Bitcoin Forum

Hi.


I'm going to purchase some satoshis as a gift for my friend, and will have to email them to her.

To make it look more like a gift, I'm thinking maybe transferring the sats to a paper wallet from https://www.bitaddress.org/, and just send her the paper wallet as attachment to the email.

Is this the best way to give sats to someone, or are there better ways to do that?

You can usbebitaddress but I'd scrape the source code and run it offline (I think they have a git repo or something).

If I were you I'd use vanitygen without passing parameters so it just makes an address: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vanitygen

If you're planning them to give the gift on a certain day you could ask them to install a wallet or install it yourself on their phone (depending on how close to you are to them obviously).

You could also give them a card with the seed words inside (a bit like a voucher) and instructions on how to get access to them.

Why don’t you help her open a wallet and you send directly to their address? Sending a private key over email isn’t the best option, but as long as she receives it and moves to another wallet (created in the properly secured way), it should be ok.

Maybe send the paper wallet along with a few words on how to create a wallet (e.g Electrum.org) and move the coins from the gift paper wallet to the new one. Make sure to help her with a few security advices. Tell her what are ponzi schemes and the basics of holding crypto (don’t save keys online, don’t go downloading random stuff and writing your keys anywhere, etc...)

I personally wouldn't do it that way, as it might cause her to do something similar with a friend of hers in the future; because it's obviously not a good idea in a security perspective.

How I would do it:

1. Let her download a reputable wallet like BlueWallet.
2. Ask her to send you her wallet address.
3. Send the coins.
4. Done.

With this, you actually made her experience her first bitcoin transaction as well.

It's definitely not the best (safest) way to do so, for a friend who I'm sure hasn't handled cryptocurrency before, she could seek assistance from some shady person and lose the gift you sent to her. Since you want it to be a surprise (gift) you could also create the wallet yourself, send the bitcoins into it and then send the recovery phrase directly to her with directions on how to download the wallet from the official website and tell her to input the phrase and boom she claims the gift you sent.

No. Sending by email is an awful option. Also some may find difficult to work with private keys.
mk4 idea great if your friend wants to install a wallet right now. Then you can stop reading my post. Else...I have 2 other options:

If you want to really just send one private key and it's supposed to be a gift for long time hold, I advise you send something physical, like the chips from this raffle https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267152.0 (there are surely many other examples too, just make sure you get from a very trusted seller) and after the physical object has arrived to your friend, you can fund the object if it's unfunded. The idea behind this kind of gifts is that one has to "break the seal" in order to access the private key and spend (the address is freely visible obviously).

Another option is a seed. That's 24 English words and it's easier to "give". Download Ian Coleman tool, https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39 generate a seed, test it too so you can also write down one or more addresses to fund, then you can just give her the seed via a phone call (preferably encrypted call with something like Whatsapp). Of course she has to write down the seed to a piece of paper (and keep it safe and offline).

She won't have the slightest clue what to do with a paper wallet. She won't take email security seriously enough and will leave the raw attachment there for anyone to pick up. You'd be better off not giving them anything at all.

Downloading, installing and backing up a wallet is simpler than handling a paper wallet. Get her to do that or leave the idea alone.

A better option may be sending a comprehensive book (physical/online) about Bitcoin and the blockchain technology as a way of introducing the person. Sending a paper wallet to the person if he/she doesn't know anything about bitcoin would be like sending a game card to be redeemed by someone who does not play video games.

You can monitor the person's interest in bitcoin overtime, if they are not showing much, you could as easily just send them fiat as they would immediately attempt to convert it after checking it's worth. If they are indeed interested in the technology then they would value the bitcoins in its original form.

Its not the best idea to send someone BTC as gift when the other person do not know about it. Even if you make her a wallet and give her private keys etc, she might know the importance of private keys and may not keep them save. If you send paper wallet to her email, she may forward it someone to share with her friends etc. I think you should give her other gifts until she has good know how of bitcoins.

I did such a thing with one of my friends several months ago, and I sent $ 100 of Bitcoin, and the matter was done by putting the amount into a portable wallet, and then I wrapped the wallet and presented it to him. When he opened the wallet, he was surprised by the amount and was very happy.

Sending seeds or private keys by email is terrible idea. You don't know how your friend secure his email. It will be terrible and bitcoin will be lost if the email is compromised.

Among wallet, Electrum is very common and it is also a SPV wallet, very light and easy to use, with seeds instead of private key. OP can create (offline) an entirely new wallet (legacy or Segwit) with new seeds. Store those seeds, and print it (offline), then give the printing seeds to his friend as a gift (with confirmed gift transaction). The link to official site of legit Electrum is needed too.

If you are thinking of physical BTC gifts, you should check the collectible section (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=217.0). You can go for loaded Denarium and Casascius coins, if your budget is high or you could gift him a Coldkey (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5130905.0)

An OpenDime would be a better option.

https://i.imgur.com/N449ZMy.png

Don't you have to option to send it to her via mail?
Sending an encrypted paper wallet by mail and the password via email / phone would be the more secure option.

You obviously also have to take all precautions when creating a paper wallet (i.e. on an offline computer and preferably without using a website).



Excuse me?
Downloading a reputable wallet or BlueWallet?

Going a bit off topic, but why is that? I just downloaded the Blue Wallet app on my phone to receive some coins through the Lightning network... :P

Is it just because they don’t have enough reputation?

Sending a private key to an email is a bad idea, even if the amount is small, if the coins will get stolen, it would make a very bad first impression on Bitcoin. If asking your friend to create a wallet is not an option, try to at least meet in person to give her the copy of the private key. Yes, you'd better to store a backup copy of the key in case she loses it, because while she'll have to trust you, the risk of losing the key is much higher.

Oh i didn't want to create the impression that the wallet is bad or insecure or something like that.
Basically, what you said. I wouldn't call that wallet reputable because they actually don't have that much reputation yet.

This definitely doesn't mean that it is not to be trusted! I was just expressing that it is not reputable in my opinion (yet).

Thanks for all the excellent answers.

Since posting the initial post, I've learned I may - via my non BTC-tech wife - be able to hand over a piece of paper to my friend. So I guess I could print out a piece of paper, something in the lines of the afore mention https://www.bitaddress.org/ BTC paper wallet, and have my wife hand that over to my friend. As noted by jackg, being an online service I must either download the generator to an offline computer, or I need to accept the risk of the service having been compromised.

Printing it is way better than sending it through something like Gmail. Make sure your printer doesn’t save it in their history or something like this. :)

Also, like I said above, take some time to teach her or link her some videos about Bitcoin’s basics. She doesn’t need to know how BTC works in a technical level, but knowing how to handle BTC and not fall for the common scams is a must.

I like Bitaddress. What I usually do for paper wallets is making sure I’m on the right website, download the .zip source code (bottom of their page) and run it offline (just open the .html page in your browser). Just like you said.

Hmm. Didn't expect that statement to be controversial LOL.

I personally placed it under the "reputable" category as I think in the 2+ years that they've existed, I don't remember reading anything shady about the wallet, and they seem to be going the right path. Sure they haven't existed as long as wallet's such as Electrum, but hey it's a pretty decent track record. 🤷‍♂️

Why not send her a Bitcoin Gift Card, she does not need to have a wallet for receiving the gift card. There are a few websites that provide such a service. You only need to select the denomination, enter a few details, and make the purchase. The gift voucher is then emailed to the specified address, it is that simple.

You can buy Bitcoin gift card here (http://"https://bit4coin.net/en/bitcoin-gift-card")

Sending a friend a bitcoin gift card would be fantastic. But I think it is much better if you will help your friend to create her own bitcoin wallet or buy her a hardware wallet because maybe someday she could buy more Bitcoins as her own investment and buy other cryptocurrencies.

I think sending bitcoin gift card and give hardware wallet is better idea . besides, maybe it can teach a friend to make or use a wallet, so that he will be able to operate the wallet properly in the future.

Sending paper wallet credentials via email was the worst idea. Emails would be hack easily and you will have the access to the wallet of your friends. That's good you have realized it. I am not sure how much amount you want to send to your friends. But likely you want to give a surprising gift. So I think sending a hardware wallet like Ledger would be more surprising to him. Then ask him to create his wallet by himself and send him a few sat.

Anyway either you send a hardware wallet or paper wallet, it would be good practice to open wallet by your friends. So he will know how to use it and would gain more technical know about bitcoin and wallet. It's better always to practice the right things.

Bitcoin Gift cards? I never heard of something like that before and it doesn't sound like a good idea at all.
The advantage of BTC is, that it is completely decentralized and trustless. And you propose to use a centralized entity which requires trust to gift some BTC?



While a hardware wallet is a more secure option, i don't think this is always feasible.
If you intend to gift like ~50$ worth of BTC, you'd first need to buy a HW wallet for ~90$.
IMO a hardware wallet is only worth it when it costs less than half of your holdings.

Even if she deletes the attachment, if she is using a terrible email provider like Google or similar, then the attachment will be backed up unencrypted on dozens of servers around the world, putting any coins at considerable risk.

I often see suggestions like this when talking about gifting bitcoin, and I 100% disagree with them. You should not gift pre-generated wallets in any format, regardless of how secure/encrypted they are, because it teaches the person bad habits. If this is their first experience of bitcoin, then right from the outset you are teaching them to trust a third party (you), rather than verify for themselves. They have to trust that you have set up the wallet securely, and they have to trust that you haven't kept a copy of the seed phrase or private key for yourself, or if you have kept a copy "for their own safety" that you have secured it well. The whole process is the opposite of what bitcoin is supposed to be.

Don't trust, verify. Far better to sit down with them, talk them through setting up and backing up their own wallet, and then send some coins to one of their addresses.

Sitting down with them and talking about how to properly secure a wallet for a few hours doesn't seem to be a good gift tho.

IMO this is a pretty bad present.. "Come here, sit down with me.. we gonna talk now, that's my gift for you..".


A prefunded paper wallet is absolutely fine IMO.
Just hand them the paper wallet. That is the gift. Afterwards you are still free to show them how to generate a wallet and how to transfer the funds (they even learn doing their first transaction this way).

The problem is not really the pre-generated paper wallet, but how it is being utilized and explained.

Put it in a card then.

"Dear x
Happy Birthday!
My gift to you is $100 worth of bitcoin.
Lets sit down together sometime over a beer and I'll help you set up your first wallet!"

A prefunded paper wallet is a rubbish gift to someone who has no idea how what bitcoin is or how to use it. Like if someone gave you $100 in a foreign currency you can't spend and you don't know anyone or anywhere which will exchange it in to dollars for you. The real gift is someone knowledgeable helping them get set up for the first time. There's also the possibility that they aren't interested enough to sit down with you, and so they have a paper wallet that they don't understand the value of, which they store insecurely or unsafely and later gets damaged or lost.

At least if you offer your time first and they aren't interested, then you can spend the bitcoin you were going to gift them on an actual gift they will appreciate.

This seems to be somewhat acceptable, i'd say.
But i still don't think that it is a retarded idea to gift pre-generated paper wallets.

Another thing is, that the majority doesn't know how to properly secure a wallet. So they definitely also won't be able to tell others how to.

It's better to help the receiver to configure their wallet because this is the easiest way to transfer your gift but if you want to do this and keep this as a secret it's better to get the address and wait for the right time to send your surprise sometimes sending funds or the wallet supported to have a description to their platform so you can leave a message and I think this is the easiest way to could apply. This is just my suggestion only.

For starters, the person who gifts a private key can keep it a secret the fact that they kept the copy, and give all the instructions on how to store it. This way it will be likely that they won't need to use this copy, but if it will happen, then the person who lost their keys will understand that this was the last time they were saved. I believe that letting people lose their coins when it's their first time trying Bitcoin will very likely push them away from it. It's like riding on a bike - some people just can't do it without training wheels and will give up from falling.

What did you mean by "Portable wallet" ?  It seems that you send bitcoins in an hardware wallet but that also have a good price.
By the way i liked your idea and would send some speical a nano ledger as a gift with no bitcoins in it.  :D

If you can afford to give him a hardware wallet with bitcoin (like Ledger) then much better. Because I believe that tangible things' presence makes the gift more special because it can build a sentimental value, that's what digital things can't do. Plus, it was a nice way to poke the interest of the receiver because he will surely become curious on how that flash drive-like thing works ;D.

Then after that, follow what others said, give him a short introduction with crypto and hope that he will like the concept. Be his mentor afterwards! You not only made him happy because of your gift but also help to expand our community — win-win situation :).

If I were you and have a lot of time, I would take a physical coin like krogothmanhattan used to raffle  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3910520.0) and add a QR code with address and a readme how to create a wallet on one side of the coin. This will look rather cool, as you are giving someone a Bitcoin as a coin.

Sending a wallet by email or just a printer paper (which will actually look like you have simply printed a gift certificate/coupon/Voucher) is kinda lame. It will look like you did not put enough effort to make gift as something special.

But that's kind of my point. If you are going to lie to other person and tell them that you don't have a copy of their key, you are teaching them to trust you completely, which is the exact opposite of what bitcoin was designed to do. The whole point is to remove trusted third parties, be that your wallet provider, your exchange, or your friend.

The vast majority of people who are currently using bitcoin did not have someone else secretly backing up their keys or seed phrases for them, and yet here we all are. I think it's far more valuable to sit down with someone and teach them proper security practices than it is to treat them like a child and secretly perform the security for them. I think doing so would lead to carelessness down the line as you are teaching them there is a safety net (you) which won't always be there.

That's a hassle man. Plus it is not the safest way. Also, I assume that someone that you will be sending your satoshis is just a beginner. She probably lacks knowledge about wallets, specially paper wallets. For me, paper wallet is not recommended for beginners. For now just assist them on a reputable and trustworthy wallets like Trustwallet.
Just to add... you use paper wallet to be away from online attacks, so do not send or store any paper wallet details on emails.

You could teach that person on how to use the wallet to manage the bitcoin you wanted to gift. Just do what mk suggested by creating new wallet and give it to that person. If that person doesn't know what bitcoin then you should explain it to that person and be able to spend or use the gift you wanted to give.

This is different, people who came to Bitcoin on their own are much more motivated about the proper use of it. But when you gift someone Bitcoin, especially a small amount, they'll likely just put it in a drawer and forget about it, and then years later, when the price increases by x10, they can no longer find it, which will likely cause them to never want to be involved with Bitcoin again. This is the scenario that I kept in mind when I suggested to keep the copy. But if the person who receives the gift shows a lot of enthusiasm, they can indeed be encouraged to move the coins or use their own wallet from the start.