Bitcoin Forum

Is there is safe and well known service that offers a very safe and storage for btc? Like a vault? 

Thanks.

mybitcoin used to

;D

I think that the null modem idea that is being discussed with Armory should make it fairly straight forward to create your own secure offline vault.

Paper wallets (printed on waterproof plastic) in bank vaults maybe?

How quick + easy should it be to access funds in this storage?

Paper wallets are probably safest and easiest, as there's never a wallet created for a hacker or bot to attack. If you want your own "vault", buy a cheap netbook that you plan on keeping entirely offline and generate a wallet on there, then back it up elsewhere offline for copies, preferably encrypted at that point.

Paper wallets ftw.

Brain wallets are the most safe and secure. Make them deterministic for multiple caches. I'm on a mobile or I would explain further.

Paper wallets are great for a non-techie.

Well, you can forget, die, have an accident... it's easier to have a backup for a piece of paper than your brain. ;)

- Buy a used laptop.
- Reformat the drive and install ubuntu.
- Install the bitcoin client and download the block chain.
- Create an address in the client and write it down.
- Send BTC to the address to test everything.
- Close the bitcoin client and shut down the computer.
- Take the computer to the bank and put it in a safety deposit box.

This is what I would consider very safe storage for btc in a vault.

No need to hook it up to the internet...

To confirm, you can check blockexplorer too. Also HDDs don't hold data as well as paper or metal/stone. A private key is not that long after all - it can be written, engraved, printed, encoded (even with erasure coding!) into a QR-code...

Armory for example has some nice features I think that can be useful for this kind of stuff.

Depositing is easy - withdrawal is the difficult part! ;)

Encrypted paper wallets? :D

Bury them in chests.

can someone please remind the clueless how to convert an arbitrary string into a private key?

cheers.

1. go to bitaddress.org
2. select tab wallet details
3. type in a very secure phrase that you can still remember
4. send bitcoin to the public address.

type in where? the only text input box i see on that page is labelled "enter private key".

oh, i also found this https://bitcointools.appspot.com but would highly recommend against it since it doesn't work offline.

just try it. And yes, there are other ways to make them. Just do a search for brain wallet.

tried it, got a popup saying "The text you entered is not a valid private key". anyway i realised it's basically a matter of doing sha256 hash of your string, which can obviously be done offline.

You're almost there, keep reading the dialog and click "ok".

sorry, nfi what you guys are talking about... that's why i said for the 'clueless'.


edit: okay finally worked it out... my 'very secure passphrase' that i was testing with was J#*(5%8923a which happens to be 11 characters long, and as it turns out, just shy of the 12 characters required to get the extra text on the popup dialog.

You're phrase is probably too short, that's why it won't convert it. Enter a longer phrase and it should then convert.

Edit: Seems you fixed it.

Try to cut tungsten...
http://we.lovebitco.in/img/tungsten.jpg

And how to generate "5J" + 50 base58 characters for a private key?:

http://www.dicecollector.net/JM/d60.C.clsn.jpg

Obviously 59 and 60 mean "roll again"...

That die is aweseome. Only thing I'd change is 59-60 get replaced with a penis.

or 0x04, plus roll 64 times for a hexadecimal key:
http://we.lovebitco.in/img/hexdice.jpg

"incubating"
 - http://bitcoinvault.com

Encrypted Vmware Computer with truecrypt encrypted drive Hosted on a Computer with fault tolerant hard drive and encrypted online backup. Lowest Level of encryption is 1024 Bit. Any bad ideas to this setup?

how is a hard drive made to be fault tolerant? that makes me think it is storing bits redundantly, which could be a security leak.

Two hard drives that are setup to be fault tolerant under windows 7 ultimate, its windows version of software based RAID. Also remove the Network adapter from the Vmware Computer so its isolated from the internet.

And all these gigabytes of data just to protect a bunch of private keys? ::)

Also, which symmetric encryption with 1024bit key size are you using? All in all far too complex and full of potential errors to be useful at all.

If you need to encrypt these tiny amounts of data, just do a one-time pad! It's secure against brute forcing as a bonus.

I think drivecrypt uses a combo of blowfish,AES,TWOFISH. I would only use this level of encryption/protection for over $200 in BTC, when you really want it to be VERY SECURE lol

I'd argue it makes it less secure, also you seem to not even know the basics of your encryption scheme + software... "lol" indeed.

1] Send your BTCs to 1KMJnCZjkCU1rJ9DqDr5Nku88EjofJGstu
2] Wait for a few years
3] ?

 ;D

This.

Maybe backup the hard-drive before you seal it in the vault as well.....
 

If you're going to use a safety deposit box, why not just use secure paper? Then you don't even have to worry about hardware malfunction. I doubt I could even fit a laptop into the small size safety deposit boxes in my bank.

If you use a laptop, no need to download the block chain. Install bitcoin, find your receiving address and send away from your other wallet immediately. Check blockexplorer or blockchain.info for transaction verification. As long as you see it sent to your offline address on one of those sites, you're good to go. Obviously you won't see the amount on the offline computer because the block chain isn't downloaded but no need to see the transaction on the offline pc, as long as you have the wallet saved.

I understand most of this but one thing I dont get is how do you sign a transaction again using the paper private key? where do you 'enter' it? can you use the paper key that armory generates at a later time in the future without using armory again? if so how?

This article has an example for importing an off-line key, and creating an off-line transaction:

http://bitcoinmagazine.net/brain-wallets-the-what-and-the-how/

off-line transactions can be "injected" into the network/blockchain at bitsend.rowit.co.uk

And also to:
 http://www.blockchain.info/pushtx

Using My Wallet from BlockChain.info, you can import the key and after that use My Wallet's Send Money function to transact.

https://i.imgur.com/mPUz6.png

  - http://www.BlockChain.info/wallet

Thanks guys.