Bitcoin Forum

I had recently been thinking about how really safe bitcoins or/and other alt coins are when stored in your wallet.
With fiat currency, financial institutions; mostly banks go all out with the notion that their institutions are safe and their vaults are top notch yet they still fall prey to bank robbers who would cart away valuables from the vault.
How safe then are the wallets used in storing coins? And if they could at any time and in any way be compromised hence losing your bitcoins

Have different between bank and bitcoin wallet as saving our money, I think bank controlling by many people from staff and security working on bank know with our data, in my country several time member loss their money on the bank and different with crypto as saving fund, only you are the controlling there and not any one know with your phrase or id about your wallet, not any one can access to your wallet depending how keep secure your data saving.

Banks are controlled by entirely different individuals with different interests at heart, the bankers could conspire to rob a bank where as in the case of None Custodian wallets, you have absolute control over your assets provided your pass phrase don't get leaked to a third party. So, your coins are very safe provided you can keep your pass phrase from third parties.

First of all note that your bitcoin is not stored in your wallet. Your coins are stored in the blockchain.
The blokchain is shared between many people and there are thousands of full nodes that validate transactions. In bitcoin we are not dealing with a centralized party.

Your wallet only stores your keys and you use them for making transactions. As long as these keys are kept safe, no one can have access to your bitcoin.

You have your wallet, you have you private key, you anonymize transactions or having privacy while using bitcoin, no one should know you have coins, then you are safe from physical attackers.

You use cold wallet for most of your coins, online open source reputed wallet with safe, secure and non-infected device with low amount of coins. You don't click on ads, you install ads blocker like ublock origin and you do all possible things you can to avoid downloading malware, then you are safe.

If your wallet is non custodial, open source and if you have backy your wallet then you are the owner and controller of your wallet. All your crypto assets are not stored in the wallet but on the respective blockchain. You wallet only provides access to your crypto assets. You are primarily responsible of the loss of your cryptocurrency and no one else.

Now ask this question from yourself. Does your bank control your money or you a actually control your money kept in your bank account?

You get maximum guarantee in securing your coins using Decentralized exchange or let me put it like this, get an open source hardware wallet, its more safer because there you own the keys to your coins, they are non custodial wallet for maximum security. avoid the use of hot wallet.


As I've said earlier, the safety of your coins lies in your hands this time around and not on the vault in banks or government, if you make use of a centralized exchange then two things are involved, their site may be later hacked and they loose users data or your security privacy can not be guaranteed in them. i will recommend you go through  open source hardware wallet  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5288971.0) where you can have varieties of hardware wallets in this category to best meet your purpose.

1. There are no coins in your wallet, your wallet only holds the keys

2. Your wallet is just as secure as you make it to be. You use a hot wallet with your recovery phrase stored digitally? Automatically at high risk. You use a reputable hardware wallet and just keep your recovery phrase physically on pieces of paper or a steel sheet? You're funds are pretty secure.

There are many ways to make your coins safer but if you are at gun point, which one would you rather lose your coins or your life?

Banks is not so different with you having the coins in your wallet. Robbers can also knock on your door. But you can definitely make the coins in your wallet safer from online threats. I could certainly be keeping my coins in my wallet safe by not even try to connect it online if possible not make a single transaction using this wallet.

They're safe based on the knowledge you have on how to keep them safe.

But I'd say that they're really safe. I've got a hardware wallet and it has been there for years I'm happy that I've purchased one before because my funds are safe there for a long time.

Funds will be compromised if you're no good in keeping them and you're careless the way you keep it.

I do think for me I look at it in two ways:
1. How you personally affect their safety
2. How you choose the wallet
One needs to understand that there are many wallets available and sometimes you do have a basic choice that everyone has to make : offline or online . Everyone knows not to go for the online wallets because they are easy to hack, way easy.
Then comes the matter of : how many coins you own ??  if you do have a lot of coins then you might have to invest in a small hardware wallet to make sure they stay safe. You can always go to the good old paper wallet but chances are if you ever lost some money, you are bound to loose it, for me that's just a physical bitcoin.
Then comes the matter of keys! which everyone rightly says " not your keys, not your coins ". Then again how good is your mobile phone ? Is it virus free? Is it bundled with numerous bugs and unnecessary apps from third parties ?? It's just not a small matter I do think people can go on and on about the safety..

Well, the central bank is totally different from your crypto wallet --and storing your money in the bank is not a good idea because you cannot use it anytime whereas in a crypto wallet once you will own the key it means you own your coin. Why do we trust a third party, especially the central bank which is they will have more power over us with our money.
An open-source crypto wallet is the safest way to store our coin and it should be a hardware wallet that has a feature that can protect itself away from the hacker and even malicious links or malware-infected PC. If you know how to store it safely, you are safe and convenient that your coin is safe and no one could get it except you alone.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be stored in different ways. The most popular way are personal software or hardware wallets such as those available at https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet. These wallets have been reviewed and tested by the community and security experts as strong enough to protect your coins from theft and hackers.

Since you control your private key, you are liable for everything that goes on with your digital wallet, including security. To safeguard your digital wallet you need to make sure it is installed in a safe and protected environment, as well as with strong passwords. A key feature of a blockchain-based wallet is that it is designed to be difficult to compromise by hackers. Ideally, you should keep your wallet in a mobile phone or computer that cannot be easily accessed by other people. It is also important that you regularly run security scans, to catch possible threats and vulnerabilities that can put your coins at risk.

Pretty simple answer and easy to understand. If the coins were on our devices then I’m pretty sure it would have been possible to hack the wallet and take out those coins. Because at some point there would have been some sort of file that will be stored on the device to recover the number of coin information. Moreover, if there was saving of our coins on the devices then blockchain technology would have been little different than the current one. Because imagine that device getting disconnected from the internet, then how would blockchain node would know about those coins? So it’s just keys and phrase.

If your coins are stored in non-custodial wallets ( the wallets which give you access to the private keys), then your coins are safe. (although you need to know about the best practices and security measures.

If you are storing  your coins on centralized wallets  or exchanges ( wallets protected by username and passowrd), then you are at a big risk and should immediately take action to move the coins to the secure wallets.

If you are dealing with cryptocurrencies, then your knowledge should be at the proper level. You need to understand that in fact you are your own bank, and all responsibility will lie with you. Banks have created the illusion of security, their marketing is based on this, but you need to understand that this is not so. Hardware wallets are a good option for storing crypto, and you can only store a small amount of coins on an exchange if you are actively trading, otherwise it makes no sense from a security point of view.

Your coins are not stored in a wallet, the wallet its an interface to access our coins stored in the blocks where it belongs and no one actually can access without the private keys which is supposed to be in your hands only so your Bitcoin will be with you as long as your private keys are in your hands.

If you have a bank account and you have a certain amount of money in that account, in case someone robs the bank, or steals your bank card and steals money that way, the bank will reimburse you in full. From this point of view, the bank looks like a pretty safe place if we would make a comparison with any non-custodial crypto wallet where each user has their own bank.

The key question here is how well the average individual is able to protect their bank from theft/hacking, especially if we consider that in the event that someone steals digital assets from a non-custodial crypto wallet, the chances of recovering such stolen funds are minimal.
 

If the crypto wallet is open source and the code can be checked, and if the user knows what he is doing - then we can say that the security is quite high. If someone doesn’t understand how things work, then hackers happen to have a very profitable business as was the case with Electrum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5090097.0) a few years ago when a vulnerability in that wallet was exploited to trick users into downloading a fake wallet and thus losing their BTC.

As long as I use krypto until now I am still safe keeping my coins in my wallet, because I have a principle I will never divulge to anyone, about the keys I keep, in fact I have never told anyone that I have bitcoins, because it prevents more better than treating.

The difference between storing money in a personal wallet and a bank account is more like the difference between holding assets on an exchange and holding assets in personal wallets, upon holding money in a bank account you are not actually holding the money and you do not have any control over the money you think you have and that's because of the centralization of the banks, but in the other hand, whenever you hold your bitcoin on your personal wallets, you actually have control over your assets if you have the private keys and no government or organization can be involved in this.

To be honest, not all wallets are safe, it could be hack, your coins stolen, and there are a lot of point of entry for you to lose your coins not just from hackers and criminals. Let's say your house got burn and your hardware wallet is store there and your back up. So it's better to have a backup somewhere else, maybe in bank vault or something. So it's matter on how to practice security or even privacy hygiene to protect yourself from losing your Bitcoins.

Depends on the wallet you choose on where you stored your balance since if you just leave it on web wallets then most provably you will get hack if the wallet provider you choose got hit by certain hackers. But this also depends on how you handle your wallet so I best to choose the best wallet and those are hardware wallets which you can safely leave your money there. But overall about this you should keep your wallet safe away from phising sites since mostly this one hit the most of newbie investor and they always fall in the trap that's why they lose their own hard earn money.

Nothing is stored in your Btc wallet but your private keys. Once you have it, you will have the control on sending all the coins associated with that Btc address.
Now, when it comes to safety, hardware wallet would be the most secure (from online attacks). However, there's a very rare chances that you'll going to be attacked by someone physically and forcefully to take your Bitcoins away.
That's basically the same as  bank robbers robbing the bank vaults.

               You see op, Bitcoin itself and it's blockchain technology is well made and is pretty safe compared to banks nowadays. Now, the extent of this safety doesn't rely on wallets and bitcoin along with it's blockchain technology alone. If human error is involved, then even if bitcoin is safe, it wouldn't matter. For example if you accidentally pasted a private key instead of an address and it gets notifed by someonw, then it would likely be stolen. So it's safety really depends on the person holding the keys.

Even with banks, the safety of one's funds to a greater extent depends on one as the account holder. This is the simple reason banks tend to lay the blame on distressed customers who complain of illicit transactions on their accounts. Banks tend to blame these customers first before anything else. The first questions are often around how did the account holder handle their ATM cards and apps. They want to know first if it was compromised on the part of the account holder before digging deep. It shows that the safety of any account is with the holder. It's the same thing I see with cryptos. It doesn't really matter if the wallets and apps are the safest in the world. Once the holder isn't security conscious and takes steps to safeguard their account, and it gets into a wrong hand it's all gone. So, security of wallets is self dependent.

You know that nothing is absolutely safe even when you deposit money in the bank. The security of your coins depends on your choice of wallet and where you store your keys. The best way is that you should choose for yourself a hardware wallet, hardware wallet is considered the safest solution today to store coins and your job is to keep the key where you think is the safest. That's all we can do.

People don’t just mysteriously have the money in their bank account disappear for no reason (unless you mean the fees that banks do charge). Same way that you have hackers in the cryptocurrency community looking for those that they can hack their wallets are the same way you have them in banks and your family members must have fallen for one of them, because I have seen such situations where people fall for tricks from hackers and they wipe up their bank accounts, yes it happens, which is why your bank will warn you not to give out information about your account like pin, card number, etc.

Same way that you shouldn’t be giving out information about cryptocurrency wallet or your emails that carries important information, because they can be hacked and if you’re storing something there, hackers will go through it to access other things.

You are right, but if I say so, there are more or less unexpected events in both places. But in my opinion, our cryptocurrency decentralized wallets are largely safe from banks. Because you are the only owner of this wallet. First of all, your role in protecting it. If you can keep the secret phrase of wallets in the right place and keep yourself away from unwanted phishing websites then I think your wallet will be more secure from the bank. And there is a hardware wallet for more security

Had been holding my coins for years(though they come and go because I sell them sometimes and Buy sometimes) but till now they are all safe mate , never experience something serious though there are delays in transactions or experiencing congestion but all in all? safe and all are intact as far as i know.
But Of course I am not taking out the compromising part but still? i can carry and better.

Your coins are really safe when you store your assets in a decentralized wallet.If you use centralized wallet or exchange, you will have no access of your private keys. So make your funds secured by holding in personal decentralized wallet.

Yes! My coins are safe in my wallet because I not have shared my private key from anyone. And not opened any phishing link in my wallet and i have opened private key option of my Wallet. Now anyone will login or make transaction it will ask passcode.

Your bitcoins are stored on the blockchain very securely and your private keys are stored in your wallet and only provide access for transactions there including sending your bitcoins in exchange for $ you need your private key.
always use hardware wallets for security and don't store your access keys online anywhere, your keys will be safe as long as you keep them very secure.

The virtual wallets that store any cryptocurrency are mostly reliable, they have certain security systems trained to protect their assets; When deciding on one of the most recognized ones such as the of Coinbase or Binance, it will depend much more on its benefits than on the guarantee of its protection. I believe that the danger would fall more at the time of transferring these coins to someone else, since there are too many malware attentive to swindle, so I would advise being aware of each movement in order to carry out the transfer without any inconvenience.


SOURCE: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-stealing-malware-bitter-reminder-for-crypto-users-to-stay-vigilant

the security of altcoins stored in the wallet only because they are hacked if we don't make strong security, for example creating some codes to login, and making notifications especially when there is a login attempt on a device that we don't recognize. and talking about finances at this bank will be different, in the bank there will be very many managers, and the security of our money is entirely the responsibility of the bank concerned. I think both are very safe. and in the wallet should create strong security on the blockchain.

In a case similar to what you have compared to with banks which is robbery, if someone sees cryptocurrency wallet in your phone they can force you at gunpoint send cryptocurrency from that wallet to their wallet if they have one. You can be robbed of cryptocurrency just the same way that banks can get robbed.

I have read such a story years back, which is why you will have to be careful and keep things that has to do with your finance away from the public, keep it to yourself. Then make sure that you don’t let anyone get easy access to your private keys, and also don’t store your coins on online wallets or exchanges that can be hacked.

As long as you don't really connect to the internet, there ain't much to be worried about. This is why I write the seeds and private key of my isolated wallet in a piece of paper and hide it in somewhere...private.
Just avoid web wallets or online wallets if you're genuinely concerned about your coins. Don't get that precious Bitcoin of yours get frozen by a third-party authorities just because they thought that you were doing money laundering. :D

As long you dont expose your keys then you would really be assuring that your coins is on the safe side.

1. Chances of Brute forcing a PK?
https://decrypt.co/43093/how-hard-is-it-to-brute-force-a-bitcoin-private-key
Not that realistic.. Quantum? We arent still there yet.

2. Storage physical risks (wet,burned,lost etc.)
This is where i do say that a certain user should be minding off.

The wallet itself is like how you think banks treat the money they store, just that, it's in a much smaller scale which makes it a LOT easier (depending on how you look at it) to hide and keep. I mean if you were to ask me to protect multiple wallets vs a single wallet, I'd go for the single one.

As for bruteforcing PKs, pretty sure we're still far off from being able to pull that off. So as long as YOU keep it safe, everything should be fine, since that PK is like the sole key to your own bank. 

Nothing will go work 100% safe in this world. That is also for the Bitcoin wallet. Moreover, if we save our Bitcoin in an online wallet, it definitely still has high risk to be lost because of hackers, malware, phishing, and other criminals. That is why we are supposed to use a hardware wallet if going to save our Bitcoin more safely, it's not also 100% safe but it is safer enough than an online wallet. A hardware wallet is very recommended to save our assets.
However, at least, we can secure our data in order to avoid from being hacked or phising or other scams or fraud.
We must be careful when saving the important data suhc as private key, password, PIN< phrase, seeds, and other important data. Only trust anyone that we exactly know that he or she is exactly trusted. But better to save it with yours

I think your coins really safe  in your wallet .A big reason behind this is that these wallets are managed through blockchain network. Currently blockchain networks are extremely highly secure. Bitcoin Ethereum is one of them. And if the secret phrase or private key of these wallets can be kept in a well protected place then I think it is much better than a bank statement. And there is  hardware wallet especially for security .

As you know, it is impossible to do that all the time. I recommend keeping your coins and tokens on the exchange only for as long as you are actively trading with them. Once the trade has been completed, withdraw the tokens to your personal wallet. This is especially important if you plan on holding coins and tokens long-term. Of course, you have to keep an eye on the transaction fees and make sure that you do not spend more on fees than you made from the trade.

Banks could in a way refund you when robbed but what if some valuable rocks or documents are stolen..
That aside, I am beginning to understand how secure blockchain and the wallet is. Also now knowing that coins aren't stored in the wallet.

They are in binance. Just do not make a big deal out of this man, why do everyone keeps on insisting that I have to store it amazingly and the most secure high tech cutting edge way? Just put it on binance and it is safe there. Who could hack into my binance account with 2fa protection? Who could hack binance big enough that they wouldn't be able to recover from?

I mean this is binance we are talking about, I am sure they have protections much better than I could ever reach and that is good enough for me. People who think that if they put their money on some hardware wallet like ledger and be more secure than binance make me laugh, you are not protecting it better than binance could.

cryptocurrency wallets are safe exactly as much as possible, if money is kept in the account in banks and guaranteed by a paper contract, then in a cryptocurrency wallet the owner himself owns his assets using his private key, it is the security of this key that determines the security of assets.

I wouldn't trust on centralized exchanges and wallets in storing my assets. No matter if their security measures are so intensive, the hackers are always going to find ways to look for a backdoor that would bypass all restrictions just like what happened in Axie Infinity. Plus, CEXs are centralized and we don't have the full control of the assets that we've stored there.

It's better to store them in hardware and non-custodial wallets such as Ledger, Trezor, SafePal, Trust Wallet, etc.

Bank is centralized they can size your money anytime without showing any reason.
Bitcoin is decentralized, no one have the power to size your bitcoin or lock your bitcoin. it is only you who is responsible for your coins.
A software wallet or hardware wallet just gives you a private key to separate you from others. until you keep this private key secure your funds are 100% secured, no one have the power even Satoshi Nakamoto the creator of Bitcoin will never access your funds without private key ;).

as long as the wallet key is stored safely and the wallet is never used as an airdrop wallet or entered by connecting to sites, I think the wallet we have will be safe

My all the crypto coin was in the trust wallets.Because it had many supported coins and it was a unique wallet from long.No one can access your wallet ,without your private ket.Actually I was speaking about the wallet and not about the exchange.While coming to exchange,my first option will be FTX,then Binance,WAZIRX,KuCoin.Because this exchange was trusted from long.

Yes! My coins are safe in my wallet. I use binance app and store my coins in it because no one can hack binance from phishing link. And if I do any withdraw or transaction it asks for 2FA and send OTP to my phone number. Without OTP anyone can't withdraw my fund.

Your fund's security totally depends on how your wallet is secure. And your wallet security depends on how are you securing your seed phrase or private keys. Forget about the custodial wallet, it's like your bank. I am talking about your non-custodial wallet where you should secure your funds. In the case of bank robbery, it's the bank's or government's fault since they failed to secure the client's funds. But in case of lost your funds from your non-custodial wallet, you are the one who is responsible. So you have to care about your wallet and seed phrase, then your funds will be secure.

Binance was my preferred exchange to hold all you savings crytocurrency.Binance was the big exchange which leads in many country of the world by doing partnership to the country owned crytocurrency. For example, the wazirx is connected with binance and the cause of it is to captured the asian crowd towards binance or wazirx. But the effency of the mother company was great compared to son company which is wazirx.

I got to understand that security is in levels and the worst decision is to have fiat currency in banks for an investment, now when it comes to bitcoin, we also have levels and using a centralized exchanges is synonymous to using banks just that this time its on digital currency because you don't have full control over your coins, if not for exchange purpose (trading) a centralized exchanges is a bad choice for an investment, people need to understand the need for having their wallets keys in possession through the use of hardware wallets.

I think, crypto wallet are more secured and safe than bank account because in cryptocurrency wallet nothing like third party which nobody can have access to your wallet. You can make use of your coins at anytime you want in your wallet without taking any permission from anybody before your transaction can be successful compare to Bank account which bank officials must verify before your transaction will be done or successful. It is very difficult for people to have access to your wallet because all your private keys are in your hands.

Security issues with banks are quite different from issues that can take place with crypto wallets, With banks the biggest challenge is physical robbery rest all the problems are secondary while with the wallets the problem is hacking, but the truth is decentralized wallets are pretty difficult to get hacked, eventually if you want to hack out some coins you'll have to goof up the blockchain altogether which is really difficult because the consensus would just never match, the only way to scam people is make a fake wallet or fake copy of some original wallet and broadcast transactions in some other address than what is input by the users, but if you fall prey to this I would call this as your mistake to download wallets from unverified sources.

The wallet security is depends on the exchange or wallet which you had chosen. The best way to chose a wallet is by the feedback from old users. You can check the google users review for it. Some dummy feedback will be done by the company, it short out. Finally you can make a decision with that. The private key is important one for the exchange.When the private key was stolen or forgotten. You make forced to lose the holding crypto on that wallet.

Well regardless, you would not want to let someone handle the safety of your coins. Maybe for the type of wallet, but not the exchange even DEX, the private key should be primarily be watched under your own supervision and not by any people.
I am not an old user even if I was here since 2017, but I am pretty sure that is a common thought already. I recall back then when I thought my coins are purely safe inside Binance, but then I realized that exchanges are hackackable.

right, Binance-class exchanges were not spared from hacks. and fortunately at that time binance was fully responsible for returning customer funds. actually using a private wallet with a private key is enough, as long as we know how to keep it safe. therefore many will be found from emails, about something that is not clear maybe with the lure of big prizes, we must know what to do so that security is maintained

Bank is not safe and funds can be easily stolen from customers or either staff/co-workers could align to rob the bank and made away with your resources but in Bitcoin you are custodian of your funds, this means you have access to your bitcoin phrase and passwords less until you reveal it to external body's before it could be stolen from you

The most secure storage method is actually a storage method without an internet connection. If you do not have a suitable device for this, you can keep it in a notebook that you think you will not lose.

crypto wallets are 100% safe so far there have been no crypto wallets such as bnb and eth that can't be hacked so I'm very sure of storing coins in a crypto wallet compared to storing money in a bank account book.

As far as I know trustwallet and binance have a history of hacked but I don't know about the others on your list, maybe some of them have been hacked too? Let's only hope that their security have improved now. I too use trustwallet but I don't store all my cryptos here just in case something bad happens to this wallet I still have cryptos left on other wallets.

Nothing is safe, whether in real life or on the digital world both are possible for our money to get robbed but I think there are companies that offer refunds, like on some banks and some centralized exchanges. This is one of their advantage when we keep our money with them.

Trustwallet and Binance have certainly stepped up their security, as they learned from past mistakes that made their security vulnerable to hackers.

nothing is safe in this world. it all also depends on how you store it, because if the system you use has the maximum possible security, but the user is too careless, it will be very easy to hack. Social Engineer is a method that is also widely used by scammers to manipulate users' minds so that they can find loopholes to hack.

The best and quite safe wallet in my opinion is a hardware wallet which has double security because it requires several verifications to be done before making a transaction. For example, hardware wallets such as Ledger, Trezor, ImKey, Safepal etc.

the answer is to the degree of how well you can keep your wallet keys or phrases. nothing is hidden in the bank because they have access to everything you have with the. this is not so with bitcoin such that only if your wallet address is exposed thats when people can see what you have as balance and yet they cant do anything without your keys.

thank you for your answer, my knowledge of bitcoin is increasing. all this time I thought that the Bitcoin I had was stored in my wallet but it turned out I was wrong, turns out it's stored on the blockchain.

My coins are safe in my wallet because my wallet provide me good security and secure transactions when ever any one login in my wallet or make transaction my wallet ask security code which only I know. If he not enter code then transaction will be cancelled.

This is indeed a very good, important and relevant question, since you really don’t want to suddenly lose your crypto assets. Previously, I thought that, in principle, storing your cryptocurrencies on different crypto wallets is safe, unless of course you yourself foolishly transfer your data to scammers. But recently, news began to come in about random hacks of various crypto systems, which indicates problems with the storage of cryptocurrencies. Of course, this information may not be true, but whatever it is, you need to pay attention to it. At the moment, I have no problems storing my cryptocurrencies on different crypto wallets, because to some extent I try not to store a lot, but even those funds that are currently safe. What will happen next, I think time will tell.

I kept the private key in my wallet very carefully. There are many people whose private keys have been hacked.In fact, we are responsible for being hacked. If we are a little careful but our private key will not be hacked our wallet will be completely saved.I have seen many accounts being hacked only because of their negligence.We will work with the utmost care to ensure that our wallets are less likely to be hacked.

If you are using some offline wallet or hardware wallet then the amount of security depends on how you manage them by yourself. If you click some weird stuff on internet and yeah you are vulnerability to any malicious attacks on the internet, it just depends on how you browse the internet, it may very between users. But, if you are storing your money on exchanges and then it depends on how well they manage their security.