Bitcoin Forum

So yesterday HCP replied to something I had posted with this:


And I do think we need a separate thread here to discuss it. So here it is the separate thread.
As a rule he is correct in that we as a group do tend to dig in when we feel our position is threatened and our favorite wallet is under attack or a wallet that we think is evil is being recommended without ever getting a full picture of what the person who is asking really needs or has the ability to do.

Hardware wallets are great, and you know what I use them. Now I'm going to pick on my accountant. He is older, his eyesight is going, and has arthritis. Hardware wallets are just about useless for him. The screens are too small, he cant easily get the microUSB plug into them and outside of one or 2 of them he cant put in the pin. But, if he asks we are going to tell him use a hardware wallet. When he says he can't we as a group dig in and explain to him why he must. However, he will never admit on a public forum that he just can't do it. We all know people like that, for whatever reason they will never show weakness [Even if it's to a bunch of people who they will never meet, on an anonymous forum]

You know what, for him we should probably put our heads together and come up with solutions, possibly multiple ones to solve his problem. Yeah, it's going to be a pain but staring a reply with "You really really really should use a hardware wallet, but if you can't then....."  is better then "Fine, if you don't want to be secure then install electrum but it's not as secure." Because people see the "not as secure" and start to wonder. Because we could have said "You will loose some security having funds not secured by a hardware wallet, but electrum will do this thing called multisig let me show you how it works. This was even if your PC gets hacked so long as your laptop is still secure then your funds are safe. And, you can have some small funds on a 2nd electrum wallet on your PC that if it get's hacked no big deal."

I know I have not, up until recently I was in the "what are you being such an ass about, just use a hardware wallet"

I saw it again with people slamming the bitpay wallet and BIP70. Like it / don't like it does not matter. If we didn't stop to find out that all this person is doing is paying merchants that are only generating BIP70 invoices then getting into the argument of BIP70 evil, BitPay evil, really does not help people. Pointing out that BIP70 is going away from core and might not be supported long term is fine, but telling people not to use it or directing someone who might not be that tech savvy to one of the invoice decoders is just wasting time and generating frustration. Giving them the pros and cons of the bitpay wallet vs electrum vs Mycelium is what we should be doing.

Thus ends my rant for today.

-Dave

I agree with you both.

I gave this example a few times already. If it safe to use a physical wallet with some fiat cash in it? Well, you shouldn't put all your life savings in it ofc, as you can be robbed, you can forget your wallet somewhere, etc, and you may lose some money. But you can, and you should, carry some bucks with you all the time, so you don't miss opportunities.

The same with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

I have with me, in my mobile, about $50-100 all the time. Some in eth, some in btc. I like to have it. Sometimes I talk to someone who is curious about bitcoin and I show them, or if I have some opportunity I will spend it in goodies. In my mobile I use Coinomi. It is the best wallet for my needs.

But my savings, well, that is cold storage ofc.

We are exposed to many different situations in life, and certainly we need different products to cover all our needs.

A very good post.

I am one of the users who would recommend using hardware wallets over any other solution. But I would never condemn someone for not using one. I understand that some people can't afford them or want one in the first place. $10 can be a lot of money in some parts of the world. Why would I suggest a $50-100 hardware wallet to that person?

I use both software and hardware wallets and they all work fine. The biggest concern is that people lack basic knowledge about computer security. They also lack common sense which results in them being phished and hacked. Knowing the basics of what to do and what not to do online is the best prevention.
I will even go as far as saying that a hardware wallet isn't even needed if you are cautious enough. I still use one though.     

My "hardware wallet" is an old laptop or an old phone. I keep seeing the prices of hardware wallets drop, but I could never get myself to buy one. The closest thing I would consider getting would be either a trezor or a ledger. The Elipal Titan also looks interesting.

I had a look at the Ellipal a while back - correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I could tell it is essentially no different to using an old phone in airplane mode. There's no actual secure element, and your private keys are simply encrypted with the user password, which allows them to be extracted with a simple bruteforce attack without too much difficulty: https://donjon.ledger.com/Ellipal-Security/

That's all you need really. The majority of hardware wallet users have either a Trezor or a Ledger. Wait until Christmas or the New Year and both Ledger and Trezor will probably have another 30-50% discount. That is the perfect opportunity to buy one if you are interested.   

Certainly that's the best time, and black Friday as well.

However, if someone holds a significant amount in crypto, I wouldn't wait a few months or weeks (risking my coins) to save 20 bucks.

that is also my views. no matter how cheap hardware wallets get, i still can't justify paying for a "wallet" for cold storage that i can create myself. i have already installed a Linux OS on a USB stick with encryption and a bunch of other tweaks which i use for storage and the only cost was the USB stick itself which isn't that high.
not to mention for cold storage, a paper wallet costs nearly nothing.

I think most people resort back to the "buy a hardware wallet" option, because it is a safe bet when it comes to security, but it is not the cheapest option, when you look at the millions of people that are living in countries with a weak currency. So you have to judge every situation, based on the merit of the situation.

A person living in a 3rd world country, might not be able to afford a hardware wallet and the amount of bitcoin being stored on a wallet does not justify the expense to buy one. These people want a good "free" wallet with better than average security. In cases like this, I prefer to recommend a wallet like Electrum, even if it has lower security than a hardware wallet. <You can even recommend a combination between the Electrum wallet and paper wallets, if the person knows what he/she is doing>

So having a rigid rule that hardware wallets must be the default option, is not entirely true for all situations.  :P

I had another conversation the other day about hardware wallets vs other secure ways of doing stuff.
Since it's close to a year since this topic was last posted to, and since we are hovering at ATH, and the Ledger leak / hack, Aad in some interesting thoughts like this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5303368.0  I figure it's time for a necro bump

The below are whit I think I see here on bitcointalk and other places:
*I* still think we as a group rely too much on telling people use hardware wallets without digging into why or how or where people are going to be needing it.
We also tend to push paper wallets for secure offline / cold storage.

Both are good but have their flaws, they require that the user really does have at least a little bit of tech knowledge.
I actually tried to have a friend who is not an idiot and a somewhat knowledgeable computer user generate and print an paper wallet. And...it took 90 minutes.
Guess what there are a bunch of new HP & Epson home printers that are Wi-Fi only no USB, it saves a buck I guess. And when he went to use the other printer in his house his laptop did not have drivers for it. So shutdown the process, connect back to Wi-Fi, download the proper driver and verify, disconnect from Wi-Fi and start again. Even better if they have a new Mac and a few other ultra portables that don't have the venerable USB A ports on them how many people have a USB C to B cable around?

I think we as a group need a nice flowchart about what can and should be done and how to go about educating people.

Personally I tried and failed to re-start a paper wallet in a box project. But something like that is still needed. A RPi or similar, bolted to a small thermal printer. Push a button and a secure paper wallet prints out. With tech where is it a small oled display is also not out of the question.

Just kicking around some thoughts and putting this back out there.

-Dave

I wouldn't use/trust thermal paper for long term storage. It fades over time.

They make 20 year: https://www.amazon.com/Brother-LB3787-Premium-Thermal-Archive/dp/B01LYORNNX
And 25 year: https://buy.advantech.com/TSC-Archival-Receipt-Paper-TSCMR-300130-A-03/XDPM-MR300130-A-03/model-XDPM-MR300130-A-03.htm
Thermal paper can last a while, but yes I do see your point.
They also make micro sized inkjet printers.

But the point still remains, as I throw all of us under the bus together.
What are we doing as a group to help?

Yeah, it's great that we all hang out here and talk. And we do help others. But if *I* someone who spends his days working on servers and networks and knows crypto quite well. And my friend a somewhat knowledgeable computer user need more then a hour to print out a paper wallet we are not where we need to be for mainstream adoption.

I can apply for a credit card online at citibank, get approved, get an instant virtual number, buy something, have Citibank link my checking account and pay for what I just bought in less time.
*cough* might have done that Dec 24th for a last minute gift, but lets not talk about that......

-Dave

Hardware wallets get recommended so often because they're less of a hassle for an average person. Without them having to have an extra computer for offline transaction signing (to get comparable level of security) I'd say it gets even more confusing for a newbie. I'll grant that the screens on most hardware wallets are definitely too small for people with poor vision, better have a magnifying glass at hand then.


If any secure way of handling bitcoins is too confusing for a user, then perhaps they're better off just using any modern working wallet app on their phone or computer and that's it to keep it simple. Buy <$1k BTC and play with it until they're more confident and proficient in using the software. After a while they can move on to hardware wallets, offline transaction signing, btcarmory, glacier, etc. or whatever appeals to them the most to learn how to safely handle bigger amounts.

After the Ledger database leaks, well, I'm not buying from Ledger. Still thinking about trezor. But I've resorted to using old android phones permanently offline running Electrum as a pseudo-hardware wallet.

You can use two phones, one has a watching wallet, and the other one is permanently offline. They use QR codes to transfer data. You sign the tx on the offline wallet.

If you implement some encryption method (e.g. using android encryption which is activated by default since android 6.0 i believe), you already got a proper air-gapped wallet setup running.
This is definitely more secure than a hardware wallet but comes with less convenience.

If you are fine with the extra steps it takes to send transactions, there is no good reason to switch to a hardware wallet besides mobility and/or faster access.

The issue is that hardware wallets are not the panacea that they are marketed as. They are marketed as this perfect balance between security and ease of use, as being as secure or even more secure than airgapped cold storage, and certainly as being far easier to use, especially for newbies. While I'll admit they are easier to use, in many cases their security is vastly inferior. Trezor devices have an unfixable vulnerability which allows the seed phrase to be extracted. Ledger leaked a database of full names and addresses of 270,000 customers. We can not (and should not) rely on these third party wallet manufacturers for our security.

The remaining options are unsatisfactory for newbies, however. Software wallets are easy to use, but not very secure. Airgapped cold storage and paper wallets are very secure, but not easy to use.

As cool as a "one click and it prints a wallet" device would be (and I'd love to have one for that matter!), I don't think it solves any problem. It doesn't help "others", as they'd still need to trust the creator of the device. So it's only useful for yourself, and if that's the case, you don't even need it. Just print a bunch of pages with paper wallets at once, and keep them on a pile for when you need them. Use a cheap dumb laser printer and a cheap laminator and it'll last a very long time.

I know people who just store a paper wallet for long-term holding, and that's all they've ever done with Bitcoin. If they want to actually use it, most wallets will do for small amounts. From my own experience I would recommend either Mycelium or Coinomi for Android, or Electrum for a desktop. I've tried many different wallets and can only recommend to try more than one to see what works best for you.
If someone wants to store a larger amount, I think they'd first have to learn a bit about what they're doing. Just like you don't just create an account at a broker and start buying stocks without doing some research, right? Right? Or maybe that is what's happening when a small car manufacturer has a P/E of 1400. Many people will get burned, just like they got burned on ICOs.

Choose your wallet (https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet) is a pretty good start.

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This is me responding after a year: I'm switching more to LN for small payments. Some hosting companies accept it directly, but usually it has to go through coupons. I'm okay with Bitcoin transaction fees most of the time, but this way I can evade the additional fee charged by payment processors for using Bitcoin.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Even for those who use Trezor and Trezor-like wallets without a passphrase, they're still better off than the vast majority of users for whom air-gapped cold storage is too difficult or cumbersome to use causing them to settle on software wallets, or even to use exchanges as their wallet. I can't find a single case of someone losing their money because they had their Trezor stolen by a sophisticated and dedicated thief. Most of the time it's things like getting hacked, exchange they used as a wallet getting hacked or exit scamming, inexperience dealing with private keys or paper wallets, etc. that cause them to lose money.

I agree that "the most secure" harware wallets aren't suitable for all due to its relatively high price and being not easy in use. That's why I usually recommend newbies non-custodial wallets with beautiful UI like BlueWallet and OWNR. Maybe these wallets aren't the best ones, but they'll be good as your first wallets to begin with.

In an idealistic world, hardware wallets should be free from vulnerabilities given how some of them are so expensive.

I don't think it's fair to shoot down hardware wallets just because of Ledger's terrible blunder. That's isolated to the company's practices and if anything, it just shows that users should take more precautions when giving out their information online. That doesn't directly affect the effectiveness of hardware wallets, even those made by Ledger.

However, I think it's fair to criticize Trezor for their vulnerabilities. I also think it isn't cool to only have a workaround but not a mitigation. In many cases, the methods used for HW wallets to reveal a key seems to be quite intrusive and some requires the user's inputs while it is being hooked up onto an oscilloscope. The latter belongs to a sidechannel attack which is inexcusable but that's the saving grace.

Cold storage are usually sufficient but they are not without their vulnerabilities. I think that for most of the vulnerabilities that are associated with the hardware wallets, they usually come after researchers persistently trying to exploit it but we won't usually see that for cold storage wallet. I agree that cold storage usually eliminates the attack vectors that most should be concern about but it still doesn't fully cover all of the possible attack vectors that is possible and that is what a *well designed* hardware wallets should be supplementing. Perhaps not Ledger or Trezor but devices like ColdCard does try to mitigate the other more novel attack methods.

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I have been using a RPi as my cold storage for years now. I've found it sufficiently secure for my use but I'd like to have another layer of security. Arguably, it's similar to a RPi as it does act like an airgapped wallet so if anything that should theoretically give me more security over my existing set up.

A beautiful UI shouldn't be a priority when selecting a crypto wallet. BlueWallet doesn't have a desktop version - it's mobile-only type of wallet. That's why it can't be compared with clients that do have desktop wallets, like Electrum. + You can connect your Electrum client with a hardware wallet, something that you can't do with BlueWallet.

If you are using the Lightning Network wallet of BlueWallet you are wrong with the non-custodial part. It's a custodial wallet.

OWNR is a closed-source multi-currency wallet. Why would this app be better than Coinomi for example? Electrum is again the better option for those looking to store bitcoin on a software wallet.   

Maybe I should change my opinion on this matter ;) I just searched for "micro printer" on Aliexpress, and it shows many different thermal printers. Ink jet won't be good either as they usually dry out. This would be a very fun project for boring lockdown days. The fun factor is more important than keeping the paper for decades.

Let's face it: most people would choose the good-looking wallet over an ugly wallet.

I only use BlueWallet for the (custodial) LN part (I use Mycelium for mobile on-chain storage). I don't care that it's custodial, because I only keep small amounts in it, and it just works better than opening my own channels. Besides, it's a wallet, not long-term storage. People store billions on exchanges, so I really don't mind storing a few bucks in a custodial wallet. I think I have about 40 euro worth of LN in it now, and another 25 in (non-custodial) Phoenix Wallet. I make more off-chain transactions than on-chain nowadays, but the total value transfered is lower.
A custodial LN wallet has benefits too: to deposit, I create a new LN wallet to get a new address. It's good for privacy, and I don't need to open another channel every time.

Fair points. It's not just the vulnerability itself which makes me wary of Trezor products, though, but also their response to it. They have very much tried to down play it, saying that everyone should be using a passphrase anyway and so the attack doesn't matter, when they know full well that only a minority of advanced users use passphrases, and only a minority of them use a passphrase which is long and complex enough to match the security of a seed phrase. Nowhere on their main website does it tell people they should be using a passphrase, and nowhere in their new user set up guide does it tell people to use a passphrase. That doesn't reassure me that they would be open and honest about other critical vulnerabilities.

If your use case of a hardware wallets is as cold storage which you only ever use in the privacy of your own home, then sure, this attack vector is incredibly unlikely. But if your use case is carrying it with you everywhere you go and frequently using it in public to buy goods and make transactions, then this attack vector potential makes them more risky than a simple mobile wallet.

Beautiful, not a priority.
Useable for someone who getting crypto for the 1st time. Yes.
Too many have poor UIs, or useless documentation / error messages.

If it's rock sold secure, 100% open source, and non custodial that's great.
But, if the UI is useless and when there is an issue you get a box that says "error #6 contact developer" who takes 2 days to respond then sorry, I'll be recommending Coinomi over it.


Please tell me you have many backups of your seeds. I have had the microSD cards just die now and then. Even more in RPi units that have their entire read / write on them.


-Dave

I do. For some reason, my Raspbian randomly wipes my entire Electrum instance every now and then. It's quite annoying to be restoring it from the seed every now and then, the entire wallet file just disappears. Not a big issue but just very annoying.

I'd have a hard time trusting a wallet that does unexpected things. Other than that, a simple script could restore a backup when it's gone.

Well, as far as I can tell, there isn't anything wrong with the ISO or the source code that I built it from. I'll try to debug it and see if I can find anything when I have the time. It has happened to me less than 10 times and I'm thinking that it could've just been something wrong with the SD card.

I think they downplayed it because there is nothing short of designing a new device from scratch for them to do. Three clicks, trezor.io -> trezor wiki -> Security -> first link, are needed to know that using a passphrase is essential to get maximum security. At least they admit themselves they don't talk enough about passphrases: link (https://blog.trezor.io/5-reasons-why-you-should-use-a-passphrase-and-3-reasons-why-you-maybe-shouldnt-411c3935ac81).

I'm not concerned about them hiding other vulnerabilities because the product is too popular and too many people, their competitors included, would have gladly taken the opportunity to talk about them.

In practice simple mobile wallets with malware is what leads to people losing their bitcoins, not hypothetical attacks where a thief saw someone with a Trezor and decided to steal one to extract a seed before the owner manages to find their seed backup because he saw a Defcon/Blackhat conference talk about Bitcoin hardware wallets and put in the work to learn how to extract the seed :P And that's assuming the owner doesn't only keep pocket change on their 'main'/decoy wallet without a passphrase.

I agree that is why they have downplayed it, but I think doing so is inherently untrustworthy. How many newbies do you think read through the Wiki and find that page? And how many of the tiny number who do appreciate the risk from not using a passphrase, since Trezor doesn't actually mention the vulnerability specifically on that page? Nowhere in their set up guide for new users (https://wiki.trezor.io/User_manual:Setting_up_the_Trezor_device) are passphrases even mentioned. You have to dive deep in the "Advanced features" pages (https://wiki.trezor.io/User_manual:Advanced_settings) before passphrases are touched upon, but again, they make no specific mention of the vulnerability.

If they wanted to maintain trust, then this vulnerability should be spelled out in plain English on the new user set up guide - "Warning: Your Trezor device is vulnerable to physical attacks unless you use a passphrase".

Sure, but you could say the same about hypothetical $5 wrench attacks, and yet everyone is (rightly so) very angry about the Ledger database hack. Just because other attacks are more likely doesn't mean these vulnerabilities can be ignored, especially not by Trezor themselves.

And if they want to maintain Sales, they better not mentioned that everywhere.

I mean.. after all it is a company. Their goal is to make money. Losing sales because mentioning there is a hardware vulnerability (which the majority of customer wouldn't even understand) is a bad move from their point of view.
The majority of people store their mnemonic code online in their email inbox or on a cloud anyway.. This vulnerability probably won't lead to tons of coins being stolen.

I definitely understand them not mentioning it everywhere.

So...I screwed up a bit...
Yesterday I had to PM Hhampuz to change the payout address for me in the campaign I am in that he is managing.



I guess that brings up the next point; we have to make to new users are drill into their heads, you are usually your own worst enemy.
No harm done, except I lost a bit in TX fees since I had to move BTC for no reason when fees were higher, but still. I have my phone protected with pin & fingerprint. I have the app protected with and different pin and I still could have lost money.

And if I didn't realize that *I* left everything unlocked when I handed the phone over, and I did loose money, I would have been wiping the phone and going insane trying to figure out how the hell it happened.

-Dave

Oh, don't get me wrong - I perfectly understand why they have done it, and keeping the vast majority of their customers unaware about the vulnerability is definitely the best thing for their business. But for me it is still an inherently untrustworthy thing to do, and I can not and will not continue to support a company which does it. Just like Ledger trying to downplay the fact that 270,000+ names and addresses were leaked - obviously it is good business sense, but that doesn't mean I'm going to buy their reasoning or excuses.

It will be interesting to see what happens when it does. If a person can prove that their coins were stolen by a vulnerability which Trezor knew about and did not inform the customer of, then they may well have a pretty strong case. I have no idea what the Czech Republic laws are about this kind of thing, but I understand that EU laws contain some pretty strong consumer protection legislation.

Which mobile wallet do you use, out of curiosity? And which wallets could have prevented this, i.e. by requiring re-entering your PIN when you try to make a transaction or view a private key, even if the wallet app is already open? Electrum, for example, requires you to re-enter your password when on desktop, but on mobile you do not need to. Seems like a bit of an oversight now that you mention it.

Mycelium only asks for a 6-digit pin. That takes one million tries to get it, and anyone with physical access to the device could (theoretically) write a script to crack it.
I also did CPFP once on Mycelium, and to my surprise it didn't ask for my PIN again. So it remembered, which I don't like.

Just to be sure, I wouldn't trust anyone with physical access to any device holding crypto (even when locked).

Yes it was Electrum. And although memory is a tricky thing I thought it used to ask for the pin again before displaying the mnemonic even if unlocked. But I have been though so many wallets over the years I could be wrong.


Good in theory, not always going to happen in reality.
I *have* to give up my phone when going into the records room. So either I leave it with the guards or in my car or in the office.

Leaving it in the office is not really an option, because I do need it (and it's 4g hotspot) when working. If I know I am just going to this one client and back it might just be an option but then I am out of contact with work till I find Wi-Fi for my laptop.

Leaving it in my car is possible, but still now it's sitting unattended someplace.

Which goes back to what I have also said, don't keep more on your phone then you are prepared to loose. Phones in and of themselves are not secure.
Now with this latest bull run I have WAY more money on the phone then I should have across all the wallets. But that is another issue and yet again on me for not moving it.

-Dave

It's been a while since I actually used Electrum on mobile, but after a bit of experimentation it seems if you hit the menu button at the top right, go to "Settings", and set a PIN, then it will ask for this PIN in all your wallets prior to making a transaction, displaying a private key, or displaying your seed phrase. Although a six digit PIN isn't exactly amazing in terms of security (only ~20 bits of entropy), it's better than nothing, and would probably have protected your funds in this scenario should someone have gone poking around on your device.

Best practice in that case would be to ensure your phone encrypts data at rest (most modern phones do this by default, some will require you to enable it) and to ensure you always turn your phone off before you leave it with someone else.

Yeah, I see that now. I just assumed (I know don't assume) that setting was for the pin when you opened the wallet.



It does, it's fully encrypted and it locks when I hit the power button. But as I said, it was a 100% brain freeze.
I was moving BTC while waiting. Guard came to get me just as I was checking to see if it confirmed. Did the polite "Happy new year. how is everyone?" thing and I just dropped the phone in the security basket and walked in. Same way I have done it dozens of times before. Just didn't hit the power button.
I realized it the moment I made it to the back of the records storage. Just didn't matter at that point. Either it had auto locked after 2 minutes or they had access.

-Dave

If you're using a phone as a hardware wallet, it's probably air gapped, so any identity linked to that particular phone will tend to be useless. All they'll see is it got factory reset then suddenly stopped being used months or years ago.

If you're not air gapping your cold storage or at least one of the signatures for a multisig, then it's not cold storage.


It's good to be proactive and move the coins after that incident, but guards normally don't really care about anything except that which they were assigned to protect, which in this case, is the records room.

What I would think about, maybe not immediately, but some time later, is how much do I know about these guards, or how much do they know about me, are they generally good people ... reset the phone wallet because it's your protocol for breaking your own protocol, when following someone else's physical protocol, without assuming the morality or integrity of the person you left it with.

I lot of the guards I have dealt with tend to return items I have left (either by accident or intentionally). Phones, wallets, bags, firearms ... but that was back when bitcoin wasn't very well known.

Ok, wait for a second here as I'll show you my old setup and tell me how good that was.
I was using a SamsungGalaxy S9: no root, updated to the latest manufacturer firmware, no biometrics ever activated and encrypted from the start (I guess using samsung knox).
The only point of using this phone was to have bitcoin in it. At the time I was using Samourai Wallet (and after a look at walletscrutiny.com I started having some doubts about it). Never used any other app and deactivated all the bloatware.
To watch the holdings I was using Sentinel (SW companion watch only app).
How secure that was?

Did you perform a factory reset on it before you started? Did you keep it permanently airgapped?

When you say you "guess using samsung knox", it sounds like you didn't actually encrypt the wallet, but just relied on the phone not allowing access to data after startup until you enter your password/PIN. If I'm not mistaken, Samsung phones can have their login screen disabled from your Samsung account in case people forget their password/PIN, so that's not exactly secure. Better to use a proper encryption program.

Where did you store the phone when you were not using it?

Did you keep the device airgapped even when making transactions?

Interesting, if I get this right it is possible to create some sort of nice set-up using commercial phones. I mean this is good because everyone uses phones these days and with proper due diligence we could basically hide a fortune almost in plain sight. I will look more into it and see how this discussion develops.
Sometimes the best hiding place is the one that is in plain sight, really!

Samsung phones can encrypt the whole phone. The only way to use it if you don't have the password is to do another factory reset.

As for Samourai and Sentinel, I have not yet personally used those. I've only used Electrum. But if it's air gapped, it should work as advertised.

Yes, a factory reset was the first thing I have done. Then I completely wiped out and/or disabled other apps and bloatware whenever possible. Never started Bluetooth and connection option (not even nfc).
After that I enabled the Samsung Secure which basically encrypts the entire internal storage when the Phone is restarted.
The phone was on my desk all the time, and nobody ever bothered to use it. (also because it's all cracked on the glass).

That's correct. Anything that can run a wallet, be that a desktop, laptop, Raspberry Pi, mobile phone, can be used, and provided you can keep that device permanently airgapped and encrypt the files when not in use, then it is a fairly robust storage method. Mobile phones work well since almost everyone has an old phone lying around they can reset and use, and they almost all have built in cameras which can be used to scan QR codes back and forth from your watch only wallet on an internet connected device.

Well, that depends. Mobile phones, even old ones, are still a target for thieves since they are easy to flip/sell/trade for cash. You also have to make sure that no one you live with will reset it to use it, try to trade it in, damage it by accident, and so on. If you are using an old phone as a wallet, I would still keep it hidden at the back of a drawer or a cupboard, for example.

That's pretty secure then. I assume you used QR codes to send transactions back and forth?

Thanks o_e_l_e_o for your detailed answer.
I have an old Samsung Galaxy S7 that I use only for playing some music, watching videos and as a companion for my physical activity. I will probably wipe it clean, do what Karartma1 did and start using it as a mid-range storage.
I need to find a suitable wallet after that, I used to like mycelium a lot but it has too much crap inside it. According to walletscrutiny it should be safe to use as the code provided by devs it is reproducible.

Yes, that's exactly what I did  :) Good then, I'm happy I was able to build a decent storage mechanism without relying on a fancy hardware wallet. I can start from scratch again and reconfigure it. The last thing to mention is the importance of the backup seeds: for that, I need to find something better than some paper in old books......

I think paper remains one of the best ways to back up your seed phrase.

There is an abundance of products on the market revolving around backing your seed phrase up in some configuration of metalwork, be that tiles in a holder, stamping letters on plates, etching letters on plates, punching holes through templates, etc. Some of them perform very well in terms of durability and longevity, others not so much. (https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/) They all come with a cost, some being very expensive for what they are.

While these certainly feel safer than using paper, I'd argue they are not necessarily so. They might survive your house burning down, but what if you can't find them again in the rubble? What if a flood or hurricane (depending on your location) carries them a few kilometers away? It doesn't matter if they survive if you can't find them again. And they are no less likely to be stolen or identified for what they are than a paper back up if a thief stumbles across them (in fact, probably more so, since they are obviously something valuable).

I have only ever used paper for my back ups, but crucially, I have multiple back ups spread across multiple different geographical locations. If my house burns down it is not an issue as far as my bitcoin go, as I can recover my seed phrase from one of my other back ups. If you do want to use metal, then just go to a local hardware store and buy a piece of stainless steel you can etch your words in to yourself for less than $10. It is cheaper than any of the products linked above, and it also avoids giving your personal details over to a company known for manufacturing seed phrase back ups, which could be very dangerous as we have seen from the recent Ledger leak.

A good friend of mine purchased and delivered to me a cryptosteel (https://cryptosteel.com) as a Christams gift. I mean it looks very cool and secure but if something like what you explained above happens, it is over! Also, what I hate about these geeky devices is that they are too easily recognizable. To me, that looks like a tremendous and unbearable risk.
I would rather stick to the old fashioned paper as you said!

You can laminate paper, or cover it with transparent epoxy. Or just to be neat, file them in plastic sleeves in a binder.

Covering them will make them waterproof. Then you can use a safe to make them fireproof, or bury them or something along those lines.

@acquafredda
It looks like a whole lot of work arranging all those letters to create 24 words, in addition to the fact that the thing costs more than some hardware wallets. How long did it take you to arrange your recovery phrase properly?

Does it have enough uppercase/lowercase letters for all possible word combinations?
I remember that o_e_l_e_o talked about that in a review of BITHD Frozen Armor (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5252579.msg54543818#msg54543818) where there weren't enough letters.

Thanks for the tip but that is actually what I do not want to do. I want to keep it secure, yet I do not want to either use a safe or go burying that somewhere. I would rather stick to the books and actually I may come up with some personal code. I need to think more about it.

Pmalek, I have never said I used that for a seed! The gift is still a gift. Never used it. ;D

Are you talking about writing in the pages of the book? I see a few book options:

1. Writing in the margins, or anywhere in the book, itself.
2. Use the existing letters in the book as some sort of steganographic code. There are many ways to do this.
3. Write on some other paper and glue it inside the pages of the book.
4. Carve out the inside pages, use the book as a container. Like how they put objects hidden inside books.

I am thinking you are leaning towards the second one. You can write a dot per page, above or below a letter. You would need 4 pages per word. 48 to 96 pages depending on number of seed words. Or spread it out even more.

If you have any sort of inheritance planning, I would not go this route unless you tell them how to decode your book code, or it's written down in the first page.


I think a lot of people should treat bitcoins (seed words) as some sort of precious object; maybe like a gold bar. Write it down. Seal it with white glue or whatever. Put it in an envelope. Store it in a safe.

A house fire can burn up to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit / 800 Celsius. That's why all these metal wallets have a market. I would just secure mine the way John Wick does for his guns and gold coins. I think those survive whatever fire razed his house.

Great o_e_l_e_o, that's a lot of necessary food for thought! ;) I'm not in a rush and I'll start researching what my best setup could be. In the meanwhile, after having done yet another factory reset, I need to solve the wallet and backup puzzle. Which wallet to use (electrum on android looks silly to me) and how to safely store the seed. I see there are already some useful tips in the late comments. Thanks everyone

You got me, I could have not been able to express that better. I am definitely leaning towards the second one you explained and, moreover, I need to get some family member aware of how to retrieve the coins if something happens to me. All this started when I underwent a surgery operation back in October last year and in case I would have died, nobody could have been able to use my coins. Long story short, all the information provided are excellent. Thank you so much  :)

I think the simpler, the better. Also because I am thinking about the worst outcome scenario: something bad happens to me, and I am not in any way able to help anyone recover my coins.

The setup I am currently running then involves a hardware wallet and a safe box in my bank, where only a very restricted number of people can access.
I currently use the hardware wallet, directly connected to my own node.
The backup seed of this HW Wallet, whose pin anyone knows, Is in a safebox, in my bank.
Inside my safe-box, there is a paper envelope with the seed written in plain text. There is the PIN of the HW and a telephone number of a friend of mine, who can help one of those persons retrieve my their coins ("just don't take a too big cut for the job" I told him).

I have a few friends or contracts set up with some sort of multi-sig thing, and they offered 10%. Because otherwise their heirs wouldn't have access to any coins. It was either zero or 90% of whatever they have.

I have a better friend then: we will take care of our respective wealth for free.
That happens if you introduce a good friend to bitcoin and he becomes filthy rich.  ;D
Having this burden has haunted me for quite a while. I hope his kids will be able to understand the whole recovery setup soon, so that they can share the burden with me too.

 

You mean that you introduced this friend of yours to bitcoin, he invested good money in this, and became filthy rich while you stayed poor acquafredda?
And he’s eventually taking care of your few satoshi for free as a sign of gratitude.
This is it acquafredda, it isn’t?

I mean, that's kinda what I am here for, a sort of private person, sort of custodial service.

I teach them how to do it, we set up some sort of multi-sig backup method where I hold one key. If they can pull it off without me, that's all fine. If they can not, they ask for my help. And sometimes they feel they can't really do it on their own and trust that I can help them with their coins passing on to their loved ones when they are gone.

Eventually, they either figure it out and redo their own wallet and security without me, or they hedge and tell me to keep a backup for them.

I know it is not funny but trust me that I stayed poor preserving my bitcoin maximalism. ;D ;D ;D
He bought ETH in presale a few weeks after I started explaining him everything I knew about btc. Then, eventually, he became probably more maxi than me when he sold everything for btc back in 2017.
We are very good friends, a rich and poor one... still both happy though which is what matters most.