Bitcoin Forum

I am a little confused about storing offline

at the moment i have 1 full bitcoin,  i keep it offline on a usb stick,   just the file "wallet.dat"

so, my question is,  if the police raided my home and took my usb stick, they wouldn't be able to crack it, but i would loose my bitcoin since the usb is not in my hands, and the probably wouldn't give it back

also, a paper wallet, they could take that away from me also, so it's not good

is there a way that i won't need the usb stick and .dat file?


can i memorize my password, and secret key,  

then after i am released, i can buy a new computer, install bitcoin and

then i can simply put my password and secret key into a fresh bitcoin, and volia!  i have my bitcoin back

that is, if the police have not cracked my .dat file

police or someone robbed my home, i am thinking of extreme situations

advice?

You could easily memorise your private key and insert it into another wallet. The only thing you require is a superhuman memory as I can barely recall my own date of birth.

Alternatively you could memorise a seed for a wallet such as Electrum or Mycelium which would be a string of words. That's maybe less of an ask but still pretty fearsome.

Don't be tempted by brain wallets though. Better to leave the entropy out of human hands.

If you use a passphrase protected Trezor all you need to memorize is the PIN and passphrase. The seed is useless without the passphrase so you could store copies of the seed with several friends. Hiding in plain sight so to speak. Just do not forget your passphrase:)

make a paper wallet
dig a hole somewhere
put the paper wallet in the hole
cover the hole with dirt and rocks whatever is around.
volia!

http://www.kylekorpi.com/portfolio/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/x-marks-the-spot-map1_2989433-360x300.jpg

this is way better than memorizing. For me its hard to memorize addy because of small and big letter and its too long for me memorizing by characters.

Anyone remember breaking bad where WW buried his money and put the gps coordinates of the location into a lottery ticket?   I thought that was clever.   Maybe you could do something similar.

If I recall rightly that didn't end up working out too well for him overall.

I would just distribute the wallet, encrypted, with a decent password in many different server around the globe and maybe one hidden in my house.

But if you memorize your private key, just make sure you train your brain and write it back in your mind, a piece of paper, a text editor or anywhere regularly... Otherwise, you will forget as you don't use it.

Yeah he fell victim to a serious social engineering attack.  But it still was clever and I'm sure there are creative ways to store private keys or seeds.

there are many ways of storing bitcoin, you can use a wallet like Electrum that is using "Seed" system to create wallet, so you have to memorize the words (a sequence of random words) but remember that memorizing alone can go wrong because forgetting one word or the sequence means losing money.

p.s why would police raid your home and confiscate your usb, what are you doing at home :?

if you are really worried about losing your usb you can always rar up the wallet.dat with a password and email it to yourself.


what you do is put a bunch of pictures in the rar file. choose to scramble the names.. then name the rar weddingpics.rar

If you lose you USB stick, or it dies or gets corrupted, then you lose you bitcoins. Encrypt your wallet (bitcoin core can do that) and make multiple backups (bitcoin core can do that). Memorize the encryption password.


Same thing. Encrypt the private key (BIP-38) and make multiple backups. Memorize the encryption password.

There used to be an online service that did exactly what you were describing: brainwallet.
They generated a private key from a passphrase you could chose yourself.

The service is down, because, as it turns out, those passphrases are not nearly as random as one would think, so somebody found out it was pretty easy to brute-force these brainwallets and steal all coins therein :)

How about having all the address and passwords tattooed in different concealed areas of your body? Or hide them entirely in bigger tattoos? You'd have it with you anywhere you go, and there would be no problem or fear of losing it ever again.

I think I have read about a Bitcoiner from the Netherlands who had a chip implanted in his hand so he would be able to spend from his Bitcoin stash by waving his hand above NFC devices lol. But this thing can't be concealed because you will light up every time you are near a scanner  :D I think your best bet is to put your private keys in a location not known by anyone even the police and keep them there. Human long-term memory is not reliable and you could lose your coins. Unless you are an elephant  ;)

I am pretty sure you have some other home access (your relatives, or cousins , grand parents etc) how about installing there an electrum wallet and putting in their pc an encrypted document with the seed. Pretty sure the police will not raid your relatives homes too, of course you have to have your relatives not very much knowledgeable in the PC are and they must have a clean PC.