HOWTO: create a 100% secure wallet

[2GOOD]

Very usefull information. Thank You

[1714945163]

1714945163

[1714945163]

1714945163

[JoeBlack123]

Will give it a try. Thank you.

[Annie1989]

Thanks for this, with all this confusing stuff it makes me feel safer knowing i am doing things right.

[Haole]

If you're on a Mac and not a software engineer, forget about creating a bootable USB drive using Ubuntu.

Apparently, the concensus and my personal experience is, it doesn't work.

How about someone update this tutorial to save more newbies from spending hours and hours pointlessly trying to create a bootable Ubuntu USB drive on OS X?  Beuller... Beuller...

[BTCHybrid]

Thank you ! This helped al ot 

[WH401]

Thanks for the information 

[Rudd-O]

Warning: many laser printers save printouts in digital form to an internal hard disk.

You might want to consider this when printing a paper wallet.

[templeofboom]

These types of newbie guides are just what the doctor ordered.  Thanks for making it interesting/fun as well

[bitsnpieces]

+1

[cr0wX]

really good guide, i think i will revert to this sometimes

[thewhitedragon]

Warning: many laser printers save printouts in digital form to an internal hard disk.

You might want to consider this when printing a paper wallet.

Paper and pencil to create a transitional wallet and then copy to something more permanent later on? I think it'd be cool to etch your private key into multiple objects, store them in different secure locations, and keep the last object(the one that holds the last piece of the key) close to you at all times. Just don't forget where you stored the different pieces of the key.

[Red Emerald]

If you're on a Mac and not a software engineer, forget about creating a bootable USB drive using Ubuntu.

Apparently, the concensus and my personal experience is, it doesn't work.

How about someone update this tutorial to save more newbies from spending hours and hours pointlessly trying to create a bootable Ubuntu USB drive on OS X?  Beuller... Beuller...

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/create-a-usb-stick-on-mac-osx

[moonpie]

I appreciate your walk-through on creating a secure wallet.  Do you have an opinion on a brain wallet?

[nobbynobbynoob]

I appreciate your walk-through on creating a secure wallet.  Do you have an opinion on a brain wallet?

I do: brainwallets are a mindblowingly brilliant concept in theory, but risky in practice. Amnesia and death become very expensive with pure brainwallets. That said, the deterministic wallet concept has a lot going for it. You can always store the root passphrase securely without it existing solely in the brain.

[Kazimir]

Amnesia and death become very expensive with pure brainwallets.

Sure, but so are password protected (i.e. encrypted) regular wallets. And let's face it, having a non-encrypted wallet is just really, really stupid.

I have already backed up my encrypted wallet at several places, both online and offline. I may be setting up something that automatically emails some people close to me (friends, family) when I show no sign of life for over three months or so. Using a Shamir's Secret Sharing approach, each person will receive a chunk, and when at least 4 people combine their chunk, they can recover the actual wallet password. I'll be including more than 4 people in the list, the redundancy is just in case I die in a car accident together with some of the people on the list. The minimum of 4 is to ensure nobody can run off with my coins individually.

[Haole]

If you're on a Mac and not a software engineer, forget about creating a bootable USB drive using Ubuntu.

Apparently, the concensus and my personal experience is, it doesn't work.

How about someone update this tutorial to save more newbies from spending hours and hours pointlessly trying to create a bootable Ubuntu USB drive on OS X?  Beuller... Beuller...

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/create-a-usb-stick-on-mac-osx

Yes, thanks, these are the very instruction I followed numerous times and it does not work, as is the case for quite a few others apparently.  One person on another thread I started on this "problem" suggested using this but I'm a little leary after reading some comments that people that have tried it on some computers couldn't boot into any OS (including the one on their hard drive) after installing it. 

The instructions on Ubuntu's site don't work, period.  all I ended-up with was a converted Ubuntu image on my USB drive that my MBP couldn't recognize at all.

Hence my comment you quoted in the first place.

I'd love to be able to do this but I'm not about to play Doctor Software Frankenstein with my only computer just to be able to boot into Linux from a USB drive.

I might try to burn it to DVD this weekend and see if that makes any difference but there are obviously omissions and inadequacies with this process on at least some Macs. 

[zxyzxy]

I think duck might have had issue with you referring to md5 as encryption.

the access is limited only to localhost though.. so if no one will physically steal your computer i think you are fine.

[Haole]

This looks like a fairly comprehensive tutorial I found during one of my searches.  As is said there could be issues with Lion and Mountain Lion but for somewhat older Macs it could be worth a try.  I'm thinking of buynig a new MBP right now and if I do I may just give this a try on my present machine running Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

It appears to me in looking around that rEFIt is crucial for dual-booting Linux on many Macs unless one is comfortable with all kinds of other software emulators and/or can work all kinds of magic from the command line?

This is still all complete voodoo to me...

[TheLQ]

Thanks, will keep this in mind

[zxyzxy]

would you trust an online wallet with considerable amount of bitcoins?