Bitcoin Forum

To what capacity is it beneficial to use the command console for everything? if I learned bitcoind, would I be lowering the surface attack enough that it is worth the hassle of not using a GUI?

I see a lot of advanced users using bitcoind saying that using the GUI has too many risks for them. They usually use CentOS, Arch, Gentoo or other complicated Linux distro so they are advanced programmers. Is it worth getting up to that level, or is it safe to stay with the regular GUI usage for usual hodling and transaction making?

i mean its not hard to poke around with a few commands. you will certainly start to understand how bitcoin works. and the further down the rabbit hole you go the more you will see how the machinery works

I am not a advanced user, but I agree the risk is lower using bitcoind than working with GUI wallet.

You can avoid trojan 100% percent if you download the bitcoind source code from its official github repository and compile it to binary executable following with some simple instructions. It could cost you some time for the first time to build up if you have no IT background, but it's all worth to do so comparing the underlying risk of randomly downloading a 3rd party wallet software.

feasible or not how we react to it. however, many people assume that learning to know bitcoin is feasible and strongly recommendedfeasible or not how we react to it. however, many people assume that learning to know bitcoin is feasible and strongly recommended

Knowlege will be its own reward. If you are technically inclined with that stuff, and have the motivation to learn, then why not? Deeper learning in something you love is always good.

Maybe you should open a thread about and let us follow your progress. We can learn from you while you are learning. ;)

It is definitely worth to learn how bitcoin works... like all cryptocurrency work.
For me as for a programmer it was a very profitable experience

But if you download the source code for bitcoin-qt and compile it yourself, you would also be avoiding any trojan horses built in on the executables... which I already do, so that's not the point.

I was asking of any particular exploits that could have an impact on the GUI software compared to bitcoind which I presume since it's simpler, it's less exploitable, but it has the added risk of you entering the wrong command and sending your coins to the wrong place or who knows. Commands have a lot of power and are not forgiving if you make mistakes. A GUI will prompt you and everything is clearer.

If security is your concern, you might want to check out TailsOS.

Very nice Linux which supports electrum by default, is a live boot system, so malware shouldn't be persistent if it gets on your system. Your electrum file, which is hopefully encrypted, will be in a encrypted partition provided by Tails for persistent data.

If security is not your primary concern, but you just like geeky stuff and technology, I think it´s not a bad idea to look into it.

It is worth it in learning bitcoin because it gives more investments and money in term of electronic currency. It is worth it because you can invest your money and double its price so that it may promotes your success and progressive life.

Learning bitcoind will allow you to develop pretty much any piece of bitcoin software so yes it is worth it

Yeah I used Tails in the past a couple of times, only because I heard it was the best thing to create a paperwallet, when I was still testing out the idea of paperwallets before I discarded it.

I don't really like Electrum for either cold storage of online transactions. Im trying to learn how to set up Core as a node online to broadcast transactions and in another computer set another Core as a cold storage wallet to sign transactions. If I can manage to do this efficiently I will use this setup, if not I guess I will need to use Armory for the cold storage.

I will not use Tails tho, just any regular Linux distro will do (Xubuntu is pretty cool, or maybe Lubuntu if my old laptop is too slow to deal with it).

its definitely safe to use GUI, but you always have to make sure that you don't click on strange links)