Bitcoin Forum

Between paper wallet and hardware wallet which one is more superior than the other for Bitcoin? What matters the most to me is keeping your Bitcoin keys offline and which one is best practice for this? Years back paper wallet triumph over everything until hardware wallet came and every advice on the forum now is get a hardware wallet.

Which paper wallet generator still functions today? Also is there any risk using paper wallet apart from keeping the phrase offline?

I will advice you to use HD paper wallet, like using Electrum wallet or Iancoleman on an airgapped device with a newly reinstalled OS, making sure Bluetooth, WiFi and other connectivity means are removed or not working while generating the HD paper wallet. You do not have to worry if you want something similar to BIP38 encryption, just use passphrase. But if you like the old ways, use https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org zip (https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org/archive/v3.3.0.zip)

Generate the wallet, backup the wallet offline on paper or on steel sheet and delete the wallet which makes it a paper wallet.

The risk is if you do not generate it properly. If you want to hold only bitcoin and not spending it for a long time, paper wallet is good, your keys are offline, and online attacks won't be possible. But protect your seed phrase. If you add passphrase with it, do not backup seed phrase and passphrase together but differently in different locations.

For vast majority of people hardware wallet is the way to go because beside hardware wallet being more convenient for use, its not so easy to properly make a paper wallet, without messing up one of the steps and that could have dire consequence.

Ink and paper functions very well today without the need of any 3rd party program or device like qr generator and printer.
I want to remind you that paper wallet isn't the safest option out there because paper can degrade, are susceptible to environmental factors, etc. Imagine, water somehow reaches the paper, guess what? You lost your keys. What if somehow there is fire at your home or in the place where you keep your paper? There is a high chance, believe me. Also, the ink on paper can easily fade away over time. What's the last time you wrote down something on the paper and lost it? No, paper is not a safe option!
Better to use hard wallet!

Paper Wallet is very cheap and easy to make, but it is only usable for long term storage of small amounts. And even for that it has the issue that the paper can be damaged!
Hardware Wallet is good for everyday use and can be backed up in many secure ways. With no back up it is also not very secure!

Paper wallet is easy to make but few people will generate it properly because what I can see more are people that generates it on an online sites and making use of ATMs that might also generate it online.

If I use passphrase while using seed phrase to generate a paper wallet, which I believe is secure and safe against both online and offline attacks, I can store high amount of money on it.

What do comes with hardware wallet for seed phrase backup? It is paper. If you want a better backup, you can buy steel sheet, but you can also backup paper wallet on steel sheet too, like having one back on paper and the other backup on steel sheet. It depends on the approach that you use.

The issue is that it can not be used more then one time, since the change address will usually not be part of the paper wallet. So fo every transaction you will need a new paper wallet that is not compromised.
The steel backup of a paper wallet makes also not really sense because of what I said above.

Why would you have to change the address for every transaction when you can simply send bitcoin to the same one? I am doing the same thing with my Ledger, sending bitcoin to the same address for a long term hodl.

One wonders what someone has been doing on the forum for more than a year and a half when they ask beginner's questions like this, which have been asked dozens of times along the way.

I guess we have established that some larger amounts should not be trusted to any hardware wallet or hot desktop/mobile wallet, and that a paper wallet has its own risks when it comes to creating the same, but also storing it. In addition to all the risks involved in creating and keeping such a wallet, many are not even aware of how to actually spend funds from their paper wallet in the correct way - and this can lead to the loss of BTC.

Namely, when they want to spend their BTC, users import their private keys into the newly created wallet, make a transaction and delete the wallet without even taking into account the fact that part of the unspent coins goes to a change address that they no longer have access to. A much safer way is to simply sweep private keys in wallet, which sends all BTC to the newly created address, for which you then have a backup in the form of a seed.

Well, both methods have their advantages and disadvantages....

I use both methods to take advance of the strengths of both options to store my coins. I know how to make a "safe" Paper wallet.... so I use that option for long-term storage (make several copies & store copies in different geographical locations) and it is very cheap to do this.

I use hardware wallet for coins that I frequently use, because the hardware wallets are more accessible for coins that you frequently use. You can also store different coins on the same wallet... which is a bonus.  ;)

I have written down countless things I didn't want to lose and haven't lost any as yet. Also ink doesn't degrade as quickly as it is touted to be; Get a good ink pen and a note pad, write down what you wish to store and keep it in a secure location where it cannot be easily touched by water or accessed by people you don't want reading it.

For a natural disaster, having more than one secure location provides a safe backup as a contingency plan.

Maybe as a security action, since the public key would be publicly visible after the transaction.

OP you are wrong, hardware wallet is the best for newbies as it's easier to handle in terms of security than paper wallet, the main problem is how to generate that paper wallet safely without messing anything up, it's not that easy like a hardware wallet.

The best crypto wallet right now is hardware wallet, it is the most recommendable for crypto newbies and old crypto users without worrying about any damages, paper wallet is not reliable because it's vulnerable to natural disasters. Even inks do fade as time goes by.

You can read this:  Vulnerability discovered on bitcoinpaperwallet[.]com - DO NOT USE IT (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5249129.0), and this thread that I created before, Disclosure: Key generation vulnerability found on WalletGenerator.net. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5146965.0)

So not sure what paper wallet generator that still functions as of today because there could be malicious attackers as well.

I guess for newbies, paper wallet are not recommended in my opinion.

I personally have more trust and confidence in hardware wallets to store my Bitcoin assets.
I think hardware wallets are more secure and can guarantee because they have better and more advanced networking features than paper wallets.
I have never experienced any problems whatsoever in storing my bitcoin assets.
However, the beliefs and beliefs of each person will be different and certainly have different opinions.
That's why I say from experience that I have lived myself.

Both paper wallets and hardware wallets have their own advantages and disadvantages when it comes to storing Bitcoin. Paper wallets are considered to be one of the most secure ways to store Bitcoins, because they can be stored offline and require no internet connection. On the other hand, hardware wallets are more expensive than paper wallets but also offer additional features such as a built-in screen, the ability to make transactions and are easy to use. The choice between the two ultimately depends on the user's specific needs and preferences.

Paper wallet is store phrase offline by default, but it is very risky to literally mean "paper wallet" using paper media. You should consider other media that are more resistant to damage.
To be honest, I'm not really sure about this method anymore when imagining the surroundings, OP you should think about this too.

OP is correct, paper wallets used to be the top choice until hardware wallets came along, and obviously, hardware wallets are the best and a lot more convenient these days.

As for the preservation of the seed phrase, each person will have a different way of preserving it, if you keep the seed phrase of the hardware wallet on paper, it will not be possible to avoid the risks as you said. This means it's up to you, don't blame paper wallets in this case.

If comparing a custodial wallet with a non-custodial wallet, a non-custodial wallet will be the safest, compared to a hot wallet and a cold wallet, a cold wallet will be the safest.

Take note that for generating a paper wallet, you don't have to use such services.
Any tool that can generate a private key offline can be used for generating a paper wallet. For example, you can run electrum on an air-gapped device, create a wallet and write down (or print using a safe printer machine) the seed phrase or each of the private keys on a paper. That can work as a secure paper wallet perfectly.

Generate private key & seed with Bitcoin core or electrum. Then write those down on a piece of paper. What could be more easy then this? Hardware wallets come with a cost where a paper wallet only costs what the piece of paper and ink that you use. If you understand btc you should be able to securely generate a paper wallet if you do not understand btc then you should probably not be using a hardware wallet or btc and learn about it before holding anything in btc.

Don't use websites or services that tell you to have paper wallet services for everyone. They can have backdoors on their websites and they can have your private keys or seeds while you're creating your wallets.

Use high quality and trusted wallet softwares like Bitcoin Core, Electrum wallets.

Download them, verify their PGP signatures. If you verify successfully, you can continue to use downloaded softwares and generate your wallets.

When you create your wallets, do it offline.

After that, make your backups on paper and you will have your own paper wallet. It is very safer than using website-based paper wallets.

Verify your downloads
[GUIDE] How to Safely Download and Verify Electrum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0)
BitcoinCore.org (https://bitcoincore.org/en/download)

You can create a paper wallet generator yourself and use it offline. It's just a javascript code. Then just save the keys and you're good to go. Don't use third party services for this.

Being offline at the time wallet creation isn't enough.
With disconnecting your device from internet when creating the wallet, you don't really increase your security.
If you want your wallet to be secure, you should create on an air-gapped device. This means that you should create your wallet on a device which has been always offline and will be never online.  

Paper wallets taken literally are bad because paper is easily destroyed. If you want a similar thing, use a steel wallet. It costs less than $100 and is reusable. You can put your seed in there and screw the wallet to save it. The wallet should withstand water and fire damage.
There are also wallets that you engrave or stamp.

Personally, I use a ledger hardware wallet. I have it since 2019 and it works well.
I also have electrum desktop wallet that I use for fast payments and holding smaller amounts of btc (below 0.1). I feel that it's safe enough for such small amounts.

Paper wallets can easily be destroyed, lost, and be mistaken for regular paper with a bunch of codes on it. I literally lost a couple hundred dollars worth of bitcoin from using paper wallets because I forgot to take my wallet out when I went to do my laundry. Hardware wallets do not have this problem because of their relative bulk and the fact that some of them are made of weapons-grade metal alloy. I still think of using paper wallet every now and then because after all it is much more convenient and cheap, you literally only have to tear a piece of paper or maybe print stuff out and you're good to go. At the end of the day it is all a subject of preference, and I guess I can vouch for everyone when we say that hardware wallets are just objectively better in every way.

You are correct that paper wallets can be easily destroyed. Physical wallets made of steel or other durable materials can be a good alternative to paper wallets. These types of wallets, also known as "cold wallets," provide added protection against fire and water damage.

Another alternative is to use a hardware wallet. Although they can be more expensive than paper or steel wallets, but they are generally considered to be the most secure way to store cryptocurrency offline. For under $100 I'd rather go for a hardware wallet than anything else.

The risk for damage is indeed very large and it also depends on how to save it properly for a vulnerable paper.
Currently, instead of using paper, it is better to use stainless steel plates which are stronger and resistant to corrosion. But to do the printing of phrases must be done correctly and with a special tool to print on strong iron.

https://cryptolisty.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Untitled-1-1.jpg
https://cryptolisty.com/hardware-wallets/best-crypto-metal-plates-for-recovery-seed-key-and-wallet-backups/

No it's not. Downloading a live Linux DVD, searching for a DVD burner, finding out how to boot from it, buying a printer with cable, getting your printer drivers to work without going online..... None of it is easy if you don't take shortcuts like printing from an online computer to a WiFi printer.

however, if you don't have a printer with WIFI, of course you can't take this shortcut.
So in conclusion nothing is cheap and easy to do, there will be several attempts and of course, it requires additional costs.
Maybe writing manually is a direct way that doesn't cost a lot, Always Offline, only paper and a pen that are waterproof, as well as good writing intuition and make sure everything is correct, after writing is done do a checkup to enter whether the phrase is correct or there are some errors.

Yes I agree with you Bitcoin uses Base58Check for that purpose. Being more easily usable by humans. So IMO it's safer to hand write a private key than to print it. The ink in cartridges is sometimes of poor quality and can become unreadable over time, in addition.

Don't you think an USB stick with a physical write protection switch could be used instead of a DVD?  
Bitcoin is supposed to help unbanked people(they are 1.5 billion according to the World Bank), they are often poor and live in third world countries, so they are unlikely to be able to spend $100 to buy a hardware wallet unfortunately.

He's right on it that there was the glory days of paper wallet until the hardware wallet manufacturers became more popular as it doesn't need to be that technically depth on it.

Yes, we'll still be required to write it down on a piece of paper and keeping it is going to be your task overall of your life until you decide to move it to another wallet. As for the choice of paper wallets or hardware wallets, you can use both of them but for most that don't have a budget, it's more likely to stick on a paper/desktop wallet and they'll just keep the seeds.

They both are the best

in my opinion, all bitcoin communities need at least one hardware wallet for security reasons and act as a cold wallet for the long term.

Paper wallets, on the other hand, can be act as cold wallet they used for offline payments without using the internet couple of years ago but I don't think people still using it. An offline transaction that replaces paper wallet is by using opendime is like a USB stick that contains bitcoin in it.

People have different opinions on hardware wallets to be a cold storage or not. Some people consider a wallet that is generated offline and in which no transaction has been sent on it before to be cold storage. In that case, hardware wallet that is used for making transaction would be considered not to be a cold wallet. Some people consider if not QR code is used for making transaction in a way the hardware wallet is not airgapped, they consider it not to be a cold sotrage, which means, using Bluetooth, NFC and USB stick as a means of making transaction makes some people to consider hardware wallet used that way not to be a cold wallet.

The physical form of bitcoin that I know of is Casascius bitcoin. Although, it might be considered a paper wallet but people consider it as just to be a physical bitcoin in form of a physical coins.

Exactly. While paper wallets are indeed easy to make, it's definitely not easy to make correctly and in a secure manner. There's so much factors to take into consideration hence why I don't ever recommend paper wallets to anyone besides really technically-literate people.

Years ago, someone sent me his hand-written (XLM) private key. He missed several characters, and there are enough other mistakes to make all my attempts to brute-force it fail. Seed words were created to write them down, writing down private keys is risky.

Sure, but I've never seen one in real life. A normal USB stick will work too, but a DVD makes it much easier to be absolutely sure nothing can be stored.

I don't think that was ever the goal. From Bitcoin's perspective, being unbanked isn't the problem, it's the solution.

There are only 43 million funded Bitcoin addresses. On-chain Bitcoin can't help all of them.

A paper wallet can be a good option for storing bitcoins, as it provides a way to offline storage, which can help to protect against hacking and other types of online threats. With a paper wallet, a person's private key is printed on a physical piece of paper, and the corresponding public key is used as the bitcoin address. The bitcoins can then be transferred to this address and stored offline, away from the internet.

However, it's important to note that paper wallets can be damaged or lost, and if the private key is lost, the bitcoins stored on the paper wallet will be inaccessible. Additionally, paper wallets can be challenging to set up and use, especially for those who are not experienced with cryptocurrencies.

Another alternative to paper wallet is hardware wallet which is considered to be more secure and user-friendly.

Ultimately, the best option for storing bitcoins will depend on an individual's specific needs and preferences. It's always recommended to research and compare different options before making a decision.

From what I understand this person didn't check his hand written private key before deleting the original one.
This risk of missing characters or doing mistakes is not unreal, but it can easily be addressed by testing the hand written private key in the software that gave it before deleting it. People do this kind of double check by themselves when they need to hand write critical things usually.

But it can't be the solution for everyone, if poor people can't use it.

I don't understand what you mean, why the current number of funded addresses is a barrier?

Don't need to add much more to what's already been said, except to agree with the summary that paper wallet, used improperly, can be really bad. Used with all the additional knowledge we now know, it's still the best, but hardly for everyone. Hardware wallet should still be the best mix of ease and security.


Even at today's price, still a bit too rich for me to keep 0.1 on a hot wallet though! I definitely did see it in BTC units, but with price for the past 18 months or so, I tend to convert in my head and readjust -- about $1000 is mine now, same as my regular debit card.

I would suggest to have a look here
glacierprotocol.org
because you will find the best guide/instructions/detailed info about the top cold wallet.
you can take also details on how you can adapt this guide for your personal purpose, adding some variants, etc etc...
It's considered the "state of the art" on this argument it deserve a read!

This is for privacy reasons the more you use the same address then more traceable your money will be. And it's fine if you have nothing to hide, but the idea of cryptos is to be part anonymous, or at least make it difficult to track them. And is important to remember satoshi words:


And getting back to the topic. The Paper wallets... I like the classic way. Make the address with vanity gen and then save them in a file protected with a password. Simple as that.

if op just wants to store btc and never wants to send out any btc, then paper wallet is fine.
But paper wallet doesn't come with seed phrases which makes it very hard to write down and it is error-prone. Make sure you back up everything correctly.
So, overall, hardware wallet is a little bit better. You can generate a seed and send your funds into one of the addresses and keep for another 20 years.

It's been a long time since I've heard anyone mention paper wallets anymore, maybe it's not as popular as they used to be. But between a paper wallet and a hardware wallet, of course, a hardware wallet will be better and a more perfect choice. I have also used both and hardware wallet is definitely my choice, I really feel very safe using hardware wallet to store my crypto assets.

No they are not considered to be the most secure way to store cryptocurrency offline, you're wrong. They are considered to have the best convenience/safety ratio, but they are not air gapped, they are not open source, backdoors and unknown vulnerabilities can exist, some loopholes have been discovered in the past. And it's not easy at all to be sure that your hardware wallet is an original one, that hasn't been tampered.

Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks of hardware wallets and paper wallets:

Hardware Wallets:

Benefits:

• High security as they are stored offline
• User-friendly interface for transactions
• Portable, can be carried around
• Can be protected with a PIN

Drawbacks:

• Can be lost or damaged
• Cost more than paper wallets
• Potentially difficult for beginners

Paper Wallets:

Benefits:

• High security as they are stored offline
• Can't be hacked
• Cost-effective (Loyce just refuted this  ;D) but if you have the available materials needed then this is cheaper than buying hardware wallet

Drawbacks:

• Not user-friendly
• Can be lost or damaged easily
• Not portable

It was said that hardware wallet is generally considered more secure than paper wallets  I do not know if someone thinks otherwise.

---

Sources:
https://www.cnbctv18.com/cryptocurrency/crypto-paper-wallets-a-quick-guide-pros-and-cons-14368372.htm
https://www.brokerxplorer.com/article/pros-and-cons-of-bitcoin-paper-wallet-2238
https://go.finimize.com/wp/guides/storing-cryptocurrency-digital-vs-hardware-wallets/
https://techstory.in/the-pros-and-cons-of-hardware-wallets/

Creating a paper wallet offline comes with least risks compared to those that are created online and possibly face malware risks. Storing them is something that matters once they are created because paper can be burnt, torn or turn older and the QR may become inaccessible for the user who generated it. Tbh I don't find it much secure that those steel wallets where you can store your private keys by storing your paper wallets in them or keeping a combination of your phrase in 12-24 word storage rust-free steel device. However, paper wallets were best used with BIP38 password added to them for ultra-security.

https://www.bitaddress.org/
This was the one I used in my early days of crypto, just to learn how to create one.

I've got something noteworthy to read, so I'm sharing it:
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/02/24/bitcoinpaperwallet-back-door-responsible-for-millions-in-missing-funds-research-suggests/

It's impossible for 1.5 billion people to use on-chain Bitcoin. Currently, Bitcoin is having less than 1.5 billion transactions in a decade, and there's no on-chain block capacity for much more.

You say "Can be lost or damaged" for the hardware wallets while you say "Can be lost or damaged easily" for the paper wallets like paper wallets were more fragile than HW. I think you should try to drop your HW into your bath or your freezer, to throw it against a wall or to apply an electric cable on it and then you should try to do the same thing with a paper wallet... Paper wallets are even resistant to radioactivity fyi.
Actually when you use a HW you need to back up your seed onto a paper, because of its weakness.

I understand what you mean, but the story of Bitcoin is only at its beginning, I hope so anyway.

Hardware wallets are gaining popularity but they may not be suitable for everyone. They can be costly and may come with features that are not needed, particularly if you only plan to store a few types of cryptocurrency. An alternative is a paper wallet, which can be a great option for backup, offline storage and long-term storage.