Bitcoin Forum

With all the recent hacks going on, I would suggest you really start thinking about where you are leaving your funds. Over 2 million dollars in btc have been stolen in the past month. When SR was seized that should have been a big wake up call. Anyone can take over servers and take coins. I recommend cold storage if you are just holding amounts of coin. If you do arbitrage trading or transactions using btc everyday I recommend making a brainwallet at the end of every day that you get done trading and sending your funds there, then simply import the key into your wallet the next day. Right now no btc exchange or online wallet is really safe. Its better to be safe than sorry. If you're leaving your coins in exchanges, gambling websites, etc then it should be an amount that you can risk losing. And for those idiots leaving all their funds in ONE wallet... I wish you the best of luck... (btw I have less than 5 bitcoins but I still take the needed procedures for keeping the little coin that I have safe)

Links to recent hacks:
1. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1pxcif/i_just_lost_301btc_70000_on_blockchaininfo_use/

2. http://www.coindesk.com/czech-bitcoin-exchange-bitcash-cz-hacked-4000-user-wallets-emptied/

3. http://www.coindesk.com/4-1m-goes-missing-chinese-bitcoin-trading-platform-gbl-vanishes/

4. http://www.coindesk.com/hackers-steal-bitcoins-inputs-io-wallet-service/

5. http://www.coindesk.com/malware-gang-steals-1-4m-bitcoin-exchange-launder/

Edit: Hacks, scams, whatever you want to call them, the lost of funds could have all been prevented by leaving your funds in cold storage. Its hard to trust banks so why trust a complete stranger with your money? Think about it that way... People trusted a complete stranger with the inputs wallets.. Not very smart if you ask me.

Yeah quite a few hacks in the past weeks. Right now there are a lot of problems, but I think security will come in time naturally as more people become interested.

I agree 100%. Just needs time

Fixed

Fixed fix.

No need to becoming paranoid and cold wallets is an overkill imo. Encypt + backup your wallet in a usb or in a cloud service and you 'll be fine.
Although i agree about online wallets. You shouldn't keep to much in those.

Still a risk. Your computer could crash, your usb could break... The risk with cold wallets is close to none. There is no 101% security solution but there are things close to it and leaving coins online just isn't the way to go.

don't be complacent with the security of your assets. why take the risk when you don't need to? just take an hour or two out of your life. in the end, it'll at the very least save you the worrying.

Yes, I strongly recommend anyone to store (most of) their Bitcoins at least in a real wallet, and for larger amounts on cold storage / a paper wallet.

Note, though, that I first thought your thread title was meant to mean "secure your $ -> convert them to BTC as soon as possible before we have another Cyprus". :)  (Not that I have any $, only EUR.  But that's not in any way better.)

Why not carve your private key into a tree and hope it makes a sound if it falls.

Or create a song where the nodes are based off the private key and print it to a discman/usb/cloud

Quite right. For the massadoption there also has To be a simpe
way to store and safe coins, like trezor. People store their coins at suspicious websites rather than store the coins on their own.

But we are at the very first start of bitcoin. Just wait.

Agree with this concern. Can't say this enough: PEOPLE, DON'T STORE YOUR COINS ON WEBSITES. Even though Bitcoin is 100% safe, a website is not!

The risk with cold wallets is if you lose access to the physical location where the paper is stored.

I just bought myself a 60 minute fireproof, 24hr waterproof safe just for this purpose. It cost me £60 which is nothing when talking about securing something that is worth more than 100x that currently and potentially more in the future.

http://www.thesafeshop.co.uk/products/f2300-waterproof-fire-chest.html

Just store several copies in more than one place. I keep a copy at home, another one at work (different city) and another one across the Mediterranean, some 2000 km apart. It takes a very large meteorite to destroy all 3 copies :).

Also keep an eye on Armory development. There are plans to include Shamir's secret sharing in the paper backup.

This allows you to encrypt the paper backup so that k out of n keys decrypt it. For example, you could put 3 papers at different locations and even if one gets compromised the private key is still safe.

Better bolt that thing to the frame of your house, that's easily stolen it's so small. Small vaults like that are the first things crooks go after.

Inconspicuous safety is always better than obvious safety: A steel pipe capped at both ends would do the same as that safe.

Until we can get a hardware wallet like trezor, things like that will be common...