Bitcoin Forum

What do you think,
How safe is to keep some BTC in the coldwallet for 20 years paying no attention to crypto world?

Edit:
lets define some conditions:

1. Cold paper wallet will be kept secure
2. Wallet owner will not have possibility to monitor crypto scene

Hardfork is not a threat imho, as the coins will exist in all future chains.
The only issue I see is private key bruteforce (quantum computers, etc.)

What else? Except for the price decrease

What are you thinking,
How safe is storing BTC in coldwallet for 20 years without regard to the crypto world?

I think it is safe but because this is in a long time, it should be often controlled walletnya, so selau can update the data

Not safe. Hard forks might occur that need your attention to prevent loss. At least use a hardware wallet, keep the firmware up to date, and check both your wallet and the forum for news every couple of weeks, at least once a month. Store the seed for your hardware wallet securely, not online, and keep a spare around in case of malfunction.

If you'd use a hardware wallet, wouldn't hardware failure be an issue?
If you just store them in a paper wallet, would your coins be compromised due to a hard fork? I mean just any hard fork?

Let's assume that wouldn't be the case, then I'd think a paper wallet might be the better option, if you're using thick, laminated paper...

Just like you said, I think a paper wallet could be safer since there is no chance of hardware failure. Not that this is a major issue since most hardware wallets are made having long-term durability in mind. Just store your paper wallet in multiple banks and you will probably be okay. Also, if there is a hard fork and you are storing your btc in a paper wallet, the way your coins are affected depends on the wallet you use to claim your btc.

Modern storage media can fail within a span of 20 years, even if they remain unused.
This problem is also known as data rot or data degradation. Basically the wallet could become corrupt after all that time. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation
Use a paper wallet instead.

Make sue to give a period to maintenance your wallet and never just try to leave it for 20 years.
Imagine the sha 256 will be broken and all of the coin migrate to the sha 512. And there is a lot of cases need to be determined by you.

Buy trezor; it is a hardware wallet and good for long term purposes it is safe and virus and malware proof so you don't need to worry for the possible internet or online attacks to your wallet all you just need to do is to buy it and deposit your bitcoin and keep it on a safe place and just ignore it for 20 years or more.

Thanks for the information but 20years is to far right now bitcoin starts 2009, there is a lot of things will happen, more upgrades in every system of bitcoin wallet even in bitcoin itself. More people getting rich because of holding for long period of time. And im the one wishing that i would be rich here in bitcoin.

This is one of the worst idea I have ever heard. It is nice to keep your bitcoin in long years but if you would not pay attention to the crypto world and there are some major updates then you will miss it. There is a huge possibility that something will replace bitcoin and you will no longer knew it. Observing the market is really important since it will protect your bitcoins, asset and capital from being burned.

Not safe as others have suggested. I agree with Trezor as one of the safest hardware wallet you can get. It maybe expensive, but you can get your money's worth. And as far as not paying attention to crypto world is concern, for me its not also good idea. You have investments, why not pay attention from time to time to see if your investment has profit or not? The only thing can someone will make to do such, is that your are investing what you can afford to lose, so it doesn't matter for you to look at what is current price or what is going on the crypto world.

Keeping some Bitcoin in cold wallet for 20 years without paying attention to crypto world is not a bad idea. For me it is a good plan even if you only store 1 Bitcoin in your cold wallet and everything went well in the future then you will profit. It is like investing to some company that has a contract that you will not be able to divest your investment until x years will not met. 

I don't think there will be any problem with it until you have secure, recoverable cold storage because you can any time recover your funds from your private key and even though the software versions, exchanges will change drastically the core thing that is private key would never replaced by anything else so if you are planning to go with a cold storage then go for it but as I said, take extreme precaution for maintaining security as well as natural threats such as wear and tear of the paper.

It's like burying gold dust or gold in the sand and hoping it will fetch you twice the price of today in ten or more years and completely forgetting about mining. I think that would be very careless on your part to forget the cryptocurrency world while you have your bitcoins in storage for a long time because there can be moments when you can sell for high prices but you'll miss those chances because you're off the cryptocurrency world.

20 year cold storage only works if the price of btc continues to rise.

It would guarantee you sold at peak value in a best case scenario.

Which probably means you held bitcoins and sold them years ago when they were worth much less like I did.

 :D

This is also one of the best investments with the risk of loss / loss is very small, but can provide a very remarkable advantage for a long time

It all depends on what you think is going to end up happening with crypto over the course of 20 years and there aren't any ways to get even a rough idea of what Bitcoin will be like a year from now, let alone 20 years from now. Other cryptos are even less predictable, so you might as well not even try to use those as a way to get involved.
It all, and I mean all, depends on your confidence. It's not up to us to determine what you'll get.

what does a hard fork have to do with anything that OP asks!
for example coins belonging to Satoshi are still not touched, if we assume they are saved in a cold storage, there was already one hard fork and the coins are still there in the cold storage and spendable!

and a hardware wallet does not sound like a good choice for a long term storage like 20 years that OP is asking. the data loss is a serious possibility with digital storage when it is not connected to a power source. and firmware updates of some hardware wallets is scary and hard.

Sooner or later everyone will be exposed to the crypto world whether they like it or not. I'm more concerned about you forgetting about your cold storage wallet or losing it when storing it for such a long period of time. You would need to take some really good precautions to avoid it.

It's 100% safe as long as you will keep it safe. Since it will be untouchable then no way it can be on danger unless the problem will be intentional.

Also up to you if you want to stay not updated in the cryptoworld for 20 years. It will just landed on two possible outputs, bitcoin is fail after 20 years or bitcoin's price worth is enough to covered your retirement and can give you a rich status.

The thing thats going to be a problem is you not paying attention to the crypto world at all. For me i find it hard to believe anyone that has been involved in crypto for just a week can do this. Trust me i've tried.

It really depends on what type of cold storage you're using. Paper wallet could be eaten by insects, for example, if you just throw it somewhere and forget about it in 20 years. Trezor wallets or ledger could fail and all your coins are lost although it is extremely unlikely. By storing your own keys for such a long time you're taking risks, but the benefits from these risks outweigh the potential of getting scammed by a wallet or exchange service. It's worth a try imo.

The chain is not stronger than its weakest link

So the question should be expanded dramatically. Are you sure that you will still be sticking around in twenty years? I don't mean to say that you won't, I'm just trying to show you that questions involving the periods of time that long, shouldn't be that narrow provided you ask in serious and not out of pure curiosity. Now imagine that you were actually going to hold bitcoins for twenty years (if you don't have bitcoins, imagine that you have them, say, 100 coins), what do you feel? Most likely, you will feel fear, uncertainty, doubt

I don't think you can't pay attentiin to it for that long though. of course you still need to be aware about what's happening with the crypto market to be able to react and adjust. though if you're planning to keep btc for 20years, you should have a lot of patience and determination to keep your btc savings untouched, so might as well forget about it

That's good. But if you won't pay your attention on bitcoin current news. You will miss lot of things like updates. You know, 20 years is a very long time. What if bitcoin just died before you reach 20 years? You just waited for nothing. All your investment are all in vain. Better sell them. You need to get in touch on bitcoin updates even just every month.

The worst case scenario when he store it for 20 years is if he is still alive when that time comes. Let us say that bitcoins value have reached a million dollars but that time but it will still be a waste if he is already dead. The best way to keep coins is to withdraw some amounts from your profit and enjoy it, remember life is short and life is much more important than bitcoin.

Just like the best investment currently is holding long-term but without keeping tab of what is happening in the crypto world is something I would advise against. Its true that the penetration is actually increasing and the likelihood of boom is also high but at the same time, the future is uncertain and that is why it is necessary that at any point in time one should be able to understand what's really going in other to decide as fast as possible because going that long-term will mean putting a lot of fund into it.

If you mean "safe" as in your btc staying where it is, then I suppose yes, it would be safe. Paper wallet or hardware wallet, as long as you ensured you got things right when you stored them and made sure to maintain and check them regularly, you shouldn't have any problem.

As for being "safe" while not paying attention to the crypto world though, that's a different matter. 20 years is an incredibly long time, almost a quarter of your life, so much can happen during that time period. Heck, regimes would have already risen and fallen in that duration of time, already 5 presidential terms in the US.

It's possible that your bitcoin could already be worthless by that time, if it hadn't skyrocketed. Since this is an investment after all, better be in the know so you can act to protect your investment accordingly.

There are some condition you should aware

1. Every software will have an update, you can not save and forget your wallet. This will be a problem when bitcoin blockchain have a hardfork or any critical update
2. Every hardware also need an update, when bitcoin have critical update so hardware will follow it, your firmware also need to update regularly
3. Sometime, if your wallet not updated it will make you lost your coin, atleast you have to read regularlyupdate

Well, in 20 years, I am scared that bitcoin will lose its prices and no longer be a number 1 crypto on the planet. Therefore, I suggest you need to follow the news everyday

Na, don't go for 20 years at least! 20 years in too big for something to form, rise, develop and getting ruined. Especially, cryptocurrency is too volatile field and new developments take place here everyday. Maybe after 20 years bitcoin has no significance and something better developed by then, who knows bitcoin could even go through hard fork between these years and your coins will have zero value after 20 years.

If you are planning to purchase any stock make sure that you are monitoring its growth if not you could not predict what the future holds for any investments and if you are smart enough you will be monitoring the assets and follow up and take action and see whether the market is favorable or not.

It does not have to be everyday, at least he should keep tab of what is happening to bitcoin in a regular basis. That is a way to protect the investment he made. Bitcoin is not like a mutual fund that you can put money in and the managers will take care of it for you.

If you really have the confidence in the project then go forward and keep that for the long term,every form of investment has its risks and if you are not able to monitor the growth the risk you are talking will be higher because the possibility of the project to be successful depends upon the ability to overcome the hurdles and if you think that these things can be matches with bitcoin then you could do that. :)

Bitcoin's algorithms are regarded by most experts to be safe until about 2030.  By then, computers who pooled together might be able to find private keys through random calculations.

However, it's extremely easy for this system to change - if it were possible to hack the private keys of Bitcoin addresses Bitcoin would then be considered worthless, so devs and miners would change that system well before there was actually a threat to anything other than poorly created wallets.

It´s very difficult that in twenty years there are no difficult times in which you will need the money, in the end you would end up withdrawing those coins before. The only way it works would be to buy an amount that wasn´t very large, for example $ 100, and save them expecting to multiply by 1000. In addition there are other complications, updates, forks, etc. And most importantly, the possibility that you completely forget that you have those coins guarded.

It will be your fault that you keep bitcoin with yourself and will not give attention to the crypto world as anything can happen in bitcoin and if you will remain alert with that changes in the crypto world then you will get the benefits what the crypto world will bring for you and your bitcoins.

Hold it in a long term was a good idea, it will only need a long patience of waiting.
Because boredom is the reason why most of the time that some of the bitcoin holders giving up they became impatience in the end which is not good anyway.

And then regretting it after they sell if they see the price still goes up. However, I don't think boredom why most are giving up. Maybe they felt that holding it for long term is not worth it that's why the make the decision to sell their coins. If I see the price of bitcoin is going strong, then I will not sell it. But others see it holding for short period a time and cashing it out if the opportunity is there, than holding onto it for a long term.

The coins could be safe, but into 20 years a lot thing can change and you will need to stay informed to follow those, as investment i would say i would risk my coins for such period, even knowing the huge potencial bitcoin does have, the thing is into 20 year 1 bitcoin can be worthing 10k-20k dollars, soo you would be very happy with the results, but something can happen to damage it as well.

With the passage of time the price of bitcoin increases if you will keep your bitcoin for 20 years then I know that withing that time period you will have got a 100x profit from all of your bitcoin which you will hold. I am advising you to hold them for that period.

Holding bitcoins for such a long period of time doesn't seem to be prudent at all, if it's a large amount, the price may decrease considerableand it will eventually end with you losing lots of money. I think on an annual rate it will be better.

Long term investments are really cool considering the fact that all the high end stocks now,if you were able to hold for a longer period of time then you could have made a fortune with those and for that to happen you need to have guts and madness because ask anyone who was holding bitcoin during the initial years and i bet mostly everyone sold them before it reached $100, so rarely do you have the opportunity to sell off at a very good price and in the case of bitcoin everything changed in a matter of years.

Yes there is nothing better than long term investment because long term investment is one of the best investment that you can make especially if it is about bitcoin investment because we can see a great increase to its price in just a matter of years so you can easily get that chance if you will buy now and hold it for long term and just check it after a few years.

I strongly second that

Even if you keep Bitcointalk page open in your browser for some time and then try to submit a post, the site will complain that your session has already expired and you have to resubmit it. So in twenty year time you may not be able to access your coins right away or, maybe, even altogether due to hard forks or similar things (provided you are still alive by that time). Apart from that, twenty years is a looong time in and of itself, and while chronologically it may in fact be a quarter of your life (or even less than that), it may still be the best part of it

That's too from now. You have taken it too seriously for 20 years? Well, it's all about how much you believe in bitcoin and 20 years from now it must be the only currency. What if another stuff like bitcoin comes into effect at 5-6 years of the period and leading bitcoin to drain completely from the market? But this problem can be overcome as you will no the hype before you get into problems. You can start selling all your bitcoins when the problems start occuring. So you will be on safe side anyway. Cold storage may lead to amazing profits for you as the price of bitcoin is continuing to increase day by day.

The life and death is totally a different scenario. There is no guarantee of the human life for only a second. Years are far more from it but no one can even guarantee that he or she will definitely be alive by tomorrow. What makes the difference here is your planning to your investment. I appreciate if someone has enough money to invest for that much long time and he can wait for the profit passionately.

For me, keeping that amount of money which I am sure is not going to be a small amount of money, 20 years is too long without looking back even the little amount I have in exchange site for trading, I check in every time in other not to miss the most important time to sell or buy. Going longterm is good because it might turn into a fortune but the same risk is also involved which might turn it to worthlessness.

thanks for your thoughts,
lets define some conditions:

1. Cold paper wallet will be kept secure
2. Wallet owner will not have possibility to monitor crypto scene

Hardfork is not a threat imho, as the coins will exist in all future chains.
The only issue I see is private key bruteforce (quantum computers, etc.)

What else? Except for the price decrease

There will be two outcome when you abandon your coin for a long time, first you will be super rich because judging from the rising yer per year the price can reach to the sky in the next 20 years, or your coin will be no value, the future is not a certain thing, bitcoin and crypto currencies still in a very early stages, so anything still possible to happened

This goes without saying

But this is certainly not the most optimal strategy in life. The most optimal one (on average) seems to be based on the assumption that you personally are going to live forever. It may be based on self-deception to a degree, though we don't really know until we actually kick the bucket, but then we wouldn't care anyway. On the other hand, constantly thinking that you may die tomorrow (or even today) will make your life totally unbearable and miserable


All else (including quantum computing) means price decrease down to complete destruction

Just take into account that the bitcoin ecosystem is entirely based on digital technology, and the vertiginous mode in which it evolves make this two-decades course look like a true eternity.

In addition to the very clever comments that I have read above, which suffice to explain the inconvenience of that idea, I have no doubt that the risk of obsolescence may also apply to all altcoins, if in twenty years they still exist.