Bitcoin Forum

Hi, I'm a bit of a newb with BTC although I've done a bit of research.

I've decided to use Kraken as the exchange (first on google rank!) and so I guess they must have some credibility.

The bigger question is that of an offline wallet?

According to: https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet, there are 6 to choose from:

Bitcoin Core, Armory, Electrum, mSIGNA, MultiBit, Green Address - all of which have a weakness of some sort.

(My general approach for BTC is to just buy a few and hold them.  If BTC goes global, I'll be happy, if not, and BTC becomes obsolete, no big loss.)

So, let's suppose I chose Electrum, which seems to be one of the easier ones to use.

If I download the wallet to a computer, can I then move the BTCs to an external HDD?  Or, do I have to store them only on the computer?  It's just that I have a netbook I don't use much with Windows 7 starter and thought I could use that.  The question is, what happens if the HDD on the netbook fails, do I lose the BTCs?

I'm also a bit unclear about BTC addresses?  When I buy the the BTCs on Kraken, for example, I have to give an address from my offline wallet?  How is the address generated?

Thanks in advance.

Electrum is a great choice. Not only is it easy to use, it is a deterministic wallet.
A seed is initially generated and you can restore your wallet from that. You do not have to worry about your HDD failing. :)

Is electrum an offline wallet though because i never thought it was, trezor or ledger is the top 2 wallets i would recommend  but for what you want i would lean towards the ledger wallet, take a look :)

Welcome and good luck

I would agree with trezor and ledger being popular for your cold storage. 

Just be careful where you keep the recovery words.

I am terrible with mine i send them to emails and certain accounts that i really should not, where would you recommend keeping them which is safe enough for the average user?

I don't have many so i am kind of lax but i would prefer better practices for obvious reasons maybe one day i will have enough to be worth stealing at the moment i don't though :( lol 

Trezor is extremely expensive and thus is not a viable choice for most Bitcoin holders. Use an opensourced paper wallet generator instead.

To store them properly, print it out or preferably, write it out and store it inside a safe. Don't forget to laminate it and make copies of it and store it at different geographical locations.

I'd go with electrum or a paper wallet.

Myceilum has recently released a cheap hardware wallet. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mycelium-entropy It sounds promising and it is pretty cheap.

Electrum is a light wallet. It means is does not need to download 20G of blockchain. You do not need to move Electrum to an external hd. You need to backup the wallet file or restore from your Electrum seed which is only 12 English words

it's only $40? sounds interesting... they're not shipping yet, right?

That hardware wallet isn't for sale yet . hope they will be available soon to us..

yes stick with Electrum...Electrum is the best choice. it is easy to use, and its a deterministic wallet.
A seed is initially generated and you can restore your wallet from that!
so Electrum is a safe bet

I personally used electrum, especially with version 2, more security like 2fa and then you dont need to download the data. Multibit too, but i prefer to electrum.


~iki

agreed w/ electrum option.

just make sure you will remember your seed.

i wolud not choose Bitcoin Core, Armory as a beginner. the rest is more user-friendly. just try and only use pocket money.

I think Bitcoin-Qt would be one of the worst option for offline wallets when there are alternatives like Electrum and Armory. Either of those alternatives seem to be much more user friendly compared to Bitcoin-Qt. Plus the seed-based wallet idea in Electrum is a great concept too, because if your hard drive ever failed without a backup, you should at least have your seed backed up somewhere.

i find it better for newbies, the classic bitcoin core, i know it's a pain to download the whole blockchain, but it's more intuitive and secure than multibit, others client seeems too complicated

Electrum is a great wallet for newbies too, it's fairly easy to navigate around in, plus the one massive advantage is that one doesn't need to download the entire blockchain to use it. To me, Electrum seems much easier to use than Bitcoin Core. I run a node with Core, and once and awhile I take a look at the interface, and it seems like it can be really confusing for newbies. Addresses don't show up on any of the main pages, unless you create a payment request. To see addresses, one must go to File > Addresses (labelled something like that) to see their receiving addresses.

Not for people who cares about privacy. You have to trust the central Electrum server to give you the correct info about your address and if the server gets hacked, you would most likely also be exposed to a potential double spend attack that the attacker may execute. Bitcoin core doesn't need central server and is more secure.

OK, thanks for all the replies.  I guess I'm not far from the point of actually buying the damn BTCs.

"A seed is initially generated and you can restore your wallet from that. You do not have to worry about your HDD failing."

OK, that sounds good, but I don't really understand it.

Given that there's a distinct possibility a HDD could fail, how would BTCs be retrieved from it?  Can I make a written note of my public and private BTC addresses?

Also, can I store the BTCs on an external HDD?  Obviously, that'd be preferable to putting them on a netbook which I'd then have to maintain; given that one has to go online constantly to update software on the netbook, that's not necessarily good for protecting the BTCs.

I am of course assuming the worst case scenarios here; that people are watching my purchase of BTCs and checking my vulnerabilities.

Oh, so Electrum is potentially vulnerable too?  That's just what I wanted to hear!

****!, the only sure way is a paper wallet isn't it?

Electrum is by far the best wallet if you are not dealing with a life changing amount of btc. I hope you will consider our service gebbit.com (http://gebbit.com) instead of Kraken. We have a much smaller spread and btc payments go to offline wallets allow the site's live wallet to be easily insured. There are tons of other great features like Bulk Orders.

blockchain is best and official and its also very lite it works with full speed even if you gave slow internet its also trusted amoung all

Spam! :( Have you took a time to read OP or atleast look the title/subject?

He asked offline wallet and Blockchain.info never fits in that category, it is an online wallet.

@eurekamazda, do you mean desktop wallet? An offline wallet is only for a cold storage (never connected on internet). If you want a desktop wallet I also suggest you electrum, in my opinion is the best (you should not download the entire bitcoin blockchain, is fast & 'secure' _ you should build your security, and the only way to build it is with the knowledge).

There is some problem here. People use "offline" wallet for two things.

1) A wallet which is never connected to internet aka cold storage.
2) A wallet which is in desktop used by the user, i.e. not on a *server*.(most used)

Most of them doesn't know terms such as *desktop* wallet and *hot* wallet. We will have to guess it by checking which definition from above two matches his/her question(s).

Ultimately whatever wallet he is creating will not always be an offline wallet. Unless the wallet will house an ungodly amount of BTC Electrum is the way to go. This is because when it eventually is accessed, it is the easiest one to navigate.

yes you can store btc on an external hdd, electrum if i'm not mistaken, communicates with the cold hdd using a key, so you can always retrieve your btc

if you just want to hold large amount of btc i think Electrum as you said is the best choice for you. but remember to use it offline and also write down your seed on a piece of paper and save it a safe location.

i liked this post on how to create an offline electrum wallet:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=853288.0;all

Be sure to keep multiple backups. If you store BTC on an external HDD, there is a huge chance of an occurance of hardware failure this causing you to lose your coins.

I think eurekamazda will never turn online and reply to my question  ::). However the users should learn to differentiate the terminologies because a desktop wallet is alson *online*, insted of a webWallet (that is not on your desktop). The first one is better for some usage (and it is more secure) the second one is better for spend your bitcoin outside (for example buy a ticket train and it is *less* secure than the first).

Armory offline wallet is the best. Use it on a permanent offline PC and interact with a USB stick through it. Make sure the hard-disk is encrypted and also hide your passwords very well, its the best security that i can think of, secure enough to hold 1 billion $ woth of bitcoin in it.

But only if you know how to secure it propertly.

Otherwise for smaller sumps Xapo, Blockhain.info and other online wallets are pretty decent too.

I recommend a Qr Code over USB. See https://github.com/hank/armorycompanion-python/

Well i use an empty USB, unless the virus can put itself there without i detecting it its very unlikely.Also reformatting it after every use, just for safety.

Also you can use a different CD every time you use it and burn it the offline tranasaction file to it.

The QR Code looks nice , but then again the risk is that it can have a backdoor and put more info in that qr code than needed...

Not saying that it is going to happen but if the virus has the ability to copy it into the USB, install it in the offline computer/copy the important files, go back to the online computer and send it to the internet, you would be messed up. The QR code shouldn't have any backdoor since it is opensourced and you can check the qr code for anything. The hard disk idea wasn't very good since hard disk have limited lifespan and can be spoilt after some time.

USB may contain MBR viruses even after formatting.


That would cost you a good amount if you continue it for a long time. You could buy a Ledger or even Trezor instead of buying CD everytime you send BTC.


Hank is a known person and he created android litecoin wallet which is widely used litecoin wallet. He has also created a few other things such as litcoinj and feathercoin wallet. So if he really want to put a backdoor, he could have put in that wallets.

However, it is good to check more about that program by checking the code(if you know the language) or by checking reviews from trusted persons(least recommended).

Wow i didnt know about those, thanks. Are you a computer scientist?

Also this doesnt solve the problem it only makes it more imperative. Since the same way as you install the bitcoin core or armory into the offline PC you can also put the virus there on the first install.

Also if you then decide to put an antivirus on the offline pc then you can also slip the virus in together with the antivirus..

So it seems to me there is no 100% security out there. What do you think?



Yea but i`m not talking about 0.01BTC either, i`m talking about 10.000 posibbly 100.000BTC to be managed. When you own that amount of funds then you have to pay additionally for increased security.


It could not be intentional though, many softwares can be infected unintentionally though. That's why i scanned my own softwares that i made with 4 different antiviruses to make sure nothing slipped inside it. Even if i made the code 100%, there could be the possibility that a malicious resource file copies itself into the assembly.

Me neither. Found out after you posted here.


:o I like to be but I am not. To clarify it, I don't have enough knowledge to be a "student".


There is nothing as "perfect solution". There is always a problem in it but if you ask me, I will go towards the door which tells me to go away not the door which calls me towards it.


Then it is better to use Multisig wallet or a Multisig-hardware wallet. If you have 2+ phones, you can use Bither.


You are right. I will also suggest you to ask a trusted person to verify the codes especially if you made it because some codes may not be suspicious to us but it maybe to others.

What you need to understand is that you don't actually keep the coins in your wallet. What you are having with the wallet program is basically the private key that allows you to access the coins in the blockchain. Electrum is an easy to use wallet program that allows you to keep your coins and at the same time allows recovery of your coins by just providing the 12 word seed in order to recover your private key.

Wow. I was using bitcoin-qt (core) all this time. I didn't know about differences between wallets when I was choosing my wallet. And bitcoin qt was 1st choice on bitcoin.org site. Now blockchain is 34GB plus data and I am wondering if I need to download it every time... With electrum it would be better I think.

You don't actually store any bitcoins. What you store are the private keys (necessary to spend the bitcoin). Think of the bitcoins themselves just like living on the blockchain. Electrum is a good and easy-to-use wallet. When you create your wallet it should prompt you to back it up -- or give you a seed to write down and store safely. You can then use your bitcoins on a totally different computer.

yeah i did saw the post title and post as well but i mixed it with some other thread where OP was asking for online wallet anyways

Electrum is a great choise, but if you wanna hold Bitcoins for some years, maybe it's better to use Bitcoin Core, put it on a external hard disk and make a paper wallet.