HOWTO: create a 100% secure wallet

[24change.com]

Thanks for the instructions.
Using two different independent computers with two wallets. One of them is very very secure (using netbook only for it, no any browsing, just for bitcoin!!!!!!). The second wallet is for everyday usage.

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[mercyfull]

Nice post, thanks!

[hadrian]

Thanks for the great guide

[Primrose]

Pretty simple, create a secure wallet using the tutorial at the start of this topic. This should be your savings account. (you never want this file on a networked computer) (this is also the account with the big amount of money you have, preferably multiple sharing this amount (so if you happen to accidentally lose one, you don't lose all your money))

The wallet on your laptop you can use as your "spending account".

The simplest way to put it is, any wallet you have an a networked computer or at some service, you should handle like your real wallet. (don't put all your money in it, etc. accept risk of loss / stolen)
Besides those you should create a very secure wallet (not networked, preferably offline/paper) which would be the same as your savings account (hence put it in a big bank vault or something) (protect these wallets, which at some point might contain a lot of money, like your life-savings account, and think what you would do to protect your life-savings account.)

Personally, I have 500 saving account addresses, 50% of these is hard-copy paper. Stored at several locations. (bank safety-deposit boxes are great, as they are also fire resistant, and you can put all those papers in there, if you encrypt it, they will still need a pass-phrase to get to the BTC's) The other 50% is on USB / Flash drives, bought specifically for this purpose, which have not been used for anything else. These are also stored in vaults on hard to get locations, spread out. Every single address, I can get to in at least 3 different locations, so technically I shouldn't be able to lose my private keys.

The only problem is, due to the nature of BTC you preferably only want to use an address once. (to keep anonymity up) So after 500 txns I run out of addresses, and I have to visit all my backup locations again to update their backups. (with extra newly generated addresses)

You can take this up any scale you want... or down if you like. Though looking at that the fact that a BTC is currently 100 euros... Hackers are going to try more often to steal bitcoins, and the only way to really protect from a hacker, is making sure the data is not networked in any way. (aka offline) So the better sense of security you have now, the less amount of surprises you'll see in the future. (you other wise might find out at some point... that one of your accounts is empty... while you didn't spend any.)

Hi Mylon

Thanks ever so much for your helpful post.
Hope you don't mind, but I have more questions, as I am in the learning stage.
I put the questions in bold as they are scattered throughout the post and it will make them easier to see, cos I can see how busy these boards are.

I bought a USB drive yesterday, and I plan to make a wallet on it by following the instructions above.
I have windows 7 on my laptop. In the instructions above, are you suggesting that I make the USB drive wallet out of an operating system other than windows?
Does this USB wallet count as offline?
What do you mean by savings account?
As Bitcoins are so expensive is it ok to only buy one and put half of that coin in one wallet and half in the other?
Am I right in saying, that as my laptop is only ever used by me, it is NOT classed as a netoworked computer?
In the context of amounts, what does 'multiple sharing' mean please?
For the 'very secure' wallet, would I print both wallets out? i.e. The windows one on my laptop and the ubuntu one on my usb drive?

I am going to need to learn a lot more about addresses and keys because I am having a real struggle with them. Is it like this - For each transaction, you need a public address key, and a private one, which matches the public one?

Am I right in hurrying to buy bitcoins as they seem to be going up all the time?
I hope you don't mind the extra questions Mylon, you have been very helpful.

Thanks again

Bump, everyone seems to be understanding things better than me.

[tomwoods]

For Windows users, I have found LinuxLive USB Creator a really simple way of creating a bootable USB drive that loads Linux. You can choose the Linux flavor you are going to install.

[Primrose]

Thanks I will try that.

[The 4ner]

Will a .dat file only appear after you've purchased bitcoin and sent them to the wallet's address? I have a wallet on my Mac but when I go to the folder where the supposed .dat file is supposed to be I find nothing. So that's why I ask if it only pops up once we actually own bit coin. I want to create a new wallet under the suspicion that my current wallet is messed up. However the instructions on bitcoin wiki ask me to touch the .dat file in order to create a new wallet but I can't since I can't find it where I was told to look for it: Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/

[Primrose]

For Windows users, I have found LinuxLive USB Creator a really simple way of creating a bootable USB drive that loads Linux. You can choose the Linux flavor you are going to install.

Hi,

I have installed linux live usb creator directly onto my usb drive, and I read afterwards that I should have downloaded it onto my computer.
Is that ok?
It seemed easier to do this.
Thanks.

[baad]

Thanks for the help!

[christop]

I have windows 7 on my laptop. In the instructions above, are you suggesting that I make the USB drive wallet out of an operating system other than windows?

Other operatings systems like Linux are preferred for their security and ease of use. It's also plain more difficult to install and run Windows from a USB thumb drive than it is for Linux.

What do you mean by savings account?

A savings account is one that you don't withdraw money from very often. It's intended to be something you put money into more than take money out. That's relatively easy to do with Bitcoin because you can still put money in while you keep the private key securely locked away. You need the private key only to withdraw money from your Bitcoin "savings account".

As Bitcoins are so expensive is it ok to only buy one and put half of that coin in one wallet and half in the other?

You can buy a small fraction of one Bitcoin and split it up however you wish. They can be divided up into pieces as small as 0.00000001 of one Bitcoin, and the system can be extended later to support smaller units if that isn't small enough.

Am I right in saying, that as my laptop is only ever used by me, it is NOT classed as a netoworked computer?

If you connect your computer to the Internet, it is networked. The Internet is a large network.

Is it like this - For each transaction, you need a public address key, and a private one, which matches the public one?

To spend bitcoins, you need the private keys that correspond to the addresses that have bitcoins; those are "your" private keys and no one else's. You also need a public address (yours or someone else's) to send the money to. You can calculate a public address from a private key but not the other way around. The Bitcoin client that you created a key in will manage the private keys and addresses inside the wallet file automatically.

Am I right in hurrying to buy bitcoins as they seem to be going up all the time?

That's really up to you and what you plan to do with them. If you plan to spend them immediately, their price in the future doesn't matter. That is, if you buy $10 in Bitcoins (about 0.063 Bitcoins at the current rate) to buy something for $10 worth of Bitcoins, you'll spend the same whether they are worth $150 or $15000.

If you plan to hold on to them for some time, you ought to figure out what the risks are for you. They could double in value or they could become worthless in a week. Is that worth it for you?

I spent a small amount of my personal savings on Bitcoins; if I lose it all (not likely), it would certainly suck, but I wouldn't be hurting financially. On the other hand, if they become 10 to 100 times more valuable in a couple years (quite likely), I'll be a little bit more well off than I currently am.


I actually don't follow these instructions. I prefer to print out a "paper wallet" from a page like https://www.bitaddress.org/ on a secure computer (that page works offline). The paper wallet consists of several private keys and their public addresses, as well as their QR codes to make it easy to scan them into a computer. Then I scan or type the public addresses from the paper wallet onto an online computer and then store the paper copies in physically secure locations like a fire-proof safe. I can send bitcoins to one or more of the addresses in the paper wallet and they'll be relatively safe. When I want to spend bitcoins from my paper wallet, I'll need to import (scan or type) one or more private key from the paper wallet into the Bitcoin client on an online computer, then I'll have immediate access to my funds. If there's any amount I don't want to spend right away, I'll send it back to my paper wallet to an address that has not been imported (the private key is no longer secure enough for an offline savings account once it has been imported).

[Hitchslap7]

Thanks for the Guide!

[Primrose]

I have windows 7 on my laptop. In the instructions above, are you suggesting that I make the USB drive wallet out of an operating system other than windows?

Other operatings systems like Linux are preferred for their security and ease of use. It's also plain more difficult to install and run Windows from a USB thumb drive than it is for Linux.

What do you mean by savings account?

A savings account is one that you don't withdraw money from very often. It's intended to be something you put money into more than take money out. That's relatively easy to do with Bitcoin because you can still put money in while you keep the private key securely locked away. You need the private key only to withdraw money from your Bitcoin "savings account".

As Bitcoins are so expensive is it ok to only buy one and put half of that coin in one wallet and half in the other?

You can buy a small fraction of one Bitcoin and split it up however you wish. They can be divided up into pieces as small as 0.00000001 of one Bitcoin, and the system can be extended later to support smaller units if that isn't small enough.

Am I right in saying, that as my laptop is only ever used by me, it is NOT classed as a netoworked computer?

If you connect your computer to the Internet, it is networked. The Internet is a large network.

Is it like this - For each transaction, you need a public address key, and a private one, which matches the public one?

To spend bitcoins, you need the private keys that correspond to the addresses that have bitcoins; those are "your" private keys and no one else's. You also need a public address (yours or someone else's) to send the money to. You can calculate a public address from a private key but not the other way around. The Bitcoin client that you created a key in will manage the private keys and addresses inside the wallet file automatically.

Am I right in hurrying to buy bitcoins as they seem to be going up all the time?

That's really up to you and what you plan to do with them. If you plan to spend them immediately, their price in the future doesn't matter. That is, if you buy $10 in Bitcoins (about 0.063 Bitcoins at the current rate) to buy something for $10 worth of Bitcoins, you'll spend the same whether they are worth $150 or $15000.

If you plan to hold on to them for some time, you ought to figure out what the risks are for you. They could double in value or they could become worthless in a week. Is that worth it for you?

I spent a small amount of my personal savings on Bitcoins; if I lose it all (not likely), it would certainly suck, but I wouldn't be hurting financially. On the other hand, if they become 10 to 100 times more valuable in a couple years (quite likely), I'll be a little bit more well off than I currently am.


I actually don't follow these instructions. I prefer to print out a "paper wallet" from a page like https://www.bitaddress.org/ on a secure computer (that page works offline). The paper wallet consists of several private keys and their public addresses, as well as their QR codes to make it easy to scan them into a computer. Then I scan or type the public addresses from the paper wallet onto an online computer and then store the paper copies in physically secure locations like a fire-proof safe. I can send bitcoins to one or more of the addresses in the paper wallet and they'll be relatively safe. When I want to spend bitcoins from my paper wallet, I'll need to import (scan or type) one or more private key from the paper wallet into the Bitcoin client on an online computer, then I'll have immediate access to my funds. If there's any amount I don't want to spend right away, I'll send it back to my paper wallet to an address that has not been imported (the private key is no longer secure enough for an offline savings account once it has been imported).

Hi

I really appreciate you taking the time out to explain all of this to me. I have read it and will c+p it to keep on my hd.
I already have bitcoin qt on my laptop and have agb usb stick, which I am having a bit of a struggle with.
I could not follow the instructions in the guide, maybe everyone else on here is tech savvy but i am not.
I tried to download linux creator, but got stuck as I needed an iso file and aint got a clue what that is.
 

[aboutblank]

very nice tutorial. hour per hour i get more info stuff to start my gold rush in a few days

[Coincrazy]

For Windows users, I have found LinuxLive USB Creator a really simple way of creating a bootable USB drive that loads Linux. You can choose the Linux flavor you are going to install.

If you have the time, patience and skill, please post a how-to for windows users, on how to create a bootable linux distro (any one) bootable from a CD

Bit coins or no Bit coins, this would be helpful

TIA
Regards

CC

[VishwaJay]

For Windows users, I have found LinuxLive USB Creator a really simple way of creating a bootable USB drive that loads Linux. You can choose the Linux flavor you are going to install.

If you have the time, patience and skill, please post a how-to for windows users, on how to create a bootable linux distro (any one) bootable from a CD

Bit coins or no Bit coins, this would be helpful

TIA
Regards

CC

For those computer lametards users who fear using Linux, we need something that has everything basically done, with a script to R/W the wallet from/to an external USB stick (though I will agree with the OP that the SD card idea is completely awesome).

Some of us don't like using computers more than we have to (because we live like monks in a temple and don't allow the modern world to influence us the way it does all those geeky computer arts experts out there). And we're not allowed the time to have a learning curve, which is why unattended mining is so attractive as a hobby.

[Coincrazy]

For Windows users, I have found LinuxLive USB Creator a really simple way of creating a bootable USB drive that loads Linux. You can choose the Linux flavor you are going to install.

If you have the time, patience and skill, please post a how-to for windows users, on how to create a bootable linux distro (any one) bootable from a CD

Bit coins or no Bit coins, this would be helpful

TIA
Regards

CC

For those computer lametards users who fear using Linux, we need something that has everything basically done, with a script to R/W the wallet from/to an external USB stick (though I will agree with the OP that the SD card idea is completely awesome).

Some of us don't like using computers more than we have to (because we live like monks in a temple and don't allow the modern world to influence us the way it does all those geeky computer arts experts out there). And we're not allowed the time to have a learning curve, which is why unattended mining is so attractive as a hobby.

Call me monk, call me lame, call me anything ..... TIA for creating a bootable linux CD that I can put into my laptop and use / try linux

Also, it would be great to have some basic spread sheet , word processing and browsing facilities, because when I get rich with bitcoins I need to count them and write my journals / notes for the next generation :-)


Regards
CC

[VishwaJay]

Just FYI: I really did live in a monastery for a while.

I'm one of those lametards users who lives like a monk in a temple.

And I reiterate the TIA for creating something the rest of us don't have to spend a lot of time learning. I barely keep my head above water as it is, fiscally speaking.

[Coincrazy]

Just FYI: I really did live in a monastery for a while.

I'm one of those lametards users who lives like a monk in a temple.

And I reiterate the TIA for creating something the rest of us don't have to spend a lot of time learning. I barely keep my head above water as it is, fiscally speaking.

Thanks Vishwa

If I understand you right, you know *something* about Linux and how to get a bootable Linux distro on a CD ?

or am I off mark ?

[XaYdEk]

What about using something like Liberte Linux or Tails with persistency enabled in a Truecrypt file (ok, fake outer file, hidden encrypted file that actually contains your wallet(s) for maximum paranoia) as your primary hold for the wallet and it's also anonymous (if you don't use it from home that is) ?

[Keimoasd]

Very useful thanks