How can I safely store a paper wallet?

[bitbollo]

First of all paper should be protected in all possible way withA good way for protecting paper from bacteria and other external infection requires just some gas for zippo.
Liquid when absorbe by paper would create a tiny player that protect the paper.
However made some prints and try since rarely some liquid ink could leave stains on paper.

[ethex]

First of all paper should be protected in all possible way withA good way for protecting paper from bacteria and other external infection requires just some gas for zippo.
Liquid when absorbe by paper would create a tiny player that protect the paper.
However made some prints and try since rarely some liquid ink could leave stains on paper.

water-based ink penetrates paper and is difficult to remove once dried. using a gas from a Zippo lighter or other?

[m2017]

Hi guys, I am having some questions.

For paper wallets it keep your keys offline, which protects against online hacking, but their physical nature makes them vulnerable to damage, loss, or theft? If the paper is lost or destroyed, your Bitcoin is also gone forever right.

What happens if my paper wallet gets wet, burned, or the ink fades?

How do I securely create and print a paper wallet without risking my private keys being stolen?

1. To avoid burning paper wallet, make several backups.
2. If you use paper as a storage medium, it is better to use a pencil instead of a pen to write the text, in order to preserve the readability of the text.
3. Laminate the paper to partially protect this storage medium from damage.
4. It is better to use a metal plate (stainless steel is recommended) instead of paper.
5. Use text encryption in case of theft and "paper wallet" falling into the hands of strangers.

[taufik123]

Regarding this stainless steel capsule, I think the capsules sailors use to store medicine, for example, could work, as some are made of stainless steel and, above all, waterproof. They don't cost much. However, in the event of a fire, I suspect the paper inside will burn, unless the capsule is buried deep in a garden. Unless, perhaps, you place several capsules inside each other like Russian dolls (matryoshka).

But what would be interesting to check first and foremost is how you created your wallet in the first place. Imagine if your wallet was emptied after several years because you created it online on a dubious website?

https://talkimg.com/images/2025/05/28/UXnG5H.jpeg

The time capsule storage modem as I gave an example is indeed used to store in the ground or places where there may not be a strong enough fire,
because the fire will burn everything but with solid and strong material protection it may still survive.
this is only optional and there are some other products that can be used and are stronger and maybe as you mentioned in the image.

And of course creating an initial wallet that uses the Website online will have more risks because some are not trusted.
But creating your own from a trusted wallet like Electrum and then recording it elsewhere might be safer.

-snip-
3 - Hardware wallets: HWs (mainly open source and air-gapped) combine the best of both worlds: the security of a paper wallet and the convenience and ease of a software wallet.

I intend to open a topic soon to address these questions in more detail.

I use safepal and it is still comfortable until now, Without any connection and only using Air-gapped which operates completely offline.
These wallets isolate devices that store private keys from any external network, including the internet.

[Peanutswar]

I consider having a duplicate copies is a must and not limited into three copies at least and by that you can distribute into different places that you are the only one who knows there it is but again make sure that you still remember that places sometimes through out the weeks or months people forget where and what they did and where we put those seed phrase. Currently I'm trying to consider the use of the metal plates because of the possibility of normal occurrence of course which is paper is one of the vulnerable.

[satscraper]

Hi guys, I am having some questions.

For paper wallets it keep your keys offline, which protects against online hacking, but their physical nature makes them vulnerable to damage, loss, or theft? If the paper is lost or destroyed, your Bitcoin is also gone forever right.

What happens if my paper wallet gets wet, burned, or the ink fades?

How do I securely create and print a paper wallet without risking my private keys being stolen?

You might want to consider using the coin-flipping method ^{which is pretty simple yet effective way to ensure true randomness} to generate BIP 39 SEED phrase for your wallet. Stamping SEED onto steel washers would be a great idea as they're far more durable than paper and resistant to fire, water, and general wear. There’s the great thread on the forum filled with brilliant ideas and DIY tips on how to choose or make the right tools for stamping washers. If you're curious about how to generate SEED phrase using the coin-flip method, this paperdoes the great job explaining the whole process ^{or google to find other relevant materials}.

[Grace333]

Paper wallets are a thing of the past. Sure, some hardcore people still use them, but with the abundance of hardware wallets and choices these days, they're almost never an option people consider.
Having said that, if you're thinking of those fancy envelope like wallets that fold and have a QR code, that's just a visual design thing.

Paper wallet can be any wallet you create, you just save your 12/24 words on a paper, print it out (or write it out by hand), and save it in a dark dry place, like a safe.

Some people engrave these words on a metal sheet, that way it's harder to burn or be damaged in a flood

You're correct,  the use of paper is an old offline storage medium though my instincts tells me that people still make use of this storage medium. I have also previously recommended that people make use of a water and fire proof safe or vault to store the written seed phrase, but now it's best to make use of stainless materials by cresting the words on them and save for a long time. Stainless barely corrode so it would be a good storage medium.  However that's for analog storage medium, for digital it's best you make use of a hardware wallet and an airgapped device.

[DYING_S0UL]

First of all you don't. Please don't rely on papers if you can't take enough precaution measures to protect it from external damage. As already been suggested by others use those steel tools. It's far more better with cold hot pressure any kind of situations. My personal fav is this one: Crypto Steel. But if you must use a paper to store your wallet then make sure to make as much copies as possible. It would slim out your chances of loosing the wallet.

[Nysusandr]

What happens if my paper wallet gets wet, burned, or the ink fades?

How do I securely create and print a paper wallet without risking my private keys being stolen?

print and laminate your paper as they do on documents

[ethex]

Hi guys, I am having some questions.

For paper wallets it keep your keys offline, which protects against online hacking, but their physical nature makes them vulnerable to damage, loss, or theft? If the paper is lost or destroyed, your Bitcoin is also gone forever right.

What happens if my paper wallet gets wet, burned, or the ink fades?

How do I securely create and print a paper wallet without risking my private keys being stolen?

1. To avoid burning paper wallet, make several backups.
2. If you use paper as a storage medium, it is better to use a pencil instead of a pen to write the text, in order to preserve the readability of the text.
3. Laminate the paper to partially protect this storage medium from damage.
4. It is better to use a metal plate (stainless steel is recommended) instead of paper.
5. Use text encryption in case of theft and "paper wallet" falling into the hands of strangers.

If I follow all these steps, is my paper wallet completely safe, or is there still some risk I should know about?

[notocactus]

If I follow all these steps, is my paper wallet completely safe, or is there still some risk I should know about?

There are always a lot of risk factors so you can not avoid them or control them completely. By having proper and careful practice, you are only reducing risk but remember that you won't be able to eliminate them entirely.

So my answer is you can not be sure about risk-free with any wallet backup methods. You can see that your backup must be safe (no damages so that it won't become unusable) but when you make multiple backups, you have to save it in different places. It raises risk of one of your backup is accessed by someone else and your Bitcoin wallet will be recovered from that backup, then that person can steal your bitcoin.

To sum up, make multiple backups with some different backup methods, and store all your backups safely.

[Hamza2424]

One solution to the problems you mentioned is to make multiple copies and store them in different safe places.

To solve the problem of getting wet and fading, you can laminate the papers, which is a guarantee of solving most of these problems.

To solve the problem of getting burned in a fire, you can store your papers in a fireproof box. I think if you take these steps, you can get rid of the problem of getting burned, getting wet or fading.

For extra security, you can store a copy of your wallet's private key in a bank's safety deposit box. This way, you can reduce the chances of theft or robbery.

Or we can simple prefer the method of fillippone - mentioned just a post above of yours. I really think laminating the paper and storing it for long term is a best practice because we can still lose it and it is still vulnerable to water and fire both, although storing multiple papers with different phrase's words printed on more than one pages is a good idea.

But we should not use them at all, paper wallet are old now but if we still want to use, then we definitely want to follow a easy and simple method of securing them, I would have encrypted it first so no one could use it, I would have a dedicated, water and fire proof safe from this, then I might not even use any other material than paper and won't even laminate it.

[khaled0111]

I can see that the above members gave you some great suggestions on how to preserve your paper wallet and keep it safe, which was the second part of your question. So there isn’t really much to add to what has already been suggested.

Regarding the first part of your question which is how to create the wallet, then you need to use a reputable wallet app or script to generate the wallet seed and you must run it on a completely air-gapped device (that has never been and will never be online). Also, make sure to write the seed/private key manually instead of using a printer.

[Royal Cap]

Hi guys, I am having some questions.

For paper wallets it keep your keys offline, which protects against online hacking, but their physical nature makes them vulnerable to damage, loss, or theft? If the paper is lost or destroyed, your Bitcoin is also gone forever right.

What happens if my paper wallet gets wet, burned, or the ink fades?

How do I securely create and print a paper wallet without risking my private keys being stolen?

In my small mind, if you want to keep your seed faces safely on paper, then you should definitely laminate it after writing it on paper. Because it is more likely to get wet in water than to catch fire. And in my opinion, it is important to keep a backup of your seed face in several places. Because accidents  come unexpectedly. So in my opinion, if you save it on an offline laptop or mobile at home and also save it on paper, then it is better.

[taufik123]

In my small mind, if you want to keep your seed faces safely on paper, then you should definitely laminate it after writing it on paper. Because it is more likely to get wet in water than to catch fire. And in my opinion, it is important to keep a backup of your seed face in several places. Because accidents  come unexpectedly. So in my opinion, if you save it on an offline laptop or mobile at home and also save it on paper, then it is better.

Lamination is indeed a good first step to secure the paper so that it does not get damaged easily and fade,
but of course this is only the initial protection that will not even always be reliable when some other damage can occur such as burning or some other more extreme thing.

Having a lot of backup in one place should also think about how well the paper holds.
As mentioned above and I also said, moving the storage to a steel plate will be better because it is more resistant to all kinds of damage,
but you will certainly need to spend more to buy a steel plate, or you can make your own with a steel plate ring and print a phrase on each part of the steel plate ring.

Spending a little money is better than keeping all the backups in the same condition, but in the end they are damaged and unreadable.