Collection of Questions and Answers
However, I was once told that to get a paper wallet I must buy it but with the information provided at the OP nothing of such was mention.
No, you don't have to buy anything besides paper obviously. A paper wallet is literally a wallet on a piece of paper (it could be any kind of paper, e.g. the one you use in your printer).
My question, is the paper waller for free and is it secure if I follow all the necessary procedure provided by the OP?
Thanks
While I personally can not guarantee safety, as the guide was not written by me, it does look good enough (especially for newbies). Just make sure that you don't generate online, and that the machine is fresh/clean.
If I understand you correctly. In other to get a safe wallet code I will have to generate the code using an offline computer?
Correct. You should download the software and generate the keys on a offline machine.
Meanwhile,you're lengend here and you should know which of this wallet is safe and secure.
Firstly, the 'legendary' rank does not imply any kind of knowledge. Ranks are based on activity, ergo you will find plenty of Hero and Legendary members with limited or flawed knowledge.
Secondly, I'm fully aware of the security implications of the wallets. What I'm saying is that, I have not written this myself and can not guarantee anything (there are ways that you can fuck up).
if I have bitcoins in my desktop wallet and I'm needing format the hard disk from my computer, I'll lost the bitcoins after format the HD?
If you don't have a backup of your wallet, then you will most likely lose your coins.
If yes is the answer, how no lose the bitcoins with formatting?
This depends on the type of wallet that you're using. For Bitcoin Core, you need to find and backup your 'wallet.dat' file which is usually located in your
datadir
I have a question. When verifying the address. When you use bitcoin core, you will be given a lot of addresses for receiving. What address should I use to sign? Or what should I use to receive payments then how to sign it. If you need to move this post, it's okay.
That's solely up to you. Usually people keep one address on their profile, and/or stake it somewhere on the forum for identification purposes. They do most/all signing with this address in cases when needed (e.g. account recovery after being locked out/hacked).
Okay then so i pick 1 then stake it here so at least they would know it's mine?
Thanks for replying!
Correct. This is the primary thread used for address staking at this time:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=996318.0Thank you for that. Last question. If I have a software wallet in an offline computer or laptop, how will it be updated about the transactions? i'm sorry, I'm really new in bitcoin
If you're talking about creating transactions: Your transaction will be broadcast as soon as you connect to the internet or you could let someone else broadcast it (e.g. use a service to do so).
If you're talking about receiving transactions: Depending on the wallet, it will synchronize as soon as you open the wallet with an active internet connection and any transactions should show. You can obviously receive payments even if your wallet is offline (easily verifiable via any blockchain explorer).
So you would always connect it the internet IF ONLY you plan to spend it or resend some funds? (Cold storages)
Correct. You don't need to connect to receive (even though your offline wallet wouldn't show that you've received anything). Experienced users can also mitigate connecting to the internet for sending by creating transactions on offline machines and pushing them via online ones (although I don't recommend attempting this considering your current knowledge). Hopefully this answers your questions. You can PM me directly if you have more questions.
Does there really need to be this much analysis tho? I feel you can just choose the mos tpopular one and you'll be fine
I'm a beginner though too :/
There are many options and wallet types to choose from depending on your needs. That's why we tried to cover as much as possible. It comes down to security and privacy. If you go with e.g. Electrum, you should be fine.
Hi. I would just like to know if you have heard of cases where people's money have been stolen from their wallet. If so how can you avoid this?
The only way to steal money is if they compromise the target machine/network. To avoid this you need to look into general security advice for computers and network. Read this thread:
Beware of Malware: Think Before Acting!. What you could do is:
1) Keep the majority of your coins on an offline machine and only boot it when you need to use them.
2) Split the coins across several different devices (e.g. desktop wallet, mobile wallets) and make sure to use 2FA and encryption where available.
Another way to keep your coins from being stolen is to use a cold storage wallet. While they are not a convenient solution for spending bitcoins, they are a great way to keep your coins safe. With the cold storage keys being generated offline, there is no way for a hacker to get said keys. But when you want to spend the coins on the cold wallet, you have to upload all the coins in the address as the private key is now possibly compromised.
If you want to save coins for the long term, a cold storage wallet is definitely the solution to go with.
While that is most likely going to be the case with the average user, it does not necessarily have to be the case. Depending on the user expertise, it is possibly to create the transaction(s) offline and broadcast them to the network from an online machine. One could say that this is almost a *fool proof* way of using them. Someone could attempt to write a guide for this, however I'd advise that average users do not use it depending on how TXs are crafted.
Oh it's ok. I'm a newbie and didn't know all of this wallet before.
But I found out a wallet called "Coinbase" I'm kinda nervous why coinbase isn't recommend in this post? Is coinbase is good or bad?
I'm using it..
Coinbase is a web wallet. Web wallets are discouraged as you the user are not in control of your Bitcoin, the wallet service is. If the service shuts down or they lock you out of your account, you cannot access your Bitcoin. If the service decides to scam and steals all of the Bitcoin entrusted to them, you have lost your Bitcoin. In general, web wallets, including Coinbase, are not considered good wallets.
Also, Coinbase is known to have shut down accounts that they suspect are being used for gambling. Your money is at their mercy.
Couple questions maybe I find answers here
Annual income every month is 0.7-1 BTC, I'm using Coinbase and Xapo as my main wallets, sometimes local wallet provided by emoney.ge where I can sell my BTC to GEL and cashout. In this case everything is fine and I feel secured.
I was wondering what is the best way of storing big amounts of BTC ? I understand that in this case hardware wallet may be the best solution, or maybe I'm wrong ?
Significant amounts[1] should not be kept with online wallets. Hardware wallets[2] are specific devices designed to hold your private keys, like e.g. a trezor[3] or keepkey[4]. Other options would be to use general hardware (like an old laptop) with a software wallet, but to keep it offline at all time (after setup). The idea is to keep private keys on systems that can not be attacked from the internet or only with significantly advanced malware that is most likely not used for attacks on wallets (think stuxnet[5]).
And if I'm not what is the right way to maintain a hardware wallet ? I mean hardware side, where you need backups RAIDs and etc. Is there any ultimate guide or something ?
Most hardware wallets use a HD[6] scheme which means you have to do a single backup upon setup and thats it. Keep in mind that this backup must be kept secure as well.
[1] how much that exactly is depends on your personal circumstances.
[2]
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardware_wallet[3]
https://bitcointrezor.com/[4]
https://www.keepkey.com/[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet[6]
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deterministic_wallet
Very interesting thread. I've been using Bitcoins more often lately to conduct transactions and as somewhat of a newbie, I wasn't sure which was best. At first I tried Bitcoin Core but it was very slow and that made it unappealing for me. Then I went to Circle, which ended, and now I am at Coinbase. After doing some reading in this thread, I decided to migrate away from Coinbase and I'm looking at some hardware wallets to store the majority of my bitcoins. I think I am leaning toward the KeepKey right now, but they have seemingly went out of stock on Amazon. Do you think it's worth the wait or should I just get the Trezor instead?
Circle and Coinbase are definitely two services that everyone should avoid as they don't give you control over your private keys. If they don't have stock on Amazon , try to use order from their official website[1]. If I had to choose a hardware wallet personally , I'd go with Ledger Nano S[2] without thinking twice and It can also manage multiple coins. I made a thread about hardware wallets[3] , I suggest checking it out as It could help you choose.
[1]
https://www.keepkey.com/[2]
https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products/12-ledger-nano-s[3]
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1710607.0;topicseen
Do you recommend Electrum wallet for beginners and what are advantages and disadvantages of Electrum ?
even as a beginner you need to know a certain things such as how to secure your wallet, how certain things work such as fee,...but yes i recommend Electrum for a beginner.
advantage of Electrum is that it is a SPV wallet which means you don't have to download much data from internet (~30 MB) and syncing is easy and fast.
but it is a SPV wallet and has SPV disadvantages, such as not having the privacy of a full node (need to download 100+ GB and sync takes a long time) and also trusting a server to tell you about transaction status (not that this is happening but) the server can tell you a transaction is confirmed while it is not and risk double spend.
I read everything and I'm quite confused.. I'm a newbie and I'm looking for a wallet to start, I see that blockchain.info is quite good but it has fees to pay for each btc transfer.
No. Blockchain.info is not a good wallet. The use of web wallets is not recommended.
I would like to use an online wallet with possibly no fees.
There is no such thing. Bitcoin transactions require fees to proceed. Whilst you can send a TX without a fee or with a very low fee, it is highly likely that it will never confirm. Therefore, it makes no sense to even attempt that.
As a noob, I'm pushed to think that an online wallet is more safe than one installed in your pc, since your pc could get viruses in various way while an online wallet MUST grant you that your money are safe, it's their work. Probably I'm thinking like real moneys and banks: it's better to give your money to the bank instead of keeping them under the mattress since a burglar could break into your home and steal them. Why it is not the same with btc?
Wrong. A web wallet is not a bank. There is no gurantee that you will be compensated in the case that it gets hacked. AFAIK the biggest web wallet hack that has occurred was the one with Inputs.io.
Read:
https://www.wired.com/2013/11/inputs/Then, is it sufficient a commercial antivirus as Kaspersky to protect my btc? What if I need to format my pc?
Nothing can make your system 100% fool proof. Using Windows is a risk on its own. You should frequently backup your wallet to an external device.
Really thanks, so the best for beginners is Electrum?
If you don't want to download the whole blockchain, i.e. use a fully verifying wallet, then yes.
Could be a good idea storing it on a virtual machine? Maybe using Linux and using this VM only for that purpose.
Yes, but I don't see the point of doing this. If your host machine is compromised, your virtual machine will also be compromised.
what happens if the Electrum service disappears? Will it still be possible to recover the coins with the private key?
Yes.
You can test this: turn off your internet, and click Wallet > Private keys > Export.
1. Can a hardware wallet accept except of bitcoin altcoins as well,
So that in a single wallet to have multiple accounts of different coins, Monero, zcash, Bitcoin and more
Not unless the wallet explicitly says that they offer an altcoin wallet as well.
2. If you have created an account in an online wallet can this account be used from another wallet, a hardware wallet for example? And visa versa.
Or you have to have multiple wallet accounts and transfer your funds from one to another?
Depends on the used service. If they allow you to import/export private keys, then you can do that (e.g. from online to desktop). This is not common though.
But, my question is about Electrum BTC Wallet, to ask how may I use sweep to get BTC that were stolen? If this is possible with sweep, than why hasn't the wallet creator able to optimized this to be used as a safe-guard from scamming / steeling others BTC? I'm not a programmer, so I'm unable to understand how it does it.
You can't get back Bitcoin that was stolen and is already confirmed by using a wallet. It looks like you don't understand how Bitcoin works at all. Unless you are trying to ask something else, in which case I did not understand the question.
In my case, I have a bread wallet which has some mBTC but I would like to change it. In the new wallet will I use my first private key or create a new one from scratch?Will the mBTC be transferred?
Just create a new wallet and transfer the Bitcoins by yourself: make a payment of your entire balance to an address from your new wallet.
Then I installed Electrum. It created 12 words, 1 password and private keys of 10-15 addresses.
Is it possible to change those 12 words, 1 password and private keys regularly?
The only way to "change" those 12 words, is by creating a new wallet. It is possible, but - as long as you keep the 12 words secure - not needed.
Every time you use a new address to receive Bitcoins, your wallet uses a new private key. So there too: nothing to do.
You can change the password.
If yes, changing those 3 types of password-like things will be enough to keep Electrum wallet secure.
It's still a hot wallet, meaning it's used on a computer connected to the internet. If your computer is not secure, your wallet isn't secure either.
Would you say that Bitcoin Core works fine for a first wallet? I like it because of the security (that it's software installed on my computer, and that the password is not held by a third party). But, I wonder because I hear reports that it is slow or unreliable at times. This guide reaffirms that.
It is neither slow nor unreliable. Bitcoin Core requires you to download and validate the whole blockchain (~120 GB at the time of writing). The initial block download takes a long of time, especially if you have mediocre hardware. However, once you have syncronized it, you could use it as your daily wallet without problems assuming you open it once every or every second day (so it synchronizes the new parts of the chain).
With mobile wallets, are they backed up online?
I will be speaking about Mycelium when I say It's not the case but there is some centralization as they are the one controlling the full nodes the wallet is connected to, they don't take data like your private keys etc.. but your addresses should be known for them. I believe that people use it because It has more features and nice GUI otherwise you can check GreenBits or breadwallet.
With mobile wallets, are they backed up online?
I've used two: Mycelium and Bitcoin Wallet. Both don't keep online backups. I wouldn't recommend using a wallet that keeps backups online anyway.
Mycelium asks you to write down random words for its seed. Bitcoin Wallet lets you create a backup, which you can for instance email to yourself.
For both wallets, or even in general, I can recommend to
test the backup system at least once. Take an old smartphone, install the same wallet on it, and restore your backup. If it checks out, you should end up with two wallets that are exactly the same.
Hi, thanks for the info.
I'm new here so this might be a stupid question but, I've personally been using Coinomi on my Android as a mobile wallet.
Would you say this one is ok, or is it better to stick with what's been written up in the OP?
Coinomi wasn't listed because It's new compared to the others and less known. I however see no reason on why you shouldn't use it as from the look of it, Its open source, you control your private keys, easy to recover using BIP44 passphrase. So Its really up to you.
gives a possible reason:
This wallet relies on a centralized service by default. This means a third party must be trusted to not hide or simulate payments.
I'm not sure how serious this concern is though.
Hi guys, I'd like to a have a clarification about Electrum: what do I exactly need to restore a wallet, besides the seed? Because some people say I only need the seed, other people say also a backup and the private key...
A lot of options could work:
1.
The seed: the whole wallet will get regenerated from the 12 words seed including your addresses, private keys associated to them etc.
2.
The wallet file (.dat) + password: You simply place it on the AppData and Electrum should read it, you will need to know the password though and keep the file with you all the time.
3.
The private keys: You will have to export the private keys in plain text and keep them safely or print them.
I recommend the first method (seed). Taking a wallet .dat file with you the whole time could get it compromised or the USB where the file is stored could get corrupt, not to mention that someone could get his hands on them and try brute force the wallet. The private keys method is also not recommended, In bitcoin, Its suggested to use a new receiving address each time you receive funds, If you follow that, It will leave you with multiple private keys and that's a little bit chaotic. So go for the seed!
3. The private keys: You will have to export the private keys in plain text and keep them safely or print them.
Thanks a lot for the answer Omega! Now I have another question for each point
1) I chose the 2FA installation option, if I try to restore the wallet on a different computer besides the seed is it gonna ask me also for the 2FA the first time or not?
2) Wallet file (.dat) + password, is it basically like a copy-paste of the whole wallet? Where is this file located on a Mac?
3) I don't get one thing, what's exactly the private keys and where are they?
Thanks again!
1. The wallet will keep asking you for the 2FA unless you restore it using the seed IIRC.
2.
http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#where-is-my-wallet-file-located (Paths for Windows, Linux & Mac)
3. The private keys are clearly "private". Its what allows you to spend the funds from an address, each address is related to a private key. You should never give your private keys to anyone, private keys start with (5, L or K). Its somehow useless to take private key backup If your address is multi-signature (address start with 3 instead of 1) as you won't be controlling all private keys in that case so again, seed is the ideal.
Long time ago I used multibit and I had single address, new multibit has worse design (imo), any way to use old multibit and 1 address? Thanks!
Multibit Classic (the old one) is no longer being updated and anyone using it is having a lot of issues (most of them are with the slow transactions and low fees). I really wouldn't suggest using it.
If you only want to use one address then this can be done using Multibit HD, even If the wallet generate a new address each time, you could use one over and over. (just save it in a .txt file and keep giving it to people when you want to receive).
who guarantees, that wallets like Copay do not steal my bitcoins?
No one guarantees anything but I believe that Copay is open source for both the client and server side, they also claim that you are controlling your funds without having any third party interfering.
Is Exodus 100% open source or not?
Exodus.io is also not open source but this might change in the future. It was also explained by the developer:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4z5uw4/exodusio_multi_asset_wallet_100_trustworthy/ddi16a0/
Hello. I just want to ask about the Electrum wallet. There are three options for Windows to download: The standalone, windows installer and the portable version. What are the differences of these and which would be best to download?
The standalone: don't require any installation, data will probably be stored somewhere (AppData folder most likely).
Windows Installer: require an installation and the data will also be stored in the AppData folder.
Portable version: Its an executable that will store the data inside itself (the exe) so you can move it around.
ThomasV (the developer of Electrum) made a warning about Portable version at some point:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154451.0I personally wouldn't go with the Windows Installer or Standalone option.
Hi, i have just joined the forum so please forgive my ignorance, I'm trying to understand all the differences with the all the coins/tokens etc and wallets available, i've read quite a lot but some of the reading may already be "old news", I've decided Poloniex for my exchange, what is the consensus for which/what wallet i should have/use? All advice greatly received, thanks.
A real wallet is a wallet that give you control over your private keys, those keys are what allow you spend the bitcoins from your addresses. Poloniex or other exchanges don't give you those keys, they generate an address for you and they control the key. If they ever get hacked, decided to suspend withdrawal, or even try to steal your money, there will be nothing you can do.
So I suggest using a wallet like Electrum for PC, Mycelium for Android, there is nothing wrong on using an exchange but once you are finished trading, withdraw your coins from your Poloniex to your wallet (Electrum,Mycelium, or whatever)
I´m looking for wallet that allow multible payments at same time (i have app that pay once per week to users). I use now blockchain but it takes many days to get bitcoins to user.
What are solutions? 5 hours delay is ok but 24 hours not. Small fee is great thing also. I send usually 100k satoshi per user.
If you mean sending funds to multiple users in one TXID then Electrum allow doing so and It also has dynamic fees so you could change them as you wish to, low fees and fast transactions don't go along though so at least make sure you are using the recommended fees: bitcoinfees.21.co.
I´m looking for wallet that allow multible payments at same time (i have app that pay once per week to users). I use now blockchain but it takes many days to get bitcoins to user.
What are solutions? 5 hours delay is ok but 24 hours not. Small fee is great thing also. I send usually 100k satoshi per user.
If your user wants to use his 100k satoshi, he'll spend half of it on fees. It's better if you pay once per month, you'll pay less fees, and your users get to use a larger share of their earnings.
Bitcoin fees are so high now that 50k satoshi (0.0005
BTC) is almost more or less considered dust.
So, before I found this blog, I created some wallets at bitaddress.org. I have two questions. First, I unplugged my network cable from the internet before generating paper wallets. Is that considered offline and a safe method for paper? Second, there were several options from "single wallet" to "paper wallet" to "brain wallet", etc. there is no explanation of the differences. How do I find that out? BTW, thank you for your post, great info.
You did good by unplugging your network cable but It would've been better If you ran Ubuntu on LiveCD + download the source code of Bitaddress and running it locally (I assume you did that last part) as well.
The single wallet is simply the private key + address generated, where paper wallet is the same thing as single wallet but with a design (not printed as plaintext) + ability to encrypt private keys+ generate multiple wallets and print them as once. A brainwallet refers to the concept of storing Bitcoins in one's own mind by memorizing a mnemonic recovery seed. (from Bitcoin wiki)
Some wallet experienced people here? What is the best wallet for bitcoin, just want to store some coins (so easy to use)? Is there some kind of wallet where you can store and send several coins from, so you don't have 10 different wallets to keeping update? Thanks in advance!
Electrum (bitcoin only) is the way to go If you want have full control of your wallet. Multi coin wallets like Jaxx and Exodus are also good but they are not open source, so It's up to you If you want to use them or not.
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