Bitcoin Forum

Looking for best way to store bitcoin wallet long term ?

Trezor. It's worked really well for me. Highly recommended.
They give you a sheet to write down your recovery seed/phrase so that in the event your Trezor is lost/not supported in 30 years/whatever, you can easily recover your wallet by entering the phrase into any popular wallet service, such as Electrum or Mycelium on your phone.
It's a good, foolproof system. But you should play around with it for a bit, exchange some coins to your own wallets, get a feel for the device, then finally move your savings to it and sleep soundly knowing that they are safe and the backup exists.

You definitely wanna put your bitcoin in a hardware wallet especially if you're planing on holding for the long term. Don't get tempted into these online wallets, even though their easier to access = easier to hack.

almost all the cold storage methods can be the safest as long as you create them correctly and also make proper backups from them.

this is a valid concern and it always exists with anything that is "hardware" they can fail.
and i believe they can be susceptible to data loss in long term if not connected to a power source.

but you can make a back up from them to be able to recover in case of any kind of failure.

the same issues will be present for paper wallets (and i suggest bitaddress.org by the way). that is taking backups and storing them safely.
paper wallet is a good choice in my opinion when you don't want to touch your coins for 10 years. you can take a look at CryptoSteel: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=977486.0 to either buy that or just get an idea of what you can make yourself ;)

I don't think it's necessary to worry about that. As long as bitcoin continues to appreciate, your wealth is safe. The wallet system will also be updated and upgraded periodically. It's best to use multiple wallets to store your bitcoins

As someone completely new to BTC this is really helpful. I'm about to buy my first round of bitcoins from coinbase(The reason being it just seemed the most user friendly for my first time).

Paper wallet is the easiest way without paying or buying something like hardware wallet. But if you have some enough funds to buy that thing then that's much better as long you have the backup of your recovery things like seed/private keys offline.
Offline wallet is much safer but there are also consequences like the paper wallet might be tear, wet or damage, etc. and hardware wallet might be lost, stolen etc.

I know ledger nano wallet is good. But what will happen if you store your coins in desktop wallets like electrum? I don't see any problem in storing your coins in such wallets as long as you have the private keys with you. But the thing is you should keep your private keys or seed words safely. So if anything happens to your desktop or laptop, you can easily recover the coins by installing the software in other computer using your seed words.

Heyyyrenz is correct. Paper wallet is the best option. It may be more convenient to use another one like an exchange or hardware wallet, but paper wallet is the best imo.

Especially for not technologically savvy people. A lot of tech people are like "All you have to do is check your node 5.3 UZ drive. Upload that to your IDE. Next compile it onto your hard drive. Once you've done that then just link your IP address to your MySQL transfer data set link backup file. Save that with either .jv or .bbo extension. If that fails then just whip up a couple of proxies and all will be good."

Most of us aren't like that and don't understand all that fancy stuff, so just use a paper wallet. Generate the address, send Bitcoin to that address, and never use the private key until many many years later when Bitcoin is more safe or until you want to transfer your funds into another currency.

Put your paper wallet in a safe or somewhere safe where it won't receive any damage.

I recommend the ledger nano s, it is much cheaper than the Trezor. Both have seed (group of simple words to temper the creation of the keys), so if you lost of the hardware wallet or gets destroyed you can recover the wallet (the private keys). The Ledger Nano S has a lot of coins and more are coming. Hardware wallet is the way to go.

The bst way to store bitcoin wallet long term is using the coin.ph. Coins.ph is an online bitcoin wallet you can store your bitcoin and your money will not be stagnant. It can grow higher and higher if you make transactions because in bitcoin you can gain interest in whatever transactions that you did.

i think if you want to store bitcoin for more than 10 years, you can use paper wallet than hardware wallet because if you store in electronic hardware, then the possibility to damage is high unless you have another safety box to store that hardware. but if you use paper wallet, you can use plastic or glass or something else to cover the surface of the paper wallet so it will safe from something that might be make the paper is dirty. then you can take the paper wallet to safety box in your bank account.

[/quote] The bst way to store bitcoin wallet long term is using the coin.ph. Coins.ph is an online bitcoin wallet you can store your bitcoin and your money will not be stagnant. It can grow higher and higher if you make transactions because in bitcoin you can gain interest in whatever transactions that you did.
[/quote] actually coins.ph is not the best for me. But only coins.ph is the only wallet we can use here in philippines. Best wallet is the wallet that you hold the private key. Coins hold our private key. I suggest use ledger nano.

  In looking for the best way to store bitcoin wallet in long term, just like what you've said paper wallet is the safest way to store bitcoin (for me) since you can duplicate it and place it to different safe place unlike the trezor you can only have 1 copy of it. There is a very good way in storing bitcoin wallet in long term.

i dont know about hardware wallet but i suggest hardware wallet because its safer than online wallet, you can keep the hardware in your safe and it will be there if they aren't stolen. but i think the hardware wallet is high risk if you use it daily, if you use it daily it can be "meat fresh" for the  robber to steal it

Paper wallet is for sure excellent choice for long term holding BTC,especially if they are not intended to be used for some time.But hardware wallet is also good and safe way to keep BTC and some other altcoins,and even if you have only one hardware wallet you can make as many seed backup of that wallet and if wallet get broken,stolen or something like that you can always use that seed to return data.

Some of the disadvantages when using paper wallet are that ink can fade,(we have user on this forum with this problem)the paper is also not waterproof and fire resistant.Also procedure to create paper wallet is not simple in terms of security,all must be done in a safe environment to avoid leak of data which can lead to loss of your coins.

Hardware wallet is safer but it requires a decent amount of money to invest in when you could just create a offline wallet yourself which is just as safe if not safer.

It has recently appear a new cold-storage method, it is  a self-managed solution called the Glacier Protocol which offers free software for a method that keeps private keys secure, isolated, and offline. The solution is not intended for those who want to use their bitcoin on a daily basis and is more for those looking for a more critical security framework. The Glacier Protocol’s target audience is meant for those who don’t trust USB connection vulnerabilities, and general offline key creation. Although, the Glacier creators do understand and state on their website that there is no 100 percent secure method for key storage, as all processes can be vulnerable.

https://news.bitcoin.com/extreme-cold-storage-fortress-solitude-bitcoins/

If you are interested in the best way to keep your bitcoin, you can use a hard wallet as an indispensable solution.

I will always recommend cold storage for storing bitcoin long-term. Many hardware wallets exists that will do the trick for you. Just research and find one that suits your needs.

Just like what you've said paper wallet is the safest way to store bitcoin (for me) since you can duplicate it and place it to different safe place unlike the trezor you can only have 1 copy of it. But there are advantages and disadvantages are regarding the paper wallet so this are some of the advantages and disadvantages about the paper wallet.

Advantages:
- You can have different duplicates and can be stored in different places.
- You hold your private key.
- Offline.

Disadvantages:
- Can be stolen Phyiscally.
- Even though it's offline the Private keys can be exposed during the generation and printing.

Store the wallet in private hard disk or pen drives in two copies and always wrote the keys in papers as well. As long as you have many backups in offline mode, it is safe to store.

I've been buying $100-$150 a week, every week, since 2012, and rebalancing my portfolio if my bitcoin percentage every exceeds 12% of my net worth (I prefer it at 6%). So I buy every week, but I'll sell half my bitcoin balance if it ever exceeds 12% -- getting me back to 6%. Then I keep buying $100-$150 a week until it exceeds 12% again.

This works extremely well. Every week I look at my cash value in checking and send the extra to my portfolio, be in bitcoin or stocks or real estate.

If you can't save $175 a week into your overall portfolio, you're doing something wrong or you want to be poor. Most poor people make the choice to be poor.

as a BitcoinHolder i have found that the best solution for real long term storage of your coins is to etch your private keys or your seed on a piece of metal. it may be an electro etch which may require a third party if you don't have access to the equipment or simply a physical tool like hammer and chisel to literary write on the metal.

If you are from Philippines, you can use Coins.Ph. i have been using it for a long time, it is so trustworthy that even everyone i know that has bitcoin is using coins.ph to store their coins for a long time. Also, the wallet offers a lot of benefits which i think anybody would like.

I prefer hardware wallet from Ledger.  I use Ledger Blue (you can hold there 10 currencies), but it is more expensive then well-known Ledger Nano. I use Ledger for long-term holding, for short-term I use myetherwallet.

If it's for long term and you have a considerable amount to store, then i think it's just right to spend money on a hard wallet. For me that's the obvious option if you're looking long term.

We can use any of the hardware wallet for bitcoin because it has a lot of wallets in market which use to make our bitcoin safe and useful as an investment for the long time, bitcoin wallet is having a lot of feature, like it keeps bitcoin safe and it use to increase in price to make you profit, Nano and hardware wallet is good but I prefer to use wallet of blockchain only, it is very easy to use and reliable to hold your bitcoin for long time.

The best way to store your bitcoin for long-term is to buy the hardware wallet (e.g. Ledger or Trezor wallet).
Hardware wallet is the most secure bitcoin wallet out there because it is completely off-the-grid wallet. No one can access it but you.

Recently I have purchased Trezor hardware wallet and it is very user-friendly when it comes to storing and spending Bitcoins. I have been using paper wallets for this purpose but it was a bit uncomfortable for me to generate a fresh paper wallet every time to change the address. Even though there is the limited number of supported coins in Trezor wallet, I use it mainly for storing my Bitcoins. I believe that investing in hardware wallet is always better than bearing the risk of compromisation of the database of web wallets.

I agree with you, that way is more effective and can safely store our assets so that we can sleep more comfortably without fear of the life of the assets we have. sometimes I also prefer to keep my assets in the exchanger if it's only in the day or will be used for trading.

If you have got large amount of bitcoin, then It would be better if you use hardware wallet. For that, you have to spend some money. If you are looking for online free wallet, then Coinbase and Blockchain.info would be very good. If have been using both of them without any problem for more than two years.

I keep all my asset coins including Bitcoin in my favorite wallet exchanger
maybe because my Bitcoin is still a little so I'm not too worried about storing it there
but from what I'm experiencing my coins is perfectly safe to be there.

Hello gialinh,

As always we suggest you store your private keys on a hardware wallet such as a Ledger. Using the Ledger in combination with a software wallet such as Electrum is the safest method to store your bitcoins.

You can find the link to buy the Ledger wallet here (https://www.ledgerwallet.com/).

You can find a link to download the Electrum wallet here (https://electrum.org/#home).

Finally you can find a link how to use the two together here (https://support.ledgerwallet.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005161925-How-to-use-Electrum-with-your-Nano-S/).

With kind regards,
The Anycoin Direct team

For storing bitcoins for the long term it is really important to keep in mind that the bitcoins should be stored in a wallet which never gets HACKED and is not accessible to anyone except the owner. These points are fulfilled by any Hard wallet that is available in the market. You should also keep in mind that even after storing your bitcoins in a hard wallet the main task then would be just to keep the wallet safe. Some of the great hard wallets are Trezor and Ledger. Ledger offers three different types of hard wallets according to the user's needs.