I want to invest some more to Bitcoin for longer term. Till now I always used exchanges and blockchain.info to store small amounts. I am worried about running Electrum or any cold storage key generators, because of chance my Windows PC is infected. What are my options? I am thinking if it would be possible to run some Linux distribution with GUI from USB stick, install Electrum wallet on this OS to generate keys and seed words and backing everything up until needed.
options:
- spend some money and buy a hardware wallet and store your funds there
- learn more about
cold storage and choose one of the options that suits your need.
- if you want it to be your long term storage then use paper wallet. use something like bitaddress, make a copy and run it offline on a clean computer and generate a key pair and print it on a paper, etch on a metal,...
- if you want a more dynamic wallet where you can still spend then use the Linux on a USB with Electrum on it. make sure you disable its network, encrypt the home folder (you need to install on USB not run live), disable guest login, encrypt Electrum wallet file, and make backups on paper from your seed and passwords.
- you can also always run a live linux from a DVD, generate a new wallet, write down the seed and turn it off. each time you want to use your wallet you will have to recover your wallet from seed, spend and turn off! it is not as safe but it is one way to do it.
