

Lots of good points raised, I've been through all of these methods myself but I always had a nagging paranoia compared to how I feel about my bank account (fairly chilled).  Now I use an easy solution that makes me feel super secure and generally happier, though I apologise for not directly sharing it - it's something I may want to patent.

I recognise, as many have said, that the current methods are very cheap (which may be difficult to compete with in the market).
Hardware wallets like Trezor are waaay too expensive though.



I mean that paper is weak because it could disintegrate over time, even from common things like dampness in the house, drying up over many years and disintegrating, a rogue child could puke on it, a rogue teenager could spill beer on it, you could spill beer on it, insects might much it down.  Of course when that happens say goodbye to all the money.

Making multiple copies may seem like the solution...2 (still scared), 3 (just about OK), screw it I need to make 5!  Now the problem is that there are 5 copies hidden in different places and this brings a completely new kind of paranoia because 5 is a full time job to monitor and it's even harder to know if one of them has been discovered.  It's very possible that I could even forget the location of one when there are lots of them and suddenly I have no idea if the wallet is safe or not.

 :) ;) :D ;D >:( :( :o 8) ??? ::) :P :-[ :-X :-\ :-* :'(
Vires in Numeris

Good point about the multiple copies. I'm always reluctant to make multiple copies of my hard wallets because the more copies there are, the more vulnerable you become to someone finding your hidden copies.

Encrypted wallet in an encrypted container on an encrypted USB stick.

The hell do you need more ? Cost is the cost of a USB stick.

In the last week I've seen at least 3 users who were gathering interest for a Bitcoin Paper wallet.
As good as offline storage is, you'll find it hard to sell in a slow market with quite a bit of competition.
What would your wallets offer that give it the edge over your competitors?

Ok, where are you situated?

In most countries it's illegal to mint any form of coins, without governmental approval. 

You are opening yourself up for a huge shit storm, if you go about it in the wrong way... Here is a old article on the matter:

Source : http://www.coindesk.com/us-regulators-bitcoin-mint-casascius-shut/

FinCen will hunt you down, if you are US based.  ;D

...and then your USB stick has a technical fault and everything is lost.  No way I would rely on one solitary USB stick alone. 

Not planning to mint coins either, that would be copying what others have done, no originality there.

The point that was made about "lots of competition in a slow market", this is a very interesting point.  Perhaps the Bitcoin ecosystem is still to small to launch a profitable product into.  That makes it hard for small-timers like me because often the companies that can launch products are willing and able to sustain big losses in the beginning years in return for getting their brand name out and known early.  Small-timers like me can't sustain any commercial-scale loss.

Well...thats why Im here asking you.  So far its been very helpful.

Make 5 of them. Drop them at friend's house etc.
Solved.

No. I don't want any kind of physical storage. Being immaterial is one thing I like most about BTC.

then you should not run your local wallet on your desktop or storing your balance on any exchange, because those run on a physical mahcine as well

bitcoin isn't non-physical, because it run on a physical things...