Bitcoin Forum

What do you think?

your undestand or not,  your must undestand bitcoin digital curency anonymous
transaction is only online, still now is not regulated payment is offline store
is physical only colletor is collect in price expensive and can't transaction via blokchain or another transaction online

The problem with Cas coins is that they are at a premium and since Mike has not produced one in a couple of years, you must be buying it off of someone. It's hard to verify that the seal has not been tampered with when you can't inspect it in person before buying. Otherwise, it is an excellent way to curb the desire to move the coins to an exchange and sell, but it is also harder to sell the coins if you need the money. See where I'm going with this?

For the trezor, you are going to spend around $100. So that is a chunk of change that could be better spent. If you are looking for a secure cold storage, and know you will have no need to access the coins until you are ready to do so, do a paper wallet. It's simple and cheap!

With a paper wallet you have to physically keep it hidden (theft), and it is physically fragile (fire, water).

A good alternative is generate a paper wallet, store the info on an encrypted USB key and destroy the paper. Make many copies, store them in many places.

I don't trust Windows, I use a USB stick bootable to Puppy Linux, (http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm) and keep the keys in a Truecrypt partition. I know the Truecrypt project is officially closed, but I choose to trust it.

You do not have to spend $99 for a Trezor. You can buy a Ledger Nano S for $65 that will do the job just fine. Any hardware wallet is better than a paper wallet for most users, unless you understand the pitfalls of paper wallets (https://bitcoinnewsmagazine.com/bitcoin-paper-wallets-are-not-safer-than-hardware-wallets/) and how to avoid them.

i like it. i did this with Ubuntu and Electrum. everything on one USB disk, everything encrypted :)
although i am looking for more interesting ways like one of those Linux from scratch like Arch to make a custom linux distro only for holding the wallet.

It's probably best to put it onto a paper wallet (with multiple copies of course) and hold your Bitcoin that way; with that you aren't limited with a specific amount and you can do whatever with it, as well as put it into a digital wallet at nearly any point in time. I'm not entirely sure how the Cas coins work, but I would assume that a paper wallet is more versatile.

in a cold wallet your bitcoin will not grow, ionvest in something like mining, and it's like having your coins generating other coin, then you sell your equipment and return back a good portion of your invested coins

price is likely to rise over time so you better store 0.80 btc or whatever you can buy in paper wallet and put paper in bank locker. You will be in 2x atleast may be by next year.

i am not exactly an expert in physical bitcoins but they are more of a collectible so if you are really interested in them, then buy it and enjoy having them for many years as a collection. especially if 0.5BTC and whatever their prices are is not the only bitcoin you have. these may go up in price but it will need a long time.

but if that is not the case then only use cold storage (paper or other ways) to store your coins.

Aren't physical bitcoins much more expensive because they are collectible?
The only ones I've seen were on eBay for something like $1,000 which is basically double the price of its worth.

Even though they are cool I would much rather just print a paper wallet or put a USB stick in a fire safe.

Someone should make another run of physical coins and make them cheap- around $5-10 and they would sell really well I think.

Yes you will have to pay a premium for physical bitcoins for exact those reasons you've mentioned.
That's why I would prefer hardware wallets like Trezor, Ledger Nano or keepkey.
Paper wallets are fine as well but make sure you store them safe and protected from water and fire.

I would go for the cold wallet over the phsyical bitcoin.

The premium you pay for the coin may be worth it at this price levels and maybe they will increase in value over time as they become more rare, but 0.3 bitcoin has much more growth potential than the coin imo. Imagine bitcoin going to 10k usd for the sake of the argument. That means the 0.3 bitcoin is valued at 3000 usd. Do you think the physical bitcoin with 0.5 btc will sell for 8000 usd? It is more likely that you get 5000 usd for the bitcoin and a premium for the coin of a few hundred dollars. I don't think those coins will still be selling for 1.6x-2x their bitcoin value at those bitcoin prices.

Taking everything into consideration, i would rather have cold wallet, than a physical bitcoin. That was i can be sure there was no tampering, and only i can know
private keys to my coins. Physical ones are much more appealing, i know, but on the end of the day, i choose security over looks, always.

I use my Trezor for trading and spending, for long-term i use paperwallet.

Dont forget to put youre paperwallet in a plasctic sheet and vacuum/seal it against light/air/water.

I'm not getting exited about a physical coin, maybe 1 with a small amounth just for the cosmetics.

trezor is definitely a way better thing, with it you can basically spend your bitcoins whenever you want and it is still a cold storage, i would go with it

cold wallet is always a great decision, in my opinion it is the safest thing you can use at the moment, i think that i will buy this too in the near future

the thing that you forgot to mentions is that what is your purpose for doing this?

if you are looking for security and holding bitcoin for a long term then paper wallet is the best choice and Trezor is good only if you are willing to spend $100+ on it.
also move your topic to an appropriate board here is speculation

but if you are speculating about the price of those physical coins like Casascius then you should look at the Collectibles board here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=217.0 and ask your question there.

i think its better to keep bitcoin in cold bitcoin even its not grow, just hoping that the rate of bitcoin will be up to high. for other, my suggestion is don't do it. but the choice is up to you.

I agree with you . do not ever let stand in cold bitcoin wallet. bitcoin investment do to get even more.
with an investment we can reproduce bitcoin we have.

Cold wallet your Bitcoin stays as it is, if its 2BTC today, its still 2BTC next year nothing will changd, while physical bitcoins, you may buy one of those today at 0.1BTC after a few years price may double base on the condition and you can also put in in display so others can see and envy.

physical bitcoin looks way much better than a trezor wallet though if it comes to safety i would definitely choose a trezor wallet because it is pretty much impossible to hack

To force myself into cold storage and get my coins out of polo lending before they get goxxed..
And get them away from my fingers (computer) so I can't easily change my mind later..

I bought a 2013 .5 BTC Brass Casascius for .8BTC to accomplish this goal and I wanted to know what others thought about this kind of investment decision..

I guess the overwhelming majority, 100%, think I would be better off to just have put .8BTC on a paper wallet to avoid the value of an object connected to my cold BTC ...

I really believe in BTC and want to stick myself in a long term investment that can't easily be undone..

It's a pretty cool token of all that effort it took to earn all that BTC. Earning BTC is getting harder and harder all the time..

thats true, i believe that physical bitcoins are way cheaper so i would definitely go with it because it can still be a really reasonable cold storage

I would also choose keep those coins in cold wallet will be better option like all others.First of all buying a physical coin like .5 BTC Casascius will be difficult.You have to buy it from a person who will deliver you and there is no way whether its genuine or not and still storing them will be better as we expect bitcoin price to increase in the future so better investement.

I don't know whats difficult with buying a Casascius physical coin with 0.5 BTC face value, you can visit the collectibles section and ask around, theres a lot of trusted sellers out there who might change their mind and sell some of their spare to those who wants to start collecting physical coin. I have some physical coins that come from the Netherlands shipped all the way here in the Philippines with no problem.

I read somewhere that a paper wallet is only safe if the program generating it comes from a trustworthy source. Something to do with a dodgy paper wallet generator being "preloaded" with a bunch of known addresses and private keys. Any ideas?

I prefer cold wallet instead of physical bitcoin as it is more costly and also hard to keep it safe, but cold wallet is very easy to store in any removable media and also we can make multiple copies of that wallet too.

I prefer storing my bitcoins in a cold wallet as if I have to redeem my bitcoins then it is pretty easy to do so from a cold wallet and if I have to peel a physical bitcoin then I would not be able to do so as they are such a nice piece of art and I would never be pleased to destroy one, so I just use cold wallets for storing my bitcoins.