Safest place to store coins? please help a noob

[movellan]

paper wallet seems to much out of my league (idk what it even is lol)

im thinking blockchain wallet?

please help!

Good info here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160634.0

Go to bitaddress.org and use the save page option on your browser to save the page on your computer. Close your internet connection. Scan machine using updated anti-virus/malware of whatever type you use. Now you can bring up the saved Bitaddress page and create and print paper wallets on a clean machine with no outside connection. Remember the paper wallets you create are only a piece of paper until you send Bitcoin to them and only you have the private key on your printed paper to retrieve your bitcoin from the wallet.

[1714945389]

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[1714945389]

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[silzero]

Every solution carries a risk. Based on your personal situation, its up to you to decide which risk is acceptable.
Cold storage exposes itself to environmental risks such as Hard Disk failure, physical theft, fire etc. But there are more in your control you'll have no one else to blame.
Depending on how much you trust the expertise [=risk] at your online wallet host, two factor authentication is 'safer' than usual methods.

-SZ

[Rainmaker25]

If you download the client to your desktop do you need to encrypt it as well?

[Dabs]

If you encrypt your wallet.dat using the bitcoin-qt program, malware will have a hard time getting to your coins, until the day you use them. At which point, malware could possibly intercept your password as you type it, decrypt the wallet, and send all your coins to somewhere. (Or send your password and the wallet.dat file to somewhere.)