Bitcoin Forum

Hii there as i said in my previous posts that i want to buy and hold my 4 bitcoins in some wallet and most users suggested me electrum.
Actually i am new in using desktop wallet i had some question.
What if my electrum wallets gets deleted or uninstalled from my laptop having bitcoins it it ?
What if my laptop get stolen/or its get corrupted and never get opened again ?

Electrum generates you this thing in the beginning called "Seed" it is a set of 12 random words that you should write down on a piece of paper and hide it away. that "Seed" can be used to recover your wallet and anybody can do it. so in case you lost your wallet for any reason, you can install a fresh Electrum wallet and recover the funds this way.
the solution for your second question is either not installing a wallet and holding your funds on a device that can be stolen, or make it harder by encrypting the whole thing by setting up a password on the wallet.

besides you don't have to begin with $5000 worth of bitcoin! just begin with a small amount, test things and get more comfortable with everything and then buy/transfer the funds to that wallet.
also learn more about cold storage. the electrum docs has a good explanation.

There is recovery phrase of 12 words which you have to save in safe place to recover your electrum wallet in such scenarios, also don't forget to use strong password so that other's can't send out bitcoin from your wallet even if they get access to your wallet or recovery phrase.

Whatever is deleted from your hard drive is saved at the service provider's end. If you erase it or lost the control, you can always restore from the 12 words seed value.  Seeds are random, unique and are used to generate the addresses.

Just make sure you write down the seed words and DO NOT keep a digital copy of the seed on your harddrive.
Hackers can also use that same seed to re-generate your wallet if they can get hold of it, so rather write it down on a piece of paper.

I have used this method to re-generate my Electrum wallet before and it works like a charm. ^smile^

Buy and hold bitcoin? I think then the best option for you will be cold storage or paper wallet. So you can keep them offline and secure.
Never keep them on any of the web wallets and although desktop wallets are okay but if you just want to keep them stored, then paper wallet or cold storage are the best options.

I use a few Electrum wallets with 2FA. I find that they are good. I feel like they are safe too, with very strong passwords and 2FA.
There is a section all about Electrum on the forum, look there for answers to your questions..

Good luck!

100% wrong on this point:  it is not saved at service providers end.

As long as you have the private keys of your wallet then you can make sure that everything is okay, so it is best if you do back up by getting the private key of your wallet and put it on a usb or in a safe place where you only know that there is the private key, so if somehow the worst case scenarios happen. You can still get your bitcoins back and nothing to worry about.

Why do not you use an online purse? It will be much more convenient, you do not need too much mind, in addition, you can guarantee security with 2FA code, everything is easy.

To avoid these circumstances to happen, you should always back up your wallet. It's not an exception for anyone. Keep your wallet.dat and keep it safe. Create a paper wallet that cointains your privatekey and save it somewhere.Encrypt your wallet with a password so if ever your pc get stolen, the stealer can't access it. Keep you password somewhere safe. Always keep multiple copies and not just one. I am also using a desktop wallet and I have done all these things because you do not know what micht happen.

dude, that is the worst suggestion you could give to anyone! not to mention that OP is looking for a wallet to store 4BTC which is about $5000
you are practically showing him the way to increase the chances of him losing that money!

a web wallet which you are calling "online purse" does not become as safe as a cold storage, not even as safe as a desktop wallet even if you enable 2FA on it. the website can still have so many bugs and your browser can leak so many things that can easily lead to getting hacked.

Personal locking is only the last resort when you lose your wallet. Instead of doing it, keep your device safe, which is most convenient, keep your wallet on a device that is strong enough to make sure it stays stable for long periods of time. Never think of the last resort when you still have a lot of workarounds.

Thanks alot all of you for these suggestions and answer to my question.This is the best forum whatever i ask i get exact answer and many opinions from experienced users in this forum. :)

I'm sorry but what are the private keys? Is it something different from the seed? Because I thought I only need the seed to restore my wallet in case the computer gets stolen or breaks down, am I wrong?  ???

each address has its own private key, which you can view.   It is different from the seed.

You can restore the wallet entirely from the seed....however if the computer is stolen, so can the person stealing it if the wallet is not password protected.

Where and how can I see the private key? And why is it so important?

I just installed Electrum and I chose the 2FA option + password, is that enough?

Yes just make sure you also have your seed stored somewhere very safe offline where no one can ever find it.

Private keys are how bitcoin works from the ground up.  Every address has a corresponding private key to it.
The idea of using a seed to generate a bunch of addresses in a wallet only came later.  It is called "HD" or
hierarchical deterministic wallet.

Yeah I did  ;)
So pretty much I can forget about the private keys, I only have to care about the seed.

One question about the 2FA: in case I restore the wallet on a new computer, after the seed is it gonna ask also for the 2FA or not? I mean the very first time I restore the wallet.

When you restore a wallet using that seed it will cease to be a 2fa wallet. You won't need to enter any 2fa codes or have anything to do with trusted coin anymore.

Edit: I was wrong. You can actually choose to keep or disable 2fa at the time of wallet restoration.

if you restore on a new computer you don't need 2fa.

you can see the private key for each address by right clicking the address I think or choosing view privte keys from the menu

That won't work for 2fa wallets since they contain p2sh addresses and there are multiple private keys for those. Electrum only shows one.

BTW OP I was wrong in my earlier post about restoring 2fa wallets. I just did a test restore and you can actually choose to keep or disable 2fa in the restored wallet. So you have the choice.

Thanks a lot to both of guys!  ;)

Now I'm 100% sure that the only thing I need to restore the wallet is the seed, and nothing else.