Bitcoin Forum

Hey,

I decided that I have too much bitcoins to store on my online personal PC
I have an electrum wallet, and I just wanted to ask, is a good way of freezing them is not putting my electrum password anymore?
ofcourse I kept a backup on a usb flash drive, but as far as I know, even if I keep my bitcoins on my online machine, if I dont type my password no one can steal it even if I have a malware right?
Also is Windows Defender is good enough against bitcoin stealing malware? Thank you!

I recommend that you get an offline computer, create a new wallet, and get an address from that wallet. Then send the Bitcoin from your hot wallet to that offline wallet.

Hey, does it really matter?
I don't think anyone can break a 20 characters password

It isn't just the password. You also have to consider some longevity things. If ECDSA is broken, then having your Bitcoin in a wallet that already has been spent from can result in the Bitcoin being stolen. There is also a consideration of whether your password has already been stolen or whether you have malware already on your machine.

There are bitcoin trojans which just steal your password if you do not keep your computer clean and swept. While you can use cold storage with Electrum with two computers, one always kept offline, it is easier to just use Trezor or Ledger instead.

Put them in the fridge.

But seriously, keeping bitcoin online for that matter is not good, not even on everyday pc. You should put it on a safe pc with WIFI disabled and no internet. Also make sure the USB is safe too, and not transport malware to the safe pc.

If that is too complicated just buy a hardware wallet.

you have to type that password at least once when you create it on your online computer, or more times if you want to spend from that wallet. so in case that computer is infected you can easily lose all your funds.

and if you don't want to spend from that wallet, you don't need to ever type the password so there is no risk but then there is no point of having that wallet on an online computer. you can make a watch only wallet of it if you want to see that wallet and keep the real one with private keys and passwords offline.

You are right, it doesn't matter: it wouldn't be cold storage.

You do not convert a hot wallet to a cold one. Once a wallet is hot it will never be cold again. Create a wallet offline and send the funds there as advised in previous posts... :)

http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/

You have there pretty much everything you need to know about cold storage. But as its been already said a hot wallet cannot be turned to a cold one. Yet you can create a new wallet as cold storage from the electrum client. As I said read the docs , there is a pretty extensive explanation of how to create cold storage from electrum.