Bitcoin Forum

hello,

I like to know where I can create a secure bitcoin wallet where I can keep my bitcoins for years, when I see websites that offer bitcoin wallet, I fear that one day the site no longer exists, and I lose all my bitcoins.

thanks.

You should look into a hardware wallet:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=967272.0


Keeping money in an online wallet is a bad idea.

The most important thing about creating a wallet, is that you have created the private key yourself and that you backup your private key.

If you afraid of online wallets, why do you bother about it? Download bitcoin core or use paper wallets or use multibit (light weight) wallet


~Rude Boy

You have to make sure to keep your Public/Private Key combination safe if you wish to keep the wallet for years.  I recommend generating these yourself and not storing the wallet on a website for long term.

Allowing only the wallet website to hold onto your Keys while a password is your access to your Public/Private Keys means that if the website goes offline, yes you will lose access to those wallet addresses and the funding.   If you backup your Public/Private Keys somewhere for each address, you will not lose access when the website goes offline as you can import your funds to another wallet.

I found this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1091414.0) for you. I'm sure you're looking for any of those wallets.

for me the bitcoint qt wallet is more than enought, pretty easy to use and dont forget is the core wallet.

but if you want something like a cold-storage wallet and how to improve it, just check this pretty good thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68482.0

If you want something for Lifetime then it's easy , piece of cake . Hardware wallet are good but you can screw up and lose it or in case of touching it water .
So you have some other posibilities , one of them is Electrum/Multibit HD (Offline wallets) which both of them use "Seed words" now , You can recover your wallet and BTC in case of a computer failure using just those words , so all you need here is a "good memory" or you write them down .
second posibility and choice you have is Paper wallet , you print it, put it in a safe or whatever and you are good.

If you are this paranoid, it's simple, don't use an online wallet. I wouldn't trust even blockchain.info if I wanted to hold long term. Always get a local wallet, or get your private keys printed in a QR.

5 years im using bitcoin "default" client, but i wouldn't recommend it anymore. Leaving it off results in insane time needed to re-sync, takes up too much space and so on..
I have a friend who was using trezor, and still had multiple issues with it on it's software side, which makes me rethink of the "higher price-higher quality" theory
For lifetime wallet i would go for that titanium bitcoin cold storage, i doubt it gets better than that..
cheers

well yes sometimes it need some time to re-sync, also i notice that in this version 10.2 it consume so much cpu than before at least for me, i mean when it need to re-sync, but even with all those drawbacks still a pretty good chooise.

titanium bitcoin cold storage looks a nice alternative :)

I would recommend you never use an online wallet. You should get a hardware wallet for cold storage and use a software wallet on your computer. I would suggest using Bitcoin Armory.

Don't keep them online for long term. Blockchain.info is pretty safe but I still wouldn't keep large amounts of coins on there.


He doesn't even need a hardware wallet. Just make several back ups of your wallet.dat file and write the private keys down and keep them offline in a safe and secure place.

or a real overview  ;D :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=899253.0

You definitely need a cold storage as others have already suggested. I recommend you my Android app 'Deck Wallet':
https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=811397
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ecuamobi.deckwallet

It doesn't have problems most cold storage options have such as key-logger risks, poor entropy or risk of connecting to Internet.

Offline wallets can be updated, dont trust random 3rd party sources for your wallets.  Also learn a few different ways to store your bitcoins to diversify your security risk.  If you aren't an expert dont make anything too secure atm until you know more.

Bitcoin nature is quite volatile and random. We can't say how it will scale in the future or if future will be bright for us. If Op is planning to buy bitcoins, put them in wallet and then forgot about it for couple of years without monitoring bitcoin state, then I can't recommend you any wallet really. All I can say - stay away from online wallets, keep your money for yourself in wallet like Bitcoin Core, don't ever let any 3rd party take control over it.

Hardware wallets or paper wallets are your best option.

bitaddress.org

Create a wallet on an offline computer.

If you don't know what that means.. don't buy Bitcoin until you do.

As suggested by other members - paper wallet is very safe and reasonably easy way to keep your btcs safe. Have 2 or 3 copies and keep them in safe places. Plenty of online tutorials on how to do it.

You should download a wallet like multibit or electrum
or create a paper wallet,if you just want to hold your bitcoins

If you have a budget, buy hardware wallet it's more secure wallet. And if you won't to spend your money or don't have a budget for that, my recommendation is Electrum(you don't need download the data) or Bitcoin Core(you need download the data). For more info about wallet: https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet


~iki

Although hardware wallets are more secure than desktop wallets, i believe paper wallets can also provide that kind of security when done in an airgapped computer. There is no way to guarantee if the code has any vulnerabilities due to the size of the opensourced documents. Paper wallets has fewer documents which will allow users to thoroughly check through to check for vulnerabilities. More importantly, it is cheap/

+1 for paper wallets.   They are super useful.   The make it easy enough to import your keys at a later date that it's not an issue but just hard enough where you will be less tempted to spend your BTC.   And assuming your private keys are generated on an offline computer, without malware, your are as sure as can be that your BTC will be safe for years to come. 

Trezor wallet can be the best, if you need wallet safety. Let say after 8 - 10 years, you can change Trezor to new one, because with time any electronical device can have problems  ;D

Have you explored and cosidered the paper wallets? (or cold storage?)

- Encrypt your wallets with STRONG password
- Keep the 'savings' wallet always offline
- Put encrypted wallet inside password-protected ZIP, put it on multiple USB drives and put them at multiple secure locations like your bank locker
- Export the private keys and store them on offline device
- Print private keys on paper and put it in your bank locker

if you want to keep it for years cold storage is a better idea.

and if you are concerned about your computer being infected with malware, use something like Tails https://tails.boum.org/

the important question is how much bitcoin you have and what do you want to do with them?
for small amounts and if you want to spend/use them, you can use an online wallet or mobile wallet.
for big amounts and if you want to invest and keep your coins for longer term, use cold wallets, paper wallets.

if you want to use an online wallet, there are two kind the ones that give you your private keys like blockchain.info this way if the site goes down you have access to your bitcoin
and the kind that don't like Xapo, if the site goes down your coins go down with it,

Most of the web wallet will give us the private key to our wallet. In fact, most of the lightweight wallet do this too. I'm using Mycelium (Android application) for almost a year now. They give me some form of backup. Whereas, if my phone was stolen I can quickly get into my Bitcoin wallet from another wallet. And than quickly send my Bitcoin to another new wallet address.

This will also work if Mycelium suddenly stopped operating for whatever reason. So, as the rule of thumb, always make sure the wallet you are using give your some form of backup such as private key - as I said before, most of the wallet offer this.

Get a pc or better yet build one that was never connected to the web.

Generate addresses & store the priv keys in a strong pgp encrypted file in safe places.

After making sure you did not screw up shread those files. (edit one - the wallet & non encrypted keys)

Send the btc you want to store to those base 58 addresses.

In the 'future' you can import the priv keys & rescan the blockchain in the Satoshi or core client to reclaim your btc.

Use cold storage to store your Bitcoins, Bitcoins on websites are never a safe place to keep your Bitcoins.

The safety is compromised with web wallets. Web wallets are authorized to make any changes to the wallet structure without your acknowledgment. They can purposely capture your password [Blockchain.info]. They can take your coins without you knowing. Go with a trusted desktop wallet if you want to keep it for a lifetime.

people who use online storage as cold wallet are utterly stupid. don't know why any person would still do so after plenty of hacks.

Using online storage as cold storage? I am hearing this for first time. Try to make your sig spam better by thinking before posting or you will be banned.

You can print paper wallets OP or read more on cold storage but do remember that paper wallets if not stored right they can get damaged and if the key is lost you end up losing your bitcoins, same goes for other cold storage like if you keep them in an offline hard drive or pen drive they might fail, so it's best if you're going to put your bitcoins in a cold storage to keep lots of back ups and check on them.

May be hardware wallets like Trezor offer better cold storage but I haven't used them so don't know.

If you keep a paper wallet on bitcoin core, make sure you backup your wallet after every 100 transactions i believe, or it was something similar.

If you use online wallet then also make an offline backup.

Blockchain.info says that they dont have acces to your funds , so even if they go down, if you have your backup offline you can restore it on another wallet.

1) You're right. But Bitcoin Core isn't considered as a paper wallet since it can't be paper. It can only be used as a offline wallet.
2) It depends on which online wallet you are talking about. Some online wallets doesn't give you control over your private key while some will allow you to have control over your private key and some will send you a nlocktime file which contains your UXTO to spend when the time specified expires.
3) They can easily change a code which captures private keys by capturing passwords or falsify transaction informations.

2) I was talking about blockchain.info, its by far the best online wallet out there so far. They allow you to have your private keys exported and they dont have access to it.

Of course i would not trust them with 10000 bitcoins, but i`m sure 0.1 or smaller chunks like that are ok to hold there.

1) You can just print out the private key from the Core wallet, so its is a "paper wallet" then.

3) If they didnt scammed anyone yet, they have no reason to do it now, i consider them the safest online wallet, as safe as online wallets can be.

2 & 3) No. Blockchain.info is not as safe as online wallet can be. The developers have done big mistakes, even stupid ones. I recommend GreenAddress. When comparing, GreenAddress is better.

2,3) You haven't been up to date with the news i see. I'll give you a list of em':
http://blog.blockchain.com/2015/05/28/android-wallet-security-update/
http://blog.blockchain.com/2014/12/08/blockchain-info-security-disclosure/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/02/24/blockchain-and-darknet-hacks-lead-to-epic-bitcoin-losses/
http://www.coindesk.com/blockchain-info-issues-refunds-to-bitcoin-theft-victims/
The most recent one happened just recently and I'm surprised that they didn't test out the software before even upgrading it.
1) How are you going to spend it? You are going to print out a few hundred lines of codes and you can't really spend them. Use a paper wallet generator if you aren't going to use Bitcoin Core on a machine. Most of them have nicer layouts.

What are the differences in spending from a paper wallet with private key from Bitcoin core and other generators?

i'm not spamming. i meant to say that people are stupid if they store all their coins in online wallet services like blockchain.info instead of storing them offline. if you just made an effort to think before posting you would have figured that out.

Other generators mostly offers a option to print in Qr code but you would require an additional program to print it for Bitcoin Core if i'm not wrong unless you are going to write down your private key. It would be much harder to spend since you have to import it into a computer but you can always sweep the amount by using mycelium or similar app if you're using Qr code. Just scan it. If you're using Bitcoin Core for solely that purpose, you're better off using other generators like bitaddress.org.

Now I got it. You should have phrased that better. Using "main hot storage" instead of "cold storage" would have made more sense IMHO.


 - Dumb private key(s).
 - Generate Qr code.
 - Print it.

Easy. :)

all you have to do just download a wallet maybe like multibit or electrumor create a paper wallet,if you just safe your bitcoins for a long time