Bitcoin Forum

I am a very private bitcoin miner. I don't "believe" bitcoin will be worth a lot of money one day. I feel more that I "know" it will.

I truly believe that one day people will scour the internet forums and anywhere else where they can short list people who have been involved in the bitcoin community for a long time and are likely to be holding a stash of bitcoin.

People could physically threaten you or your family, attack your house, or perhaps hack you.

Maybe someone you know in the physical world may try to rob you?

I welcome any discussion of how you think it best to secure your wallet/s.

I currently have 2 thumb drives which I consider my "bank" wallet. Which is empty, but still, it's there for when I need to send to it. I have them encrypted in a winrar file, then the wallet itself encrypted with something near impossible to find, then that wallet is then broken up into fragments and embedded into a bunch of wedding photos. Probably overkill, but still, why not... I think I should also make a copy of this to a microsd and a small cd.

Hardware failure worries me.

Does anyone have any experience with the purpose made encrypted thumb drives?

How do you secure your bitcoins? or plan to in the future? Am I just overreacting?

Cheers

You are not overreacting.
If one day bitcoin becomes a fundamental part of financial society,
you may be holding and controlling a percentage of that new financial order.

Potentially in the far future, even 1 single bitcoin could be enough for a lifetime.
And if that is the case, anyone who holds more than 1 is a target.

No one will rob banks or break into homes for tvs or jewelry.
There will be hacking teams and mafia working together to find early adopters/holders.

But by that point, I like to think we will be living on our BTC Holder Only estates on Mars.  ;)

I can dream...

You should spread out your Bitcoin over several addresses and use encrypted paper wallets and store those paper wallets somewhere very safe (e.g. safe deposit box). They will be encrypted with your password (better make it a good one) so that even if the wallet is stolen, no one can take your funds. The private keys for those addresses should never be on a computer anywhere and the wallets themselves should be made on an offline computer booting from a live cd. Also make multiple copies of each one and store each one in a different place to insure against theft.

That scares me too. If teams of hackers can breach places like Sony, eBay and Governments various secret facilities like their military's etc. Then who do we think we are to fend them off should they learn that we were early adopters?

I wonder if using a very high resolution image on a computer offline which has been opened in a photo editing program where you cut/paste your wallet in QR as small as it can go since it will only have to in pixels. Or just paste the private key as small as it can get.

Yes, but they could be doing that now as well.
But when it really gets going in the future we will all probably be dead, so only your descendants will have to worry.  :D


In reality though, you should follow knightdk's advice. It is what I do with my little amount of btc.
What you are describing might be too complicated and if that hard-drive storing the photos fail, you are in trouble.

Soniccoin does this via android app. Would be sweet to incorporate it into Bitcoin. 1 pixel out of the image has the privat key and only yourself or the intended recipient can decode that pixel.

I also agree with knight. You need to keep your stash secures on paper not just a thumb drive. One thing I have learned is devices fail. I keepone backed up on thumbs rives AND paper.

Paper wallets with a strong passphrase cannot be hacked. Just take everything off any electronic device and transfer it to a paper wallet. Laminate the paper wallet and keep two separate copies in two separate locations.
Store the encrypted passphrase in another location.

I have not heard of anyone who has lost bitcoin <properly created> from paper wallets <offline> I do not trust any electronic or physical device with my money. The industry change to fast, and backward compatibility will not last for 30 or 50 years. < I have stuff on stiffies 1.44mb I cannot access today >

Is Ledger not enough protection anymore?

I thought you said you don't believe!

This is a cool thread, consider me a subscriber. I don't have an impressive or unique storage story, so I'll just learn from all of you. The challenge I have with the idea of something elaborate is that the complexity can lead me to forget the details as the years go on. I realize it's my responsibility on my part to not forget, but still...it's easy to drift to the most convenient option.

Perhaps you call could share a gauge on the convenience factor in your respective storage set ups. Thanks.

And what about the people creating an electrum wallet to find out that there used to be funds in there 2 years before them? That kind of scares me when you don't have an encrypted wallet.dat file...

I think that your precautions are to weak. Someday someone (even not to much expert) can broke those. And will take the nothing you have on those. How will you survive that day. In which way do you justify yourself for not taking more precautions to protect that big nothing you have? I suggest that you thought deeply about this and reflect as soon as possible. Before the Apocalypse succeed.

This might help your planning: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1175691.0

Just another, very similar thread.

many early adopter have acquired their coins, through mining, there is no way to know who they are, also they are storing their treasure in a cold storage, who know where

other early adopter have left the bitcoin game long time ago, i doubt hacker will waste time to search for something unknown, better for them to target big and well knwon place like exchange

30 years ago, I worked for a company where they backed up data to huge magnetic tape reels. Those were the days of the dumb terminals and when mainframes was still huge. If you want to restore any of that data

today, you would be in a lot of trouble. The equipment reading the data from those tapes are now obsolete, and possibly recycled into a new notebook or a kids toy.  ??? This is only +/- 30 years ago... The

technology we use today, will be obsolete within the next 20 years. I still have some of those floppy drives luying in a desk somewhere... and nothing to read them with... I think that was only 20 years ago, when

they were used. Let's hope Bitcoin is still around in 30 years, at the rate that companies are creating their own "Private Blockchain" technologies.  ??? ???  

Everything credible and true. But I think that you forget something. Internet has more than 45 years and is yet the most used and developed tool today. Bitcoin is associated with a technology like this. Disruptive for to many technologies and very revolutionary. So I think that the cycle of life for bitcoin and its technology behind it it will not be so short.

i currently store my wallet files on 8 different usb drives. at this point they aren't encrypted, but i surely plan to do so. i only don't know what encryption software to use.

Use a Trezor and use a secret word option with it. In this way, even if they steal your Trezor or if they find your word seed, from where they can get your coins, they will have nothing.

Two problems still persist with this method. First, they take you hostage and make you give ghem your secret word. But this problem is unsolvable and exist with all methods.

Second problem, you get into car accident and you lose you memory. You are screwed since you forgot your secret word.

There are millions of people with plenty of visible wealth who lead perfectly normal lives unencumbered by kidnapping and murder. BTC is obviously more easily extracted but you might be overthinking it.

I wouldn't be trusting any type of fallible storage mediums myself.

In my opinion you are overreacting a little bit.
first of all, all the things that you are assuming is going to happen only "if the bitcoin will be worth a lot of money one day (a lot is somewhere around 10K USD per BTC)" which if you ask me, is not going to happen.

second of all, you are saying "People could physically threaten you or your family, attack your house, or perhaps hack you."
the threat is the same amount if you are rich (have a lot of fiat $$$) now. i don't see why there can be any difference between being rich with fiat or being rich by having bitcoin!

i feel like your whole process of securing your bitcoins is a bit extreme with a lot of unnecessary steps, it can be easier but if it makes you feel safe never do even one step less.

I'd be screwed anyway, because I would have forgotten I owned any Bitcoins in the first place.

I've often wondered about enabling the secret word option on my Trezor, but I don't think I completely understand it. What's the difference between the passcode and secret word? Is it just like two passwords you have to input instead of one?

I will let tattoo public adresses and private keys in my butt crack with ink that is only visible with black light!!Darkest place on earth will be the safest. ;D
Fuck the hacker mafia!! ;D ;D

I have a Mycelium entropy for sale. It's a USB stick that goes straight into the printer USB slot, hit print and you got a 100% safe paper wallet that has not been created online.

I think you are right in that I may be over reacting a bit.

I just don't want to be sorry that I didn't do enough. I find the the security part interesting and fun too.

I think this is a very solid idea, however in 30 years time your asshole will be probed constantly for prostate cancer, fissures and hemorrhoids. I hope you trust your medical professionals.

that would make for quick payments "oh after ur done searching my ass, just scan the private key right there  ;)"

I think that's a little bit over. I have my stash right now transferred to a completely random generated brain wallet which is left offline. I even have the privates out into another encrypted drive just in case. For me that level of security is good enough.