The official BitcoinPaperWallet.com thread -- updates and news.

[canton]

First of all, this is my favorite paper wallet I've seen by far. It has had a lot of thought put into it, and it shows. They look so good I am considering buying a color laser printer so that I can print these in color!

... A few suggestions for the back

Hi JCW,

Thanks very much for the kind feedback. And especially for identifying yet another typo on the back. Oops. I think your suggestion about having the back refer to the website for more comprehensive/up-to-date wallet swiping instructions is an excellent one.

Ultimately for the back of the wallet I'd like to make the back something that's customized on-the-fly during print-time, so that when you print the wallet  you can choose:

* the language -- someone already sent me a portuguese translation...
* whether to include instructions at all (versus for example ample space to write a nice note if the wallet is a gift)

PS: If you decide not to buy a laser printer, there are some ways you can make your inkjet-printed wallets more water-resistant. I'll be posting a report on this soon as I'm in the process of testing a bunch of different products/solutions.

[canton]

Have you considered selling professionally printed wallets? Albeit everyone would have to trust you don't record the public keys. It'd still be nice. All I have is an inkjet, and no idea where I can possibly find a laser printer.

Funny you should ask! A related project selling professional printed paper wallets just launched at http://safepaperwallet.com . It's not a folding / tamper-evident design, and you still have to print out your own codes onto the blank spaces on the wallet, but these promise to be super high quality.

Right now I wouldn't invest much effort/trust in having anyone professionally print wallets *with* keys for you. There's a protocol in progress called "BIP38" which will make it possible for you to choose a password before having a wallet printed, which will circumvent the trust issue altogether. I haven't implemented BIP38 myself yet, but it looks very promising.

[aantonop]

Canton,

Very kind of you to drop a mention of the Safe Paper Wallet.

Today I upgraded the initial order, from 4000 to 8000 wallets, from regular perforation to micro-perf and from digital offset to 4-color linotype press.

The paper is a textile-weave texture, on 250gsm weight heavy paper which is acid-free and archival quality to last a lifetime, even on display and under light (which degrades regular paper and inks).

I will have samples at the conference.

The next print run will include your design as I branch out to more designs (and the MB Messer design too).

If the current rate of orders continues for a few days, I will be running break-even by end of week and ordering the next print run for 20,000 wallets.

Thank you for the mention and all your incredible work on this and other projects!

[charleshoskinson]

Canton,

Very kind of you to drop a mention of the Safe Paper Wallet.

Today I upgraded the initial order, from 4000 to 8000 wallets, from regular perforation to micro-perf and from digital offset to 4-color linotype press.

The paper is a textile-weave texture, on 250gsm weight heavy paper which is acid-free and archival quality to last a lifetime, even on display and under light (which degrades regular paper and inks).

I will have samples at the conference.

The next print run will include your design as I branch out to more designs (and the MB Messer design too).

If the current rate of orders continues for a few days, I will be running break-even by end of week and ordering the next print run for 20,000 wallets.

Thank you for the mention and all your incredible work on this and other projects!

I didn't know you had entered the wallet business. I'll update our course to mention the safe paper wallet in the paper wallet lecture.

[dhenson]

We're lucky to have people like Canton in our community.  I've used both his paper wallet site, and ordered stickers (which came amazingly fast).

Thank you Canton, you are an amazing addition to the bitcoin community!

[canton]

We're lucky to have people like Canton in our community.  I've used both his paper wallet site, and ordered stickers (which came amazingly fast). Thank you Canton, you are an amazing addition to the bitcoin community!

Thanks very much for the kind words, dhenson. Working on these designs combines a lot of my passions (cryptopunk, print design, web design, ecommerce, and STICKERS I love stickers) so it's nice to hear when this work is proving useful to other folks as well.

[exor674]

PS: If you decide not to buy a laser printer, there are some ways you can make your inkjet-printed wallets more water-resistant. I'll be posting a report on this soon as I'm in the process of testing a bunch of different products/solutions.

I'm slightly curious how well it'd work to do a three-pass print and not a two-pass. ( which makes this even closer to the other project, but... )

Print the front and back in color without the QR codes on some printer [ color laserjet, color inkjet? I wonder how it'd work if those ink could bleed when wet when the QR code couldn't? ], and then print the QR codes on a cheaper black and white laser printer.

This would probably also work for your "super paranoid" option, without having to buy a nice color laserjet and only use it for wallets.

[ However, I imagine the pain this would be to align and calibrate across two different printers ]

[canton]

[ However, I imagine the pain this would be to align and calibrate across two different printers ]

This. Ow ow ow ow. Yes.

In any case, Aantonop's safe paper wallet project is definitely geared towards what you're describing here -- he'll ship you professionally printed designs (offset printing) and then you just laserprint on the QR codes and alphanum keys in B&W.

[aantonop]

[...] he'll ship you professionally printed designs (offset printing) and then you just laserprint on the QR codes and alphanum keys in B&W.

I have upgraded the printing order, it will now be a full linotype press print, not digital offset, which will result in much much higher quality with brilliant color and durability of color. I received an incredible rush of pre-orders at the discounted price, which gave me confidence that I will sell all of them, so I upgraded all the parameters of the print production:

- Full lino press
- Micro-perforations instead of regular perforations - 72 cuts per inch, makes a completely smooth edge.
- A beautiful "Crown" brand, 80# weight, textile-weave textured white paper.
- Double volume: 2000 sheets (8000 wallets), instead of 1000

[canton]

After a long search I finally found a perfectly transparent Ziplock bag that fits my design properly. This should hugely improve the life expectancy of wallets, especially when printed using inkjets. I'm expecting that these will not only mitigate water damage but also may reduce air-degredation (a problem for ink printers like HP that use heat activated instead of piezo heads.)



I'll probably have to trim about 1mm off of the height of my design to make it easier to load these baggies, but I think it's worth it since this is a more convenient protection compared to buying polyester paper or spray-on preservatives. I'll be adding these to the https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com site in a week or so for a nominal add-on fee.

[jcw]

Awesome. I'll be ordering some of these along with some stickers as soon as they're ready. How many wallets per bag would you recommend, is it 1 per?

Also I am very interested in the combo design you posted earlier. The use case for me is the left hand side (private key encrypted with a passphrase) could be kept in my actual wallet or somewhere reasonably accessible and the tear away part (with the plain text private key) would go in a zip lock bag in a secure place (e.g. a safety deposit box). Is that idea something that is still in the works?

[canton]

Also I am very interested in the combo design you posted earlier..Is that idea something that is still in the works?

Definitely in the works though there are some other items ahead of that in the queue, e.g. language translations, "two-up" design to save paper when printing. Also I need to get my head around BIP38 and see how the bitaddress.org implementation of BIP38 is progressing. (I think Pointbiz/bitaddress.org might only have decrypting right now, not encrypting?)

[joffrey]

Hi canton,

Just to let you know I used Bitcoinpaperwallet to offer bitcoins to a friend, for his birthday. It's fantastic, very easy to use, and the design of the wallet is really gorgeous. Sadly, I printed it in black and white (on a laser printer), but it was still really cool and he loved my gift.

Mind if I suggest you only one thing? To be able to use our own public addresses/private keys. I guess it wouldn't be very secure, but since it was a gift, I thought it could be funny if the public address was a vanity one that I generated before. Thus, I used your great tool but had to generate the QR codes somewhere else, and replace them along with the keys using the Chrome Inspector.

I don't know if you'd like to implement a feature like that, but hey, maybe you'll consider it.
Thanks!

[QuantumQrack]

After a long search I finally found a perfectly transparent Ziplock bag that fits my design properly. This should hugely improve the life expectancy of wallets, especially when printed using inkjets. I'm expecting that these will not only mitigate water damage but also may reduce air-degredation (a problem for ink printers like HP that use heat activated instead of piezo heads.)



I'll probably have to trim about 1mm off of the height of my design to make it easier to load these baggies, but I think it's worth it since this is a more convenient protection compared to buying polyester paper or spray-on preservatives. I'll be adding these to the https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com site in a week or so for a nominal add-on fee.

What paper are you using? Just regular inkjet paper?  I am using this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004PX7Z3S/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teslin_(material)

[jcw]

You're using Teslin with the tri-fold design? How many mm thick is that product, does it fold OK?

[QuantumQrack]

You're using Teslin with the tri-fold design? How many mm thick is that product, does it fold OK?

Folds easily.  Its 10 mil thick. Strong.

75 mil                                                                 Nickel

60 mil                                                                 Penny

50 mil                                                                 Dime

10 mil                                                                 Business card

6 mil                                                      white trash bag used in kitchens

4 mil                                                             standard piece of paper

[jcw]

Cool, I think I'll try that out, thanks!

[StarfishPrime]

Canton: Thanks for all the work you've done optimising this paper wallet solution. It rocks.

Just printed a few tests using Teslin IJ (10 mil). Folds great, feel is similar to Australian etc. polymer notes.

Teslin IJ is synthetic and completely waterproof, soaked it in water for a few hours after printing on a standard HP inkjet just to see... Neither the material nor the printing was affected in the least. Can highly recommend.

[413j0]

PS: If you decide not to buy a laser printer, there are some ways you can make your inkjet-printed wallets more water-resistant. I'll be posting a report on this soon as I'm in the process of testing a bunch of different products/solutions.

I'm slightly curious how well it'd work to do a three-pass print and not a two-pass. ( which makes this even closer to the other project, but... )

Print the front and back in color without the QR codes on some printer [ color laserjet, color inkjet? I wonder how it'd work if those ink could bleed when wet when the QR code couldn't? ], and then print the QR codes on a cheaper black and white laser printer.

This would probably also work for your "super paranoid" option, without having to buy a nice color laserjet and only use it for wallets.

[ However, I imagine the pain this would be to align and calibrate across two different printers ]

i would be wary of 3pass printing on a paranoid level, because a laser (like on the previos tests) with the correct frecuency coud candle the qr from 1 ink while the obscuring pattern having a different pigment could be transparent to that particular frecuency

[413j0]

have you tried alumajet (http://www.horizonsisg.com/alumajet.html) i have printed in it and it looks great, and it is prety durable. Besides it would help making the wallets look valuable