Bitcoin Forum

Hello I had collection paperwallet.

Does your guys have suggest to do cover paperwallet?

Does laminating it's good idea? I'm not sure about it, might that's could force the security password.

Sorry for not good language, wish you guys understand what's my point and reason why I've not good language.

More important is to keep those notes in an area relatively uniform temperature and humidity out of direct sunlight. And to store them I would suggest you use mylar holder so that you would not have acid exposure.

I would not laminate a paper wallet.. 

cold use a seedplate or washers with a punch - make a back up of your seed phrase and store it safely - metal is more likely to survive a fire or a flood vs paper.

This might be of interest to your paper wallet question https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5290065.msg55741314#msg55741314 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5290065.msg55741314#msg55741314)

using a good quality paper and ink should be more than enough to create a durable paper as long as it is stored correctly. i already have papers (not bitcoin related) that are about 10 years old with writings on them without any damage or degradation.

but the important things in storing paper wallets in my experience are their encryption and creation of multiple backups stored separately. so if there was a disaster like fire and you lost one, the others could be used to recover funds.

If you can add something which can prevent from both fire and water, they would be a good edition. Otherwise, none actually makes much sense. Nevertheless, you can laminate as well if you find it helpful anyway. I just have printed and kept it in my secure places.

You should avoid lamination as it could be counterproductive and result in speeding up the degradation process.
The best and safest way to save a wallet seed or a private key is to engrave it on a metal plate. It might be a bit more expensive, though.
If using papers is your only option then make few copies and store them in different places and check them regularly.

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this:

Store your bitcoin seed / private key safely (Water, Fire, Shock-proof) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5278839.msg55281477#msg55281477)

Lamination is better than write key down on paper sheet but you are totally right that lamination is expensive and it does not permanently exist. Metal plates are better than lamination but the cost is expensive too and they even can not 100% protect your seed or keys. Who can find anything can 100% survive through any kind of disaster or catastrophe.

Paper, lamination, metal plates, USB, harddrive, etc, any tool is used store your private key/ seed backups need to be put into another safe protective device such as Vaults. Vaults in turn need to be placed in as safest locations as possible.

Double or tripple protections for your private keys/ seeds.

Do not use laminating because the words can be very blurry to read, I suggest finding a safe box with key combinations to store such paper wallets or find a strong book and write the paper wallet recovery seed in between the book, I do this all the time

If you're talking about the 12-24 word backup, then I'd suggest etching the words in steel. You know, to prevent damages from water and fire and stuff: https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/

If you're talking about a literal paper wallet though, just place it in a waterproof Ziploc bag, and place it in a fire-proof safe. Word of caution though, paper wallets aren't for everyone as they can really be complicated to made in a way that your keys actually couldn't be leaked. There's so much stuff a newbie could get wrong in the process that it's just far safer to get a hardware wallet.

Paper wallets consists of a barcode and your recovery seed, you can write the recovery seed on the paper wallet down to a safe location and burn the paper wallets if they are too many in number, or you can just decide to keep all the paper wallets in a single location, my advice is to find a strong stainless steel and carve the recovery seeds on the steel, it will be more harder to destroy this way

I don't see any big point in lamination - you either use some metal medium to make your wallet practically indestructible, or you just use a piece of paper and regularly refresh it let's say once or twice per year. In any case, you should have multiple copies of your wallet in separate places, so no single incident can lock you out of your coins.

I don't really see the point of a physical copy. It's vulnerable and a hassle to store. You can store the same information properly encrypted on multiple micro SD cards. No one will ever know what's on there and they're much smaller. Just make sure you have plenty of them as they're not very durable.

It's up to op if op wanted to laminate a paper or other ways to store the key privately. Metal, paper, usb can also be used to store the keys. I have seen laminated paper that are still exist and still no damage and exactly look the same as before it is laminated plus it will survive for long if no accident happen like fire.

Seems, the comment above isn't recommended to you laminate your paper.

I know the purpose to avoid your paper from water. you can use a phone waterproof case (replace the phone with your paper) like the picture below;

https://i.postimg.cc/kGp9zywK/2.jpg
image source; amazon.com

Image as an example, you have to search a better than that.

Steel is pretty resilient, typical house fires don't reach temperatures high enough to melt steel (~1400 deg. C).  I'd be a little concerned with relying on only one type of medium as a BTC wallet backup, especially one of questionable data permanence.

If you will use something to protect your paper wallet from being broken, drained and burnt out then go for it. The important thing in using a paper wallet is the protection of it from those things, for me laminated wallet is good, it can protect it from being drained and will be hard to be cut. Keeping it in a safe place would still be the best possible thing that you may do in your paper wallet, do not forget as well as having a back up.

There are water and fireproof boxes available on the marketplaces which is especially made to store cryptocurrency backup seeds so you can go for it but my opinion will be a soft copy on an encrypted offline drive is better than hardcopy.

Laminating it won't do good. Well, for water it could be protected but it's not that durable as what you're thinking op. Like eco said about words can be blurry in the long run. The metal plates are good suggestion but I haven't tried it.

The way I keep my paper wallet or with its seeds is only keeping it like a bookmark at a good and safe location. But I might do the same as other suggested about engraving it to a metal plate or dog tag whichever is good for me.

Many people don't realize that they can make engraved metal plates on their own. All you need is a stainless steel tile and a way to engrave or stamp letters on it. You can do this with power tools or with ordinary hand tools. For example, you can buy an Electric Micro Engraver Pen from Amazon or eBay for as little as $16.

If, thousands of years ago, people carved words in stone with a simple hammer and chisel, we can definitely do at least a little better in the 21st century.  :D

https://blog.lopp.net/content/images/downloaded_images/Metal-Bitcoin-Seed-Storage-Stress-Test/1-4o0R_RCB3mRtROwD21Eqqw.jpeg
source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/8oikd5/cold_storage_idea/


EDIT:
Btw, don't bother importing this seed phrase into your wallet. There is nothing on it! (I checked.) ;)

When it comes to lamination, I wouldn't recommend it. Until now I still have a paper wallet with me for years and it still looks good because I've kept it in a "very safe" place.

A waterproof phone case would be a great idea as well courtesy of @DroomieChikito.

Not a bad idea at all :). At least better than paper lamination. I have bad experiences with my moms educational papers which was laminated and most of the old lamination was broken. Maybe due to heat and pressure of lamination few lines were removed from some papers. I am not gonna suggeSt anyone to laminate their paper wallets.    

It doesn't matter there is anything on it or not but i can tell you that some guys have already tried for multiple times.

Are you sure about that? Are you speaking from experience? Lamination is a good way to protect paper from unintentional spills or greasy fingers.

All my documents are laminated and none of them are blurry. If it happens you can always cut the edges of the plastic with scissors and remove the plastic.

Nobody says that OP has to use a size 5 font for the seed.

Usually, if the only person claiming something without any actual backup is just a random person on the internet... take it with a grain of salt.

I'm not sure why laminating a paper wallet would be any worse than not laminating it. I can't think of a good reason for that.

Further, he suggests to store the paper inside of a book. That is fine as long as he doesn't rely on it as a security fasctor.
But putting a laminated paper inside of the book wouldn't have any disadvantages.

There is a quote posted by khaled0111 that you probably missed.


I've had some experience with that. Inkjet ink may be more susceptible to exposure to glue or other agents in the lamination process.

Actually didn't know that!

I guess if you really want to preserve a document, laminating isn't the way to go.
But for a paper wallet which you might use once in a while, that's fine as long as its not the only backup (which it never should be) or as long as the other backups are preserved with a more appropriate method.