Bitcoin Forum

Hi I had a general question about wallets.

What is the best way to protect your bitcoin from being hacked? Would creating a wallet and storing it offline on a usb drive be the safest bet?

thanks

if it is offline, they you dont have to worry about hacker,
you might get virus on your USB (what the chance  ;D)
or you could put on a voucher, paper wallet....

ok this is what I was wondering, whats the easiest way to make an offline wallet? I just read a how to using bitcoin qt to make it. Are there easier ways?

I'd say use Armory. The process is described here: https://bitcoinarmory.com/using-offline-wallets-in-armory/

The answer to that depends on a number of factors.   Obviously, a person wanting to protect 10 or 50 BTC in an offline wallet has different requirements than a business protecting thousands.

Armory is so useful because it not only lets you prepare and use the wallet from an offlien machine, but it lets you create a spend transaction that you transport over to a connected machine and that is safe to spend.

Another method is to use a paper wallet from an offline computer using the .html from BitAddress:
 - http://www.BitAddres.org

The problem with that is when you want to spend you are generally importing the private key into a machine that is connected to the network, in order to spend the funds.  So that is a method that is somewhat less secure than the Armory method.  So maybe one solution is to create many smaller wallets se.g., 2 or 4 BTC each, so that the risk when redeeming is limited to just the one paper wallet being redeemed.

What I want to basically do is having an offline savings wallet, and when I make purchases to transfer to a purchase wallet from my savings. I'm assuming armory is still the best bet for this?

Another vote for Armory. It's the best way to store, back up, and use your coins.

ok great will go that route.

Thanks for the help