Bitcoin Forum

This isn't my idea 💡

A friend and I were discussing crypto yesterday and he said he always change from one wallet to another every month, he said the highest he have used a crypto wallet is two months, he always transfer all is coins and tokens from a wallet to another new created wallet in a month or two...imagine the stress 😆😆

I told him the risk still persists, you have to keep the phrase safe still but other friends of his are saying its good idea..this is why I decide to hear from the bitcointalk audience, what do you think.

Honestly, this should be labeled as a stupid idea, but based on my own perspective, the most important thing is keeping your safe keys, well secured to an extent that you alone have access to them, transfer of tokens from one wallet to another is a big risk, most especially if you're doing it all the time, we've got to be extremely careful about that too, As you're aware changing wallet to another could easy mix things up for you, so it's not a good practice.

Others might say it's a good idea because to some extent, it will prevent anyone trying to monitor your access code to your phase keys, but still not the best practices, hence keep your phase or Private keys well secured. This is my take on this

wouldn't that mean he would have too many keys to open his wallet?
I'm not sure it will be good. but for me, it would make me even dizzier with piles of wallets and keys.
the risk is not in the hack, but in the error in ourselves.

if the new wallet continues to be used to connect to a malicious web or site, of course, it will not reduce the risk. I usually differentiate the main wallet from the one I use to trade on the dex exchange or link it to a new site.

you should just tell your friend slowly to put all his assets in one wallet only, because if he moves to another wallet then the vulnerability of losing his private key or password is very big.
I'm afraid your friend will have bad luck when he creates a new wallet to be his new asset but forgets to save his private key and password. the safest way is to keep your private key and password safe in 2 places or put it in a safe that can withstand any conditions.

What he is trying to achieved by doing such thing? Is this for safety or privacy purposes because it doesn't make sense to transfer token to different wallet if the wallet is not compromised or exposed to possible hack. This move is just a waste of transaction fee and at the same time too hassle to do if he have multiple coin stored in his wallet.

But it really doesn't make sense for to change wallet regularly for whatever reason.

I think there are other, much better ways of keeping your privacy than changing wallets all the time.
I personally keep crypto assets that I don't currently need on the ledger. Given that Ledger is offline and has a good level of security, I'm not too worried.
I keep the liquid funds, which I need daily for trading, on crypto exchanges using all possible levels of protection.
In 7 years I have never had any problem.

The only reasonable reason 8 could see for doing this that hasn't been mentioned above is to keep up to date with knowing how to transfer his coins and it might prevent either him being scammed or doing something stupid when he comes to sell them (it might also mean he does something stupid and loses all his funds before then).

I hope he's not doing token transfers on the eth chains too as the fees seem like they'd erode a lot of his crypto investment.

Security is probably worsened short term by a system like this but I had an idea of doing something similar to this a while ago but due to skepticism..

The idea of changing wallet is good but that often like a month not sure, cause he should remember keeping the seed phrase everytime. Yeah his not prone to scam or potential target of scammer. But if his careful and not clicking malicious links, I think theres really no need to change wallet frequently.

Why not just use a hardware wallet, it's much safer than moving coins or tokens every month to a new wallet, of course it will make us dizzy with the many wallets we used before?
Did your friend do that because he was afraid of losing too, so he did this idea for the safety of the coins he had?
To be honest for me this is not a good idea, as long as we still have a secure private key and the wallet is not connected to any Dapps we will still be safe with the coins we have so this will not be a headache and of course every transfer of coins and tokens will cost money more.

I guess that OP's friend is somehow afraid his address gets hacked or something in a matter of time. The problem is that (if the wallet was generated really safe) the time needed for that may be more than the lifetime of our sun.
Even more, a hacker may go for his wallet's seed instead of a sole address, making OP friend's effort futile.

Another direction of thought would be that OP's friend misunderstood the idea of not reusing addresses (which is good for privacy, while it doesn't really matter for security).


Bottom line: it's stupid and useless.
(As said, if he hears his funds and he's not tech inclined, hardware wallet is his best call).

This doesn't seem reason enough to go through the stress of creating new wallets every month and safe keeping multiple seedphrases.

If it becomes necessary to keep up with changes in how transfer protocol changes, having a little fund kept away in a wallet which can be used to play around with and keep up to date.

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The idea doesn't seems unnecessary in my opinion and exposed they user to a lot of risks.

Some people don't really know much about wallet security, changing wallet monthly is not really reasonable and those not mean your funds are safe if you did not properly secure your private key, the only time I think you should transfer your coin from one wallet to another is when the current wallet which you store your coins have been compromised, maybe when you notice someone as access to your wallet private key, then you can create new wallet and transfer your coins their, but creating new wallets monthly and transferring your coins their is not really making sense to me, because the private key which you will be having will be kind of much and you might endup mixing everything up one day.

Why changing from one wallet to another? It is possible he might lose his seed phrase or mixed it with another of the old in a way he can lose his present seed phrase.

I think of all possible ways this would be considered a good reason, but none yet comes my mind. I see this as ignorant means of securing your coins in a way no security is added and yet can lead to confusion and loss of seed phrase.

I get the intent but I don't find this to be the brightest of ideas, so I am going to say stupid.  Also, Sats are being wasted doing this which in the long run will be detrimental.  There are better ways to go about security.

For me Its actually stupid had it been he/she is indulges in saving on exchanges it will even be considered reasonable. Even the transactions fees should be a thing of concern not to talk of having multiple seed phrases which might get missed up. He should rather just get a ledger Nano rather than going through all this fiasco

I understand that some people might want to change their critical account passwords frequently, but I don't think changing crypto wallets on a regular basis would be a good idea. It would be like changing your phone number or email address every month. It would be extremely inconvenient and would make it much harder for people to reach you. Furthermore, the frequent transfer of all coins and tokens creates added risks. The more times you move your coins around, the greater the chance that something will go wrong.

I think it would be safer to have a few major wallets for different purposes. For example, one wallet could be used for day-to-day transactions, another wallet could be used for long-term savings and investment, and another wallet could be used exclusively for ICOs.

Is the reason because of making the assets safer? Seriously, I don't think so.
This is a quite bad idea, too complicated, but doesn't guarantee a secure wallet. Not only that, isn't this actually increasing the expenses for paying transfer transaction fees, right? This actually makes our assets decrease. While the wallet used is still an online wallet?
Not a wise idea, this also doesn't guarantee that the asset is safe. Instead of doing that, why not just use cold wallets if you want to be more secure, right?

For whatever reason that he is transferring his coins from one wallet to the other is very risky. I believe with doing that, it is likely to be a miss up at some spot at the phrase and this is confusing if that happens. I have experienced a miss up in phrase sometime, it is really difficult to sort out. Be sure you write your passphrase somewhere only you know because you may need to get the exact phrase again to input it in the phrase if you missed it. If you don't have any need to transfer coins from one wallet to the other, then don't start doing that.

Well, we don't have to blame the guy for knowing his own way of keeping his asset safe. He might have to learn from an experience if he is smart enough, because I guess he probably has little use for his time to be so meticulous about going through such a process bi-monthly. 
Inasmuch as he has good intentions, his method of delivery is poor and complicated. It is easy for him to loss his funds by just
simply forgetting his phrases or passwords, than for scammers or hackers to steal his funds.
He should consider using cold wallets, for ease and better assured security.

He is not stupid, he is trying to secure his coins from hackers.
However, sending coins to a new wallet every month requires a lot of transfer fees. I cannot imagine if he hold the coins for 5 years, how much the transfer fees he spent during holding the coins. I suspect the value of the transfer fee will be bigger than the coins he keeps in the wallet. I think, his strategy is only effective if he plans to keep the coins for several months only.

I have to say your friend is stupid. He should learn more about cryptocurrency. Moving funds doesn't make it secure anyway. The best practice is to use a hardware wallet and secure your seed phrase. Then your funds are secured automatically. Otherwise, you may use any other non-custodial wallet if you can't afford to buy a hardware wallet. Ask your friend to come here and learn more.

That is dangerous because he might mistakenly input another seed phrase in the new wallet or he might forget the password of the new one when it it is time to change it. Changing of wallet does not change anything in his wallet. Ether he loses Everytime he makes a transaction because of the transaction fees nods collect whenever he makes a transfers.

I will advise him to use one wallet throughout. Changing of wallet is very must dangerous. And he just wasting his time on all that. One wallet is ok for one to store and maintain funds. If it is password he is changing like that it would been better.

Is your friend aware of cold wallets? And also tell him if he keeps moving like that he will lose his money because of transaction fees :D

I assume your friend is a beginner and he never read any article about how to secure coins.  ;D

I am surprised by his idea to move tokens/coins to a new wallet monthly. Can I know what wallets he creates? MetaMask, MEW, or other wallets? Moving tokens/coins too often may risk the tokens/coins. It will be complicated to keep the wallet data and it also needs high transfer fees. Moreover, if your friend put all the coins in a single wallet. He may end up losing all the coins, or get bankrupt by too many transfer fees.

If he is a long-term holder, suggest him to put the token/coins on cold wallets or hardware wallets. It is the safest place to keep tokens/coins for a long time and it also will minimize the transfer fees. But if he is an active trader, I think he only needs to choose a trusted exchange and can put the coins there. Sending coins to cold wallets or hardware wallets whenever it is really needed.

Let your friend to read this article:
- https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-safe-storage-cold-wallet/
- https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/how-to-secure-your-cryptocurrency

Haha, that's too harsh it might be his friend was paranoid about his portfolio which keeps transferring the coins he has, until such time came he didn't know all his coins had gone because of the fee.

Transferring funds into another wallet isn't a secure way, it's an additional cost.
It might be because you're using a software wallet and it's free to generate a new wallet but it could be one day, you'll be lost track of them and it could be your private will be lost because you've created a lot.  Just maintain one wallet that has strong security features and I think only a hardware wallet can do that thing.

As long as you're using non-custodial wallets that you have control over your key, you're safe.

The transfer of tokens from one wallet to another is a big risk, especially if you're doing it frequently, so we've got to be very careful about that as well. In my opinion, the most important thing is keeping your safe keys, well secured to the extent that you alone have access to them. As you are aware, switching wallets can easily cause confusion for you, thus it is not a good habit.

All that comes at the expense of how free it is to get a new wallet. I don't see that to be fir the best although, it ensures security for sure but, your likely going to end up securing your coinfrom even you.make no mistake, your private key or seed phrase aren't iust few digits or a single word but some rigorous combinations that shouldn't be mistaken or forgotten and having to change in between them severally and at different times is one way to come by some confusion and get yourself messed up. The good news is, once its lost, your coins are lost but supper safe. Just from you as well. I wouldn't advice it.

that is a waste of time I mean it can be really helpful tho, but why do you need to keep changing your wallet every 2 months or so if you never made a transaction with it? If your friend changing wallet because there is bunch of transaction especially connecting with bunch of DaPP play with play to earn and connect your wallet everywhere it might have a high risk.

But if you do only few and not connected to DaPP you already made a cold wallet add some hardware and keep it forever the phrase key

it's a bad idea and maybe a little silly too.
because moving crypto / tokens if too often, it's very inconvenient, so what if there is an error in writing the wallet address, it's very dangerous.

And what if he chooses an unsecured wallet, it's also very risky.
it would be nice to look for a quality wallet that has proven security, then don't move crypto/tokens too often to other wallets.

Excessive skepticism, or maybe he had reasons for doing so. So far it's not mentioned what wallet the OP's friend is using. If he assumes he does a lot of transactions with DApps or unfriendly environmental factors, it might make sense to maintain security.

However, one small mistake like forgetting to backup the new private key will boomerang for him. I think the OP's friend should reconsider how useful it is to do so.

The advice given by your friend is not a good advice because he want to say if your assets remains in one wallet  it can be stollen. But of you move it again and again so this might be more risky. If you have huge assets in your wallet. I would suggest to buy a cold wallet it is more preferable.This can save you from future problems like hacking, Stealing etc.

I think your friend is complicating him even more. moving assets every month to a new wallet, will not reduce the risk. There will be more transfer costs that must be borne.
why not buy a hardware wallet and save the seeds well? it will reduce the risk.
the most important thing is if you want to connect the wallet with some new sites, such as for airdrop or other purposes. use a new wallet. do not use the main wallet to claim the airdrop. it will increase the risk of the wallet being hacked or other problems.

For the sake of sensibilities, I wouldn't say it's a stupid idea but I know it's not a wise one either. The best would be for your friend to generate new wallet addresses whenever they feel the current address has been overused instead of discarding the wallet totally and setting up new ones. Doing that will mean your friend has to start all over again and get seedphrases saved up. It's an attempt in futility. It can even expose one to hacks.

It looks like your friend and his other friend blindly assume recommendation to change password every few months is applied to cryptocurrency wallet, except they change wallet rather than change password. Not only it's mostly pointless, there are few security risks from user side such as,
1. Forget to check whether they download wallet software from real website.
2. Re-using same/similar password across different wallet.
3. If they switch to different wallet software by creating on-chain transaction (rather than importing old seed words), they may pay lots of transaction fee. It's even worse if the wallet often overestimate recommended fee.

He better use hardware wallet or create an airgapped device solely to manage his coin if he has very serious security concern.

Safety is not in continuous changing of the wallet address used but in the type of wallet used, they means adopted to safeguard the keys and kw careful the user is to maintain maximum caution in securing his wallet details against a third party user, we most times lack the proper orientation once it comes to security because the leakage to been hacked, scammed or defrauded all begins from our mistakes which we count as minor thing before it eventually turns as entry point to attack us, if he thinks he won't get things twisted for himself then fine, but it may always comes in with a demerit in most cases.

There is nothing wrong with how he secures his wallet. Maybe that strategy is what works for him, and I don't see anything stupid with it. If that works for him then so be it.

Even though it's working, it isn't the most efficient way of securing your assets I must say because there are way better and less stressful ways to keep your assets safe. Just buy a hardware wallet or keep your computer safe and be always careful in every website or software that you visit or download.

I'm holding crypto assets for quite some time already, and I didn't even try to buy a hardware wallet but at the same time, I'm only using one wallet and I'm not transferring it like what your friend is doing. For those who are saying that his friend's way of storing his assets is stupid, you're so harsh :P.

I think it is unnecessary, but it doesn't make him stupid. For one I think he is someone that thinks about the safety of his investment, which is good. Unless he has a particular reason for wanting to put himself through this stress and can keep up, it can become challenging keeping up with the access to these always changing wallet. Rather than him wanting to always change wallet for safety, there are other safer methods of protecting his crypto.

The best solution would be to create multiple wallets for different purposes. At the same time, you can use one wallet to participate in various airdrops, another to perform tasks in the test network, the third to buy coins at the preliminary round of sales, and so on. You need to change the wallet only if it is compromised.

The best solution is to have a wallet where you only send tokens and coins to, for a long-term hold, you won't be sending your assets out until the day.

Now have a separate crypto wallet for connecting to dex and joining airdrops/testnets, you will be safe since this wallet will always be empty.

Having more than two wallets is like expanding your risk because you have to safely secure their recovery seeds.

Prevention is better than cure. I don't know, but how do we know if our wallets are compromised? If we already lost our coin in our wallet? I know OP's idea is very redundant every month, but it is a good idea, but the cons are that you need to make it every month and again keep the key. Your idea was also good, and we should practice it because using the same wallet in all those activities would risk you getting hacked. It is still our fault and not being cautious about why we are getting hacked, so we should be cautious all the time.

Well whatever floats his boat anyways. Try to mention that there is no perfect security.
Just like what other mentioned in here, just get a hardware wallet and keep the phrase safe.

Would you mind asking your friend why is that his idea aside from it being a "good idea"? I am pretty sure he has own reasoning for that.

I am not the very techy guy here but I don't understand why he is doing it. He seems a newbie or lacks information on how to protect his coins. The strategy isn't lessening the chance of losing those coins. Those coin movements remain traceable either unless they went thru mixers. Imagine the fees and the effort of saving keys and seeds over and over again. You should advise him to just buy a hard wallet and re-arrange its seeds and keys in a difficult format that he is the only one capable of understanding.

I am suggesting that it could be that he feels someone may likely get his wallet hacked, it is like moving from one country to another when you feel like you are been followed or tracked. So what will happen if he eventually finds out that a big amount of Bitcoin was erroneously sent into one of those Wallet's and he can no longer have access to them? He will be so sad, even Satoshi is against deleting of old wallet's completely.

If you read what the topic creator wrote very well, you will understand that his friend does not keep the keys of a particular wallet after he has used it. I mean immediately he stops using a particular wallet he will discard it and uninstall it and trash the keys.
After all, it doesn't cost to download a wallet and generate a key phrase. If that is the best way that he thinks he would be safe from scammers, it is good for him. But his method will be possible and not difficult if he only has one type of coin for example only Bitcoin in his wallet.

However, it's somehow tedious, I cannot consider to do that instead I will rather be careful about where to connect my wallet addresses and ensure I did not reuse a particular address.

This isn't just an unreasonable idea it also an idea that tires me to imagine let alone to do it. Crypto-currency is transparent and except you friend makes use of a mixer then those interested in wallet can see where his cryptos were moved to.

Sometimes doing too much is doing too less. I have not reason to think owning and keeping your crypto-coin in your wallet is stressful, the safety precautions or rules are as simple as a kid learning how to laugh. Be less greedy, up your security sensitive, add 2FA, ensure you provide a safe place to store your seed phrase, if you can make transactions at your secured private place.

Transferring a coin from one place another or From one wallet to another wallet, doesn't show signs of security, it's totally wrong from my perception, because what should be done in this aspect is to have a wallet that's exceptions of exchange wallet and documents the seed phrase, because i know that it's only exposure of seed phrase that can create access for someone to penetrate in your wallet, instead of moving your coins from one place to another place, because the process of transferring your coins it also create room for devaluation, because of the charge.

In fact, if you want to increase privacy with bitcoin and want to make it harder for people to track your transactions, then you only need to use one address for one transaction (for the same wallet, but by creating a new address). I don't want to say it's a bad practice, but it sure gets little tedious if delete and download the wallet again.

It seems like the OP friend is having a trust issue with everything around him, even to the extent of his crypto address. OP's friend can't come up with this strategy on his own without getting the idea from someone else. Maybe the OP friend has heard how crypto wallets are been hacked, and he decides to play smart without even knowing that putting him or herself in a confusing journey of changing address. Soon or later OP's friend will dance to his music in a sad way

Anyone that knows how crypto works, won't be changing their wallet like clothes. I don't think the OP friend knows. The person that introduced him to crypto didn't lecture him well on how secure your wallet address is if you keep and don't give out your private keys

Many people have lost their assets through this kind of practices as most time they end up mixing their private keys up and losing the wallet seed phrase and you know what that means.

So changing wallet here and there is not a good idea to me and the only advantage I can see in this is that hackers may not be able to trace his assets but even that is not a good enough reason to keep changing address every month or two.

No one is really perfect to come to a mutual agreement because actually what you do will never be considered the best practices by everyone. You are responsible for yourself and don't care what practices are good for others unless they ask for advice. As a trader, I have many wallets to store different assets. If it's bitcoin, then a non-custodial wallet is a good choice.

Too much hassle tbh, but if he feels safe that way, who am I to judge?

Have you ever asked why he did that?
I don't think he did that just to keep his assets safe by transferring tokens to different wallets over and over again. Indirectly he has harmed himself every time he moves assets to a different wallet, each transaction will incur a fee (Gas), he must always prepare a certain amount of Gas that will be used to make transactions.

Tell your friend he don't have to do that. Stop wasting transaction fees and too hassle yourself. He can put assets in only one wallet by keeping the private key secure.

This is nothing but confusion keeping different keys, I don't see any good reason to be having new wallet in every month. This is not the best way preventing ones self from scammers or hackers . The risk of managing plenty keys is so high and it is not advisable.  No reasonable person would choose to or think to have new wallet every month. This is not just risky  but stressful to secure different keys. Their is nothing wrong in changing wallet but creating new one every month.

Every month a new wallet, it's a bit strange, it's realy necessary? This can eventually lead to you having to store a lot of seed phrases and knowing which phrase is from which wallet is very inconvenient. If there is a need, you can make several wallets, but a new wallet every month is more like paranoia. Because of such wonderful ideas, then there are stories about wallets to which access is lost.

I forgot to mention this in my previous reply.
Way to hassle not gonna lie. I won't even consider having many wallets since usually I only have "few" wallets entirely for different purposes (can't mention how many for privacy reasons).

Even if I was using custodial wallet, I might forget one of these wallets one day. :D

It's very easy to lose track of the seed phrase if you keep hopping between wallets. Your friend probably knows what he's doing though, and seems to keep track of all his seeds (if I am wrong then please advise him to at least do that).

If he knows what he's doing, that's just something that you shouldn't thought of being stupid. There are some ways that we think is better to do for our security.

If that's how he thinks then probably he's doing it for his own security. Well, he's doing it monthly and there's nothing wrong with that as he can just simply dump the last wallet that he used after going with another one. The fees of transfer ain't that lot too.

Your friend is just cautious for nothing's sake. Giving himself unnecessary pressure and confusion now and then every month should be very tiring for him.

Can you bring this post to the notice of your friend? Let him get to know what we(bitcoiners) are saying to what he is doing. If he should read all of these posts, he will rethink what he is doing and stop totally

That is not a stupid act, it's just choice and how he sees the market of measuring his safety of ending up losing all his coins so he thinks transferring it from one wallet or the order is a good safety guidelines. All you have to do is to advise on why it is good to keep a private keys from people that can use it and steal all his coins. Whatever way we choice to prevent our coins from scammers is a good attempt because the major objective is to make sure our coins are safe from people that might use the privilege of seeing our private keys to steal our funds.

Yeah some people feel safer with changing and using a new wallet address for each transaction I don't see this as a stupid thing to do but it's just that, when you are doing so you must make sure safe all the necessary information for each wallet you used.

But then some other people may see this as a wired way to manage your asset changing wallets and transferring assets at any point may lead to a loss sometime

I don't think, is advisable for someone to start changing his or her wallet every month, because it will not add any income into your wallet than to wast your time and energy and even put you in risk if you forget the new wallet seed phrase your transfer the coins to without writing them out.

Changing wallets is a waste of time. The same thing with changing addresses within a wallet. Some people say that reusing the same address is a security risk but I've been using same addresses for years and it's the same thing with the same wallet. I had core for 2 years then switched to Electrum and had that for another 6.
Don't tell that guy that he's wasting time OP and a year or 2 from now ask him how many wallet changes he did and how many hours of his time are now lost forever :D

The biggest risk is the chance of getting the private key or seed phrase mixed up. In the course of moving the coins across different wallets it might result to forgetting to update the most recent seed phrase or private key in a documentable device and will definitely lead to permanent loss. Maintaining a single wallet address so far it is a cold wallet both keep the coin safe and also reduce the risk of losing access into wallet, coin and tokens as long as the private key is kept secure

What kinda risk is that?? Isn't he aware that there are times you'd just get cut up with so much on your mind that you forget your passphrases?? Which is which? (That'll happen if you're a type that loves documentations though but, how TF would you keep those random words  tied to your cerebellum? Expecting to remember 'em each time you feel like doing the same shit?)? So he might still get the whole thing mixed up.
Changing wallets every month won't help get rid of hackers, will it? Neither is it gonna stop his friends from hijacking those funds (if they felt like). The point is: keeping things safe and confidential is not just everyones' thing yunno....some peeps are really bad at that but I'm afraid, that'll be the only way out... Else he's just finally gonna loose-up -- to the point that he'll mix things up so, you should do well to advise 'em on that.

Sandra 💇