Best wallet for cold storage

[notlist3d]

Hi,
I'm going to save some Bitcoins for the future. Which is the safest way to store them?
I was thinking about a wallet on a usb flash drive. Which wallet should I choose?

Thank you

Take a strip of metal and carve your (unencrypted) private key into it and bury it somewhere.
You can also take a piece of polished granite to carve your private key, this way it will not be detectable by a metal detector.

If your just needing to hide from others something such as a in the wall compartment might work nicely: http://www.amazon.com/Meridian-Point-Hidden-Wall-Outlet/dp/B0082CRN2Q/

It will not protect you from fire though.  So I suggest keeping copy of paper wallet in bank box.

[findftp]

Hi,
I'm going to save some Bitcoins for the future. Which is the safest way to store them?
I was thinking about a wallet on a usb flash drive. Which wallet should I choose?

Thank you

Take a strip of metal and carve your (unencrypted) private key into it and bury it somewhere.
You can also take a piece of polished granite to carve your private key, this way it will not be detectable by a metal detector.

If your just needing to hide from others something such as a in the wall compartment might work nicely: http://www.amazon.com/Meridian-Point-Hidden-Wall-Outlet/dp/B0082CRN2Q/

It will not protect you from fire though.  So I suggest keeping copy of paper wallet in bank box.

Why would you put it in a bank box.
Why would you give the access to your private information to someone else?
Why not just print it out, put it in a plastic bag and box and bury it in your garden?


Bitcoin is lost when we keep giving our complete trust to the banksters and their lockers...

[Ingatqhvq]

bitcoin core is the best choice if you want to cold storage your coins.
                                                                                       

[findftp]

bitcoin core is the best choice if you want to cold storage your coins.
                                                                                       

Tell me how.
Afaik it's a hot wallet

[TinEye]

bitcoin core is the best choice if you want to cold storage your coins.
                                                                                       

Tell me how.
Afaik it's a hot wallet

because it's the most secure, the recent invalid blocks, done by mining prove this, i'm talking about the last version, and it can be used with a cold storage on a safe machine, i don't see a problem in running a machine dedicated to the client only without surfing the web, downloading random exe and clicking on suspicious links

yuu don't agree on this?

[Ingatqhvq]

bitcoin core is the best choice if you want to cold storage your coins.
                                                                                       

Tell me how.
Afaik it's a hot wallet

If you never ever connect it to the internet, then it is a cold wallet.
And it the most secure wallet, you don't need afraid any pseudo random wallet.

[n2004al]

The best wallet, according to me, is a wallet out of you computer. If not possible this I like to much coinbase. It's safe and credible. Millions of people use it. Some people like to store their bitcoins in their computer through the bitcoin core. This option is good only if you can store the dat file in a usb (better in two) in order to prevent los of bitcoins with the damage of the computer. And there are to may ways that the computer be damaged or crashed.

[findftp]

bitcoin core is the best choice if you want to cold storage your coins.
                                                                                        

Tell me how.
Afaik it's a hot wallet

If you never ever connect it to the internet, then it is a cold wallet.
And it the most secure wallet, you don't need afraid any pseudo random wallet.

There is no problem in creating a random number.
Just take a dice and throw it 100 times to create a base6 number.

Voila, supersecure private key.
Stamp it in metal or carve it into stone.
Bury, wait, dig it up and retire.

[Herbert2020]

Hi,
I'm going to save some Bitcoins for the future. Which is the safest way to store them?
I was thinking about a wallet on a usb flash drive. Which wallet should I choose?

Thank you

i am using electrum and i find it pretty easy to set up and use , and most importantly for me the good point is that i don't have to download the whole blockchain.
because i don't exactly have the best internet connection nor enough HDD.

[boopy265420]

I will suggest for cold storage desktop client of Bitcoin Core with encryption of at least 15 letters password.I am doing this way my Bitcoins for myself and is working fine and safe for me till now.P.S you need to install some good antivirus on your machine to be safe from different types of viruses.

[findftp]

I will suggest for cold storage desktop client of Bitcoin Core with encryption of at least 15 letters password.I am doing this way my Bitcoins for myself and is working fine and safe for me till now.P.S you need to install some good antivirus on your machine to be safe from different types of viruses.

And don't forget to just install any anti virus and click and accept everything without reading.
Oh, but you could also just install linux.

[Amitabh S]

Memorize 15-20 random words from a large dictionary. Take up to a week to memorize them, ensuring that you can recollect them even if someone woke you in the middle of the night.

Use a well known hash function to converts those words to a (sequence of) large integer(s). This is (are) your private key(s). This needs to be done carefully as the wrong way could render your system insecure. I would suggest

seed = SHA256(word1 || SHA256(word2) || SHA256(word3)... ) as the starting seed
and then use

SHA256(seed || i) to get the ith private key.

You have a (decently) unbreakable wallet now. Of course you need some coding skills to do this.

[Mickeyb]

The thing I don't like about Trezor is that it isn't mobile. I need a laptop or desktop to use it...not very good for on the road transacting. But if you use it for your vault, I guess it's a great option.

Install mycelium and you will have a great protection on the go with the Trezor! This is the best option for me by far!

[talkbitcoin]

i use electrum as my wallet and i am happy with it so far. i use if on an offline computer that i will never connect it to network.

[LiteCoinGuy]

Hi,
I'm going to save some Bitcoins for the future. Which is the safest way to store them?
I was thinking about a wallet on a usb flash drive. Which wallet should I choose?

Thank you

you can take a look here (hardware wallets):

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=899253.0

[Chris_Sabian]

Bitcoin core installed on a offline linux computer.  Since you are storing coins long term, don't bother downloading the blockchain.  You also should back-up the wallet.dat file and encrypt it on several storage devices.

[harrymmmm]

The thing I don't like about Trezor is that it isn't mobile. I need a laptop or desktop to use it...not very good for on the road transacting. But if you use it for your vault, I guess it's a great option.

I installed Mycelium wallet on my mobile devices and it has the feature of spending from cold wallets and Trezor is integrated too so you are ready to go. It's an HD wallet for Android.

Yup.
You do need a special usb 'on-the-go' cable to do it this way tho. They're easy to find online.

[pooya87]

Hi,
I'm going to save some Bitcoins for the future. Which is the safest way to store them?
I was thinking about a wallet on a usb flash drive. Which wallet should I choose?

Thank you

i am currently using Electrum on my USB drive with linux live which i keep offline at all times.
it is not that hard to make and it is easy to use in order to spend from.

Bitcoin core installed on a offline linux computer.  Since you are storing coins long term, don't bother downloading the blockchain.  You also should back-up the wallet.dat file and encrypt it on several storage devices.

there are better and easier options. especially if you want to spend them without having to import the private keys. like electrum that i mentioned or even Armory.
or
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet#Creation_of_a_paper_wallet
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Cold_storage

[jonald_fyookball]

Memorize 15-20 random words from a large dictionary. Take up to a week to memorize them, ensuring that you can recollect them even if someone woke you in the middle of the night.

Use a well known hash function to converts those words to a (sequence of) large integer(s). This is (are) your private key(s). This needs to be done carefully as the wrong way could render your system insecure. I would suggest

seed = SHA256(word1 || SHA256(word2) || SHA256(word3)... ) as the starting seed
and then use

SHA256(seed || i) to get the ith private key.

You have a (decently) unbreakable wallet now. Of course you need some coding skills to do this.

....yeah that works.  or you could just use electrum.

[LiteCoinGuy]

bitcoin core is the best choice if you want to cold storage your coins.
                                                                                        

Tell me how.
Afaik it's a hot wallet

If you never ever connect it to the internet, then it is a cold wallet.
And it the most secure wallet, you don't need afraid any pseudo random wallet.

Cold storage in the context of Bitcoin refers to keeping a reserve of Bitcoins offline.

For example, a Bitcoin exchange typically offers an instant withdrawal feature, and might be a steward over hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins. To minimize the possibility that an intruder could steal the entire reserve in a security breach, the operator of the website follows a best practice by keeping the majority of the reserve in cold storage, or in other words, not present on the web server or any other computer. The only amount kept on the server is the amount needed to cover anticipated withdrawals.

Methods of cold storage include keeping bitcoins:

    On a USB drive or other data storage medium in a safe place (e.g. safe deposit box, safe)
    On a paper wallet
    On a bearer item such as a physical bitcoin.
    Online, but on encrypted media where the encryption key is offline.
    Use a offline Bitcoin Hardware wallet


Deep cold storage refers to keeping a reserve of Bitcoins offline, using a method that makes retrieving coins from storage significantly more difficult than sending them there. This could be done for safety's sake, such as to prevent theft or robbery.

Because Bitcoins can be sent to a wallet by anyone knowing the wallet address, it is trivial to put a wallet in cold storage but to keep a copy of the addresses needed to send funds to it.

A simple example of deep cold storage is opening a safe deposit box and putting a USB stick containing an encrypted wallet file in it. The public (sending) addresses can be used any time to send additional bitcoins to the wallet, but spending the bitcoins would require physical access to the box (in addition to knowledge of the encryption password).