Bitcoin Forum

Just like the title says I'm looking to pickup an inexpensive laptop for bitcoin cold storage. Any ideas?

Lightweight, highly portable, good battery life and cheap would be a great combination.

It should be easy to pick up a used laptop on ebay.

I'd get an old Android phone. A lot more portable, easy to hide, easy to charge. Just turn off WiFi for security.

just get a cheap netbook, something that can be had for $100.. that or you can swap out your hard drive from a desktop.

Do you really mean Cold Storage? If so, why not a paper wallet? cheaper than any laptop and far easier to secure/hide, plus the added advantage of never breaking down!

Try this: https://www.bitaddress.org/bitaddress.org-v2.9.3-SHA1-7d47ab312789b7b3c1792e4abdb8f2d95b726d64.html

Craigslist.

When you get it, delete the Ethernet driver files.  This will take the machine offline permanently.

maybe a bit offtopic, but some time ago I was thinking of a cold wallet/general password storage based on an android phone with a camera (and working screen). communication (including possible wallet/password updates) solely via QR code exchange/on screen keyboard. i didn't find anything suitable, but should be pretty straightforward to implement.

I would recommend using an old notepad (and if paranoid then consider removing the WiFi card and perhaps blocking Ethernet and modem sockets if applicable) then using a "live" OS (so always boot from USB).

From a major computer store complex in Beijing I managed to pick up one for under 100 USD (although the seller was rather stunned that I wanted the WiFI card *removed*).

And here is a picture of what I did to the sockets of it. :)

http://ciyam.org/notepad.png

A raspberry pi combined with a battery pack and a case would work out for these - except you'd need a screen, mouse and keyboard. Depends how portable you need it to be I suppose. The Pi would set you back about $30 and depending on the other addons you would probably spend about $100 all up.

Alternatively you could buy a cheap second hand notebook, but the battery life probably wouldn't be that great.

Agreed that the battery life isn't too great - but it is enough to do at least one transaction (and generally when you are moving from cold storage to hot you only would be doing that).

Why not just buy another HDD ? boot linux from USB ? Isnt it not enough ? Please enlight me i am a newbie

Theoretically fine.  I think the paranoid would say something about the machine being air gapped offline etc

Yes - I do *air gapped* so it doesn't matter how badly virus ridden the original OS is (or the one you boot).

By using the CIYAM Safe (https://susestudio.com/a/kp8B3G/ciyam-safe) all communication is done via QR code (i.e. by webcam not by USB or any other *wire*).

what does air gapped even mean though in this context?

if your computer is offline its offline right?

That's not good enough for cold storage. Set a password. Set the phone to Airplane mode, then turn the phone off. Remove the battery, store it separately.

Consider the use of a safety deposit box.

Yeah, a netbook is perfect. Small, cheap, and you can rip the wifi card out.

the phone? why are you talking about a phone ? arent we discussing laptop storage?

Highly portable and cheap computer? Perhaps you should consider purchasing a Raspberri Pi.

Problem with a raspberry pi is that then I would also need to find a monitor, keyboard and mouse to plug in, in order to do any transactions, which would be nearly impossible to have ready access to that stuff on-the-go. Problem with true paper wallets is well, its too easy to damage, get moldy, ink to smear or just simply lose it etc.

I do like the netbook with removing wifi card and ethernet drivers and your ethernet port "mods".

However, even more interesting is the idea of a phone in airplane mode. Especially if I could get a full disk/OS encryption (I think android tablets have this function? not sure if the phones do?) AND get electrum on it and somehow sign online transactions with it..... Electrum is a must for me.

One potential issue with any laptop/PC, regardless of what OS you run is that the bios could be hacked and unless you physically remove wifi and bluetooth capability you will never know if there is a keylogger etc in place. The good thing about cheap chinese phones as cold storage is that they don't generally support google play but you can side load mycelium from an sd card and disable BT and wifi.

Btw I have a really nice tosh r500 portege (2.2lbs and 12.4" screen, 128gb SSD) that I'm probably going to give away but I won't be back in the US for another month or so. It runs linux pretty well but with w7 the browser can be a little slow.

Cheapest laptops range from 200$ to 500$. They are very slow on running windows (and often come with unsupported XP), so you may want to use Linux if you go for a netbook. Sometimes these netbooks are not so cooperative with installing Linux, so it could cost you an evening or two. Alternatively you could go with the cheapest laptops that are not netbooks, around $400-$500;

Acer Aspire One AOA150-1447 8.9-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, XP Home, 6 Cell Battery) Sapphire Blue
6 used from $122.00 1 refurbished from $125.00

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-AOA150-1447-8-9-Inch-Processor-Sapphire/dp/B001EYV9TM

Giving it away? Is there any catch?

Edit; I'm 1/2 thinking of doing something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Windows-7-Dell-Latitude-D630-Core-2-Duo-3-6-4-8GHZ-2GB-160GB-WIFI-Cheap-Laptop-/251539725292?pt=Laptops_Nov05&var=&hash=item3a90ef9bec  what do you guys think?

I'd like full windows support so I could add multibit if/when they come out with the deterministic HD wallet

"Giving it away? Is there any catch?"

No catch. The ssd is probably the only thing worth any money on it. It's a six year old ultra portable and it's on its last legs and I think the fan is about to give up the ghost which will cost $50 to repair. I'm using it instead of my tablet because the physical keyboard is so much better than a typical touch screen tablet. Also, amazingly the original battery still lasts for around 4 hours. Tosh built a mean laptop back in the day.

get a used thinkpad and a 2nd hdd. clone the hdd. if the disk dies you replace it, if it's the laptop ebay will have a replacement by your door the next day even in 4 years.
NOTE: the redundancy if for low stress "just works" ease of work. Allways have a paper backup.

Take a look at offbit. It allows you to keep your privatekeys offline at all time: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=488915.0

A smartphone?

Make this yourself: http://www.pi-wallet.com/products/pi-wallet

125 Euro is a bit steep considering you can get a Model B Pi $40. And SD cards aren't that expensive.


Nothing wrong with that computer, you might want to make sure it has the battery life your looking for and whether new batteries are still sold for it. If your set just to run Electrum, then an older Android phone would probably run just fine with it - but yeah you obviously don't get Windows and probably no disk encryption.

Totally agree,   ;)

Any laptop would do, just check for a secondhand one.

I can recommend asus brand laptops in general but for your purpose it hardly matters which one you pick.

Hence "make it yourself".

A Pi works great for cold storage.  I opted for the Raspberry Pi OS and Electrum wallet.  I have a watch only copy of the wallet on my PC and signing transactions offline works great.  You just need to back up the wallet seed somewhere.

I recommend hiding the seed securely in an image.

an old or even damaged, android phone without sim and  airplane mode will be enough

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=606238.40