Bitcoin Forum

I've read the FAQ and documentation but there's a few questions I'd like answered.

I've already made a paper wallet backup like Armory suggests.

When I want to backup my bitcoins with Bitcoin Core, all I have to do is backup my wallet.dat file.  Can I do the same with Armory?  I see a wallet file named .wallet in my BitcoinArmory directory, is that the same as wallet.dat?

What happens if someone steals my offline (cold storage) laptop?  How do I send bitcoins?

If someone gets access to my paper wallet keys, do they have access to all of my bitcoins with ability to send bitcoins?

Thanks for your time.

You are correct, the .wallet file is the equivalent of wallet.dat. Your paper backup has all the information you need to recover you wallet and be able to spend your bitcoins, but you will loose your labels and comments. By restoring the .wallet file, you will get your labels and comments back.

If somebody steals your cold storage device, they will need to crack you armory password, then they can spend all of your bitcoins however they want. If this happens you should use your paper backup to restore your wallet, and immediately send your bitcoin to a new wallet (not just a new address in the same wallet).

If somebody steals your paper wallet, treat it as if they have stolen you cold storage device, but without a password. If you are worried about this, I recommend using a "Fragmented Backup (M-of-N)". Using the fragmented backup, you can have 1 piece stolen, but that alone will not let the thief spend your bitcoin.

I hope this helped.

armory password is the wallet encryption, right ?

Correct, when you add a private key to you wallet, it encrypts the private keys. If somebody gets the wallet file, they will still be able to see your balance without the password.

First you say that if someone steals my paper backup they have access to all my bitcoins.  Then you say if they steal it, they'll need a password.

Which is it?

I'm trying to understand, this software is definitely not user friendly.

It's both. The paper wallet isn't protected by a password. If the paper wallet is compromised, the thief has immediate access to the coins. If they have access to your device, they still need the password in order to spend the coins.

so it would be convenient to implement a paper wallet encryption/Password
Is this planned in next updates?

The idea behind paper wallets is that they're a last resort. What happens if you forget the password for your e-wallet? You go to your paper wallet. What happens if you get hit by a bus? Your family goes to your paper wallet. I suppose we could implement some sort of password scheme for paper wallets if there's enough interest. Speaking solely for myself, I'd prefer not to do that since it could lead to confusion and people complaining when they forget their paper wallet's password.

If anybody desires a password solely because they're worried about theft, that's why we have distributed paper wallets. You print out, say, a 3-of-6 wallet and distribute the pieces to multiple different parties and hang onto one or two pieces yourself (or hell, hang onto nothing if you're that confident/concerned). That way, no one person can recover your coins unless they collaborate with people who have the pieces or steal from multiple sources.

On an unrelated note, Bitcoin Armory seems to not want to update teh blockchain.

I thought I fixed it by setting the install and home directory to the daemon folder, but I guess I didn't.

It says last block received three days ago.

What am I doing wrong?

pls respond

If anyone's interested, instead of printing the whole backup PDF I just cut the relevant information and pasted it in a regular text file. Then I encrypted it using aescrypt (https://www.aescrypt.com), and then parsed the result to base64 in order to produce "paper-friendly" text. Now this I'm confident enough to print and store it anywhere...

And you just lost the most important function of a paper backup:  When you forget the password, you can still get the funds.  That is still the most common way of losing bitcoins.  I am sure you remember the password in three months, but in three years?  Have you tried typing it back in, and decrypting it?

Sure thing, I generate and store all my passwords in a KeePass2 database. Maybe I should have mentioned that in the first message, too  ::)

Don't trust such a database too much.  You will not be the first to lose the entire database of passwords.  I once lost half a database of passwords due to some strange sync error between devices - fortunately it was only websites, no bitcoins were lost.

That's really weird.