Bitcoin Forum

To me, it seems like offline wallets are way more secure.

The main appeal is ease of use. And no, they're not more secure, in fact it's the exact opposite...

I think the main appeal of online wallets to other people is that it is very convenient to use as long as you have access to internet. You don't need to use any hardware to access your coins. But the problem with this is that it is not secured. You don't have the main control over your coins in an online wallet. Meaning if they suddenly shutdown (this is possible but the chance of this happening is very small), you will not be able to retrieve your coins from them.

Oops, typo in main post, edited.

All right, it's correct now :) People also use web wallet because, well... they have good marketing, appear on ads and newbies start in the cruptocurrency world by using them...

You're very, very wrong.

Think of a bank for a second.  When you put money in the bank, you don't own it, the bank does and they spend it for you.  The reason that your money is usually OK in a bank is because governments tend to insure reasonable amounts of money in the bank so that you can be compensated if they fail to pay and they're also very heavily regulated.

Now imagine that you were putting money into a bank that has only existed for about five years, is dealing with a new type of money, isn't insured and is extremely poorly regulated.  That's what an online wallet does.  It's about the furthest thing from safe that could exist in your lifetime.  It's basically like an exchange where you don't have to withdraw fiat.  They could collapse just like Mt Gox did and your money would be gone.

When you hold your money outside of an online wallet, you have responsibility for your funds because you actually control them.  If you lose them, that's your own fault, so it has the potential to be extremely secure.  You could run a full node; you could own a hardware wallet; you could write down the keys as a paper wallet if you don't intend to spend very often; you could even just store it in a lightweight node like Electrum.

Bitcoin offers real freedom from banks.  The whole point is that you don't have to trust a third party to have full control over your funds.  When you put your money in an online wallet, you remove that function of Bitcoin and thus it makes very little sense for you to be involved in Bitcoin at all.

Using online wallet is much more easy to use rather than the offline wallets. Also, in having transactions, if you are to send bitcoin at any amount to another person that is using the same online wallet like yours, the transaction will be done in just a blink of an eye. No confirmation was made. That is in the case of the wallet I am using, the Coins.ph wallet. It's pretty convenient for me. Well it is a local wallet here in the Philippines. As for the aspect of security, for know I do not have any idea since I am not yet looking into it.

But the reason people like the online wallets IS ease of use. It's easier to buy bitcoin through an online wallet, it's easy to facilitate day-to-day transactions. It's perfectly suited for business accounts - they can run transactions through an online wallet and keep their real holdings offline where they can own their private keys.

Iranus has the right angle on the risk. In the terms of US Financial history, online bitcoin wallets are currently similar to US banks in the early 1900s (before the market crash in 1929). Banks back then weren't ensured and could easily go bankrupt if not managed well, which would lead to people losing their savings. Once the market crash occurred the US government decided to ensure bank deposits to prevent "runs on the banks" by account holders. This insurance is managed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporations (FDIC) and protects account holders between $100,000 - $500,000 of deposits if the bank were to go out of business...i.e., "get Goxxed".

Obviously this security doesn't exist in Bitcoin (nor should it) so there is more risk each online wallet holder is taking on when they work with an online wallet company.

Two additional points.

First, Freebitco.in faucet is now adding online wallet features AND paying 4% interest on deposits, which starts to pay account holders for the risk they're taking by leaving deposits in this online wallet. Coinbase, Circle, etc., should do the same.

Second, the success of bitcoin has ALWAYS required a great amount of trust among the users in the community. That trust has been broken a few times and we've all learned from it. But if we refuse to grant trust to companies like online wallets we will forever stunt the growth of bitcoin.

Always manage your money wisely and "let the buyer beware"!

Bitcoin main function is a digital currency, and using online wallet make that way easier and convinient. Sometimes people don't bother to use offline wallet because they only have a few bitcoin and online wallet is enough. It's different when people use it as investment, they need more security so they don't use offline wallet.

I like using online wallets because when i'm not using my computer I could still open my bitcoin wallet through my phone. Yes,I think they're not that secured compared to offline wallets that's why I only leave small amounts in my online wallet.

there are two types of web wallets:
1) those that don't give you access to the private keys like coinbase.
these are very newbie friendly. and a new member who has a hard time grasping what bitcoin is feels a lot more at home when using such wallets that are also looking a lot like what they are used to, like PayPal for example. on top of that these wallets offer some features that are good to be fair. for example the fact that they pay the transaction fees (although may seen stupid to some) is useful to others. and also coinbase for example provides someplace to buy and sell bitcoin too.

2) wallets that don't have access to your private keys like blockchain.info
these are still newbie friendly because the similarity to PayPal thing is still there, you open a browser and have an account and just remember your password. but have the benefit of giving you your private keys.

and both of these are good for being accessible  from anywhere and on any device. imagine you are out and want to buy a small item. you go to one of these accounts and log in and make the payment without needing to carry your bitcoin wallet around.
but of course if you can it is always best to use a desktop wallet even as your hot on the go wallet.

It is very convenient, simple and can be earned on some. Only you need to beware of scammers who can steal the password and all the funds from your wallet.

People use online wallets just because you don't have to sync to the blockchain and online wallets are accessible from anywhere, in my experience.
I personally use both a desktop/offline wallet and an online wallet, and I only use the online as a dump point for most incoming transactions and then I move the rest somewhere else. Nothing special and most of it ends up moving out of it anyways.

The simple truth of the matter is that the ease of use like someone else has said and not really not about safety as even in the past attacks have even been more on exchanges compared to wallets which have equally improve in their security over the years and they have been good at keeping our funds safe at least up till today.

There are some coins which you cannot store locally, like Synereo AMP, Steem  etc.

The big companies like Xapo, Coinbase aside, how many custodial wallets are left?

I find it mind bending that someone would use an obscure one after stuff like the Tradefortress thing, yet I still see people popping up on here mentioning problems with wallets I've never heard of.

because the safety for offline wallet was too much for handling at the first like always sync and access every time
but online wallet will give you faster and easier method to store the bitcoin while piling up also they offer such 2FA for stronger protection

Aside from the convenience, Web wallets tends to be more popular in newbies . When a tutorial about bitcoin features a wallet it is typically a web type so newbiew will create an account of that . For me blockchain.info was the first one which is I just heard of . But as you said it is not that secured so I stopped using them, the reason is obvious because there are better choices so web wallets are not appealing to me .

It's just peoples' familiarity with banks "taking care" of their money for them, which is ironic considering bitcoin is meant to abolish the need for banks...

Any wallet is unsafe if your system gets hacked or your password. Even physical wallets are prone to virus and people have lost their coins due to it. Till you own your private key, it's fine to have an online/offline wallet. It doesn't make a huge difference unless you own like 50-100 btc.

For me it is mainly because I can access my wallet on any device I'd like to. I use three different computers and I like being able to check it on the fly on my phone too. It is also easier to use, but also it lacks some advanced tools, but I can easily live without them.

There is no doubt that offline wallets are more secure, but many newbies are not aware of it and don't realize the importance of holding your private keys.
As for more experienced users who trust their Bitcoins on online wallets, I guess that the main reason is the ease of use they provide and the low fees(Coinbase charged zeros fees until recently for example).

Why do Wallets sometimes have seeds and sometime wallet.dat files. For example PIVX has a file you have to store but other only have a seed?

You need to back up the wallet.dat file and always make sure that you have the private keys to your wallet. You must really note down the seed and the password and if you loose them you will end up loosing everything.With online wallet you only need to remember the password and the pin when it comes to xapo and the ease of sending and receiving the coins is the greatest appeal of online wallets.

I agree to this. People use online wallet for ease of use. Some people are in habit of trading and gambling using bitcoin. In such cases online wallets are better.

Honestly I use online wallets cause I find it easier to use and accessible anytime anywhere. Then you don't even need to manage it, all is managed by wallet owners. Secondly it's embarrassing but I have no clue how to use a hardware wallet. Even despite spending so much time on Bitcoins, I yet need to know a lot about it. But I would be interested to know is using online wallets really risky or its ok to use them? Any one who has personal experience of using both may guide me, like what problems they faced or why one should not use online wallets?

As others already said, online wallets is easier to use, people don't need to download anything. It's more usual, because it's very similar to services like PayPal or bank account. Also, online wallets have more features like exchange, block explorers and so on. Finally, earlier there was only Bitcoin Core wallet which requires lot of space and resources and people wanted for more user-friendly wallets. Some have stereotype that is complicated to use desktop wallets.

Every wallet has pros and cons, a wallet in cold storage is very safe but many don’t have that many coins to need such storage on the first place, so they prefer to use web wallets, because they can access their funds anywhere and also because some of this services pay the miners fees.

People they afraid and they often have the misconception that someone else, here the owners of the online wallets, are more appropriate than them to keep their money safe. Fortunately if someone reads about wallets and ask others like here he can easily go to another solution.