Reminder to not use brainwallets

[shorena]

Wow, listened about Brainwallets for the first time.
Ok, I will not go for it. For me best for holding Bitcoin is Paper Wallet and for daily transactions is Online wallet.
Any better suggestions?

Brainwallets are fine but human sometimes can't generate a passphrase that is secure enough and If he does , chances that he forgot the passphrase over the years are high.
An online wallet that doesn't give you control over the private keys are never suggested , not even for daily transactions , here is my order :

1. Hardware wallets
2. Paper Wallets
3. Desktop wallets (for daily uses)
4. Web wallets (that gives you your private keys)

Ok! Thanks for your suggestions.
I will go for Desktop wallet now!
As per private keys, do blockchain.info gives them?

Blockchain.info used to give the private keys but they are not doing it anymore so I suggest sticking to electrum and maybe use btc.com for web and phone.

AFAIK they still give you the seed, as their new wallet is HD which indirectly gives you access to the private keys. I dont have a new bc.i wallet though, so its just what I picked up in context to people trying to sign messages.

[Dudeperfect]

I trust my brain, and I have 100% confident about it.

That it will forget the passphrase until the time when I would try to import funds from cold storage. I don’t use brain wallet at all, and my main funds are stored in not only the paper wallet (with multiple copies) but also in the soft copies in disk drives, pen drives, etc. with recovery precautions and information. I don’t think anyone near me would be able to steal my keys, but still, I have hidden it in a secure place.

[eternalgloom]

It's a good suggestion, but in reality, what are the chances that a newbie will look up a way to store Bitcoins and end up with using a brainwallet?

Besides, would this method be equally unsafe:

1. On a computer with no malware, run Electrum and generate the 13-word recovery seed.

2. Memorize the seed using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_peg_system

3. When spending or saving, restore the wallet from memory using the seed.

4. Use the master public key to create an online watch-only wallet, where you can send to but not spend.

5. Spend from the wallet in the manner of deep cold storage. Transferring the unsigned transaction to the cold storage computer, signing it and broadcasting to the network.

Source: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet (first result when looking up 'brainwallet' on Google)

[Itty Bitty]

Anyone use Green Address wallet (recommended by bitcoin.org). Can't log-in with either my PIN or mneumonic today, log-in arrow just keeps spinning and spinning unendingly. Anyone else?

[CyberKuro]

Now that there are a lot of newbies asking how to store their bitcoins, it is often remembered how it's a terrible idea to hold bitcoins on exchanges and online wallets like blockchain.info, but it is often forgotten how bad of an idea is to go the brainwallet route. Even gmaxwell has remembered people to not use them... it is just not a trusted way to store coins specially longterm. Maybe if you want to cross borders and temporarily hold coins "in the void", but forget to hold your main stack in a brainwallet.

Accepted. Brain wallet is very secure but memorizing passwords is hard enough for ordinary people.
To choose a strong password based on words you have been used and easy to remember or recover it, but that point is the problem.
Read this article https://news.bitcoin.com/brain-wallets-not-secure-no-one-use-says-study/
You should worry about your bitcoin if the amount more than BTC10 imo and try diversity.

[davis196]

Now that there are a lot of newbies asking how to store their bitcoins, it is often remembered how it's a terrible idea to hold bitcoins on exchanges and online wallets like blockchain.info, but it is often forgotten how bad of an idea is to go the brainwallet route. Even gmaxwell has remembered people to not use them... it is just not a trusted way to store coins specially longterm. Maybe if you want to cross borders and temporarily hold coins "in the void", but forget to hold your main stack in a brainwallet.

I`ve never heard about a brainwallet.What is this?

There is no 100% protection against hackers.I just don`t surf sucpicious websites and

always clean my PC with a Malware removal software.

[Mike Mayor]

This is good advice especially to the new comers. I would highly recommend this thread to any newbie here. Even older members. It can be easily fprgottent about and I am guilty myself at the beginning for using exchanges as wallets. Not a good idea. The coins are not in your possession unless they in your wallet. Always remember that.

[Xester]

Its not safe to use brainwallets it is rather risky especially in the long run. I recommend that you use web wallet and do not stack your bitcoins in one wallet only and in one site. The best way is to create multiple wallets in different site then distribute your bitcoins on them that way when hackers attack not all of your accounts will be taken away and not all btc will be lost.

[shorena]

Its not safe to use brainwallets it is rather risky especially in the long run. I recommend that you use web wallet

and do not stack your bitcoins in one wallet only and in one site. The best way is to create multiple wallets in different site then distribute your bitcoins on them that way when hackers attack not all of your accounts will be taken away and not all btc will be lost.

Mitigating the risk of a single web wallet getting hacked, is actually solid advice. Brain wallets are not per se insecure, it depends how you creat and use them, same with almost all wallets. A brain wallet with a passphrase "Soft kitty warm kitty little ball of fur"[1] is as secure as a webwallet with a password "123456", "pussy" or "dragon"[2]. With multiple online service you also need multiple secure passwords, as reusing them might result in an attacker getting all your coins regardless.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTkVAGG9bKE
[2] https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/top-500-worst-passwords-all-time

[Mometaskers]

With no doubt , the number of users of brainwallet are less (much less) then the users of exchanges (who stores their coins there) and online wallets but here is the thing , If I learned anything from being with the bitcoin community in the last two years , is that bitcoiners never learn the lesson unless they lose their coins.
I will give you an example , since the hack of Mt.gox and people are advising each other to not store their coins in an exchange but how many of them are actually doing it? not much... because until now , exchanges are still being hacked and we see people crying about how they lost bitcoins.
Overall , you can put reminders and warnings all over the place but If people don't lose their coins , they won't learn the lesson.

I'm just new to bitcoin and don't have a whole one so I don't have a lot to worry about but I've heard stories of people losing their bitcoins. I just found out a relative (who I have no idea is into bitcoin) has lost his. Apparently he got it around 2009 (that's what I heard from another relative, wasn't able to talk to him directly) when they were actually giving away FREE bitcoins. He's got 20, turned them into those paper thingies and promptly forgot about them. Now he's pulling his hairs that they're now worth a million in php. Lesson learned.

We'll all come to a point where we'll have to learn a new storage method but it's really important to put reminders. The worst case is knowing you have bitcoin but can't remember where you stored it. The brainwallet seem interesting but I'm not planning to learn it anytime soon. It'd probably only be some last resort. Even when converted to some mnemonics, it would be hard to remember especially if you have many of these.