Bitcoin Forum

I think offline wallet is much more secure than online wallet. What do all of you think?

That depends on what you define as 'offline'.  A lot of people are starting to call anything that doesn't happen 'in the cloud' as being 'offline' - but your storing a wallet on your computer can easily be less secure than an online wallet service if you've got broken security policies, like an addiction to internet explorer toolbars, say.

An actual offline wallet - i.e. one that doesn't connect to a network - is inherently more secure as it can only be accessed physically.

offline cold storage

 ;D

It really depends on what you are trying to protect against.

Offline wallet is secured, but if you lost them, you loose the bitcoin, but online wallet, you have chances to get recovered.

A unencrypted paper wallet sitting on your desk at home is pretty insecure.

The wallet is as secure as the computer the wallet is in.

You know what you have to do now.

It depends on the circumstances, of course... 

But exchanges and online wallets have a long history of occasionally goxxing their customers.

If you can secure your own machine, it's very much better to hold it yourself. 

If you can't .... well, if you can't you're better off trusting online wallets, but keep in mind that if you trust online wallets, then eventually you're going to get goxxed.  Manage your risk accordingly, and don't let any of them have so much of your savings that you'll be destroyed when it happens.

True, but the attack surface is significantly reduced.  You normally have a good idea if someones been in your house.  There is no silver bullet, you need to implement a number of different strategies.

Depends on the extent at which you protect your stuff. If you have an encrypted paper wallet lying about in the open in your house then I'd say it would be more of a risk than having an encrypted version of your wallet in an online storage site with 2FA turned on. Theoretically, not having an online wallet is better - you have less attack vectors but realistically it's highly improbable someone will break into your Dropbox account steal your wallet and manage to decrypt it.

An offline wallet is always the most secure wallet unless someone gets access to your physical data
An online wallet can be secure if it is a full node wallet like Bitcoin QT or if you use multi-sig verification to process a transaction
That said an online wallet can be defined as a website wallet or a full node one.
The full node is by far the safest of the two and be careful not to store large amounts in online ones.

bitgo.com is one of the most secure way of storing bitcoin.

They cannot steal your coins, even if they disappear, you still can access your coins, even if your computer gets hacked hackers won't be able to steal your coins, if your house burns to the ground you won't have your cold stored coins disappear, etc...

Basically, nothing can happen to your coins with bitgo - and it's of course free.

It is more secure than cold wallet because it does not depend on any hardware or paper.

It is more secure than online wallets because it cannot be stolen from the third party without your signature.

Yet it is as flexible as an online wallet.

From Bitgo's site:


"How It Works
 3 unique keys

Three keys protect your wallet. We hold one key, you control a second key, and a third key is held as a backup offline.

 2 keys to unlock

You need two keys to access your Bitcoin. This means there is no single point of attack and our wallet is virtually hack proof.

 1 BitGo Wallet

Best-in-class protection for Bitcoin holdings.

Read our whitepaper about multi-signature wallets."


So it's two keys to unlock. Who knows the third key, both Bitgo and the owner of the Bitcoin? If so they could steal the coin.

Putting your coins on the exchange is not safe, maybe offline cold storage is the best way.

offline wallet is a good place to saving bitcoin but when you need to be active on the market offline wallet is useless, send extra money to offline cold storage and keep remaining amount online. use a safe computer or use secure wallet. you can protect your bitcoin by sms authentication on asmoney.com

The third key is only in the possession of the owner who prints it or saves an encrypted version of it. He would need it only if Bitgo disappears somehow.

Sms authentication is not helping that much. If asmoney is hacked or if its CEO is a scammer or who knows what, your BTC is gone.


This is why only a solution like bitgo is truly secure. Even if bitgo is hacked, hackers cannot access your coins...