How do you stop someone forcing you to hand over your private key and taking all

[cryptonia]

One thing I have thought about is that with bitcoin, someone could force you to hand over your private key. What sort of safeguards are there to prevent this happening, or to prevent them taking everything in that wallet?
One thing one can do is leave Bitcoins on an exchange that will only allow you to withdraw $1000 worth per day, but then you run the risk of the exchange being hacked....what are the other options?

[anonymoustroll420]

Have a 'decoy' wallet that you hand over when forced. This will only work when the attacker does not know the Bitcoin addresses in your main wallet.

[ranochigo]

How are they going to force you hand over your private key? Are they going to point a gun to your face and make you recite your private key? If you were to be robbed, they would probably just make you hand over your phone. In that case, prepare a cold wallet and your loss would be minimised.

Anyway, some wallet uses multi sig. Without their key and your key, you cannot touch the Bitcoin within the address. I imagine this would be counter effective since you can still control the coins in your wallet with you holding more keys.

[cryptonia]

How are they going to force you hand over your private key? Are they going to point a gun to your face and make you recite your private key?

I mean if someone learns you are into bitcoin, and suspects or knows you have some coins.

[Qartada]

One thing I have thought about is that with bitcoin, someone could force you to hand over your private key. What sort of safeguards are there to prevent this happening, or to prevent them taking everything in that wallet?
One thing one can do is leave Bitcoins on an exchange that will only allow you to withdraw $1000 worth per day, but then you run the risk of the exchange being hacked....what are the other options?

There's no reason why they would focus on your private key specifically.  They'd have to be right there in your face and some kind of real threat if they wanted to actually get it.

What sort of safeguards are there to prevent a criminal from attacking you and stealing your real wallet?  Far less, and they're far more likely to do so even if Bitcoin was mainstream.  People are unlikely to be able to recite their private key by memory accurately anyway, and the thief would have to be able to locate the wallet if they wanted to actually get the private key, which would be hard.

People practically give away their private keys anyway by putting money into exchanges and online wallets.

[jakelyson]

They can't make me, I do not memorize my private keys and they cannot make me give them my private keys. Not over my dead body. It is stored somewhere safe and even if they take my phone or laptop, they cannot find my main wallet in there.

[TastyChillySauce00]

Just give em' random combination of numbers and letters if they seem very fool, otherwise, you can use multi-sig. Though, it's kinda rare that people forcing you to hand over the private key instead of forcing you to send your bitcoin to the addresses given by the criminals.
At least, that's what those robbers usually do when they're robbing.

[cryptonia]

I was hoping I wouldn't have to spell it out. I'm really talking about where someone hears you are into bitcoin so they turn up at your house, force their way in and put a gun in your mouth. I didn't want to get so graphic, but I think we as a community should develop safeguards for this.

these people might not be very smart, but they might be thugs.

has no one considered this?

[Mvaporis1961]

You are really dumb if you will give away your private key from someone.There is a reason why is it called a "private key" for you to keep it by yourself because you own it.Even  if you are being forced why would you give it then.Having a dummy wallets will help you to get more secure if they force to get the private key from you

[anonymoustroll420]

I was hoping I wouldn't have to spell it out. I'm really talking about where someone hears you are into bitcoin so they turn up at your house, force their way in and put a gun in your mouth. I didn't want to get so graphic, but I think we as a community should develop safeguards for this.

these people might not be very smart, but they might be thugs

In that case, they have no idea how much Bitcoin you have, they have no idea what your Bitcoin addresses are, so just hand over a decoy wallet containing a small amount of BTC. They will have no way to know if you have more than that.

[cryptonia]

You are really dumb if you will give away your private key from someone.There is a reason why is it called a "private key" for you to keep it by yourself because you own it.Even  if you are being forced why would you give it then.Having a dummy wallets will help you to get more secure if they force to get the private key from you

I'm not really dumb. If some thug knows you are into bitcoin and learns the very basics, he might not believe you if he plugs in the computer and sees that the address you gave him only contains one bitcoin. That might make him very angry

[cryptonia]

I was hoping I wouldn't have to spell it out. I'm really talking about where someone hears you are into bitcoin so they turn up at your house, force their way in and put a gun in your mouth. I didn't want to get so graphic, but I think we as a community should develop safeguards for this.

these people might not be very smart, but they might be thugs

In that case, they have no idea how much Bitcoin you have, they have no idea what your Bitcoin addresses are, so just hand over a decoy wallet containing a small amount of BTC. They will have no way to know if you have more than that.

But if someone kidnapped someone who they knew had a lot of bitcoin that will not work. Maybe you told your wife you have a lot and she told her friend and someone else found out. This is a possibility for some people.

[Hazir]

One thing I have thought about is that with bitcoin, someone could force you to hand over your private key.

That can happen with  every possesion, someone can force you and  steal your money, gold, car - the only problem is that stolen bitcoin will be harder or near impossible to reclaim.
There is a difference between stealing your private keys and situation where you are forced to give them away.

What sort of safeguards are there to prevent this happening, or to prevent them taking everything in that wallet?

You can encrypt your wallet but if you will be blackmailed or forced hard enough you will do anything, you will even disclose your password.

[ranochigo]

How are they going to force you hand over your private key? Are they going to point a gun to your face and make you recite your private key?

I mean if someone learns you are into bitcoin, and suspects or knows you have some coins.

Of course they will. Are they going to knock your door and take your computer away? Are they going to your house and point a gun at you? Both of them is considered robbery and you have no choice even if it involves fiat instead of Bitcoin.

The same precaution applies. Stash some Bitcoins away and you won't lose much. In these scenario, the only thing you can do is to minimise loss.

[cryptonia]

How are they going to force you hand over your private key? Are they going to point a gun to your face and make you recite your private key?

I mean if someone learns you are into bitcoin, and suspects or knows you have some coins.

Of course they will. Are they going to knock your door and take your computer away? Are they going to your house and point a gun at you? Both of them is considered robbery and you have no choice even if it involves fiat instead of Bitcoin.

yes but people tend to only have small amounts of cash around but bitcoin enthusiasts may have a lot of bitcoin

[anonymoustroll420]

If they know for sure that you have a lot of Bitcoins and are willing to torture you to get them, you are pretty much screwed.

This kind of thing happens to bank managers/rich people where they are forced to withdraw money from banks etc, it's called tiger kidnapping.

If you're worried about something like this happening. Step up your personal security. Get a gun etc.

[cryptonia]

You can encrypt your wallet but if you will be blackmailed or forced hard enough you will do anything, you will even disclose your password.

Of course you will. Geeks into bitcoin will be no match for a ruthless thug. Thugs are very very scary people. And I don't say that lightly
We need a new kind of wallet that protects geeks, by having the option of limiting withdrawals

[anonymoustroll420]

We need a new kind of wallet that protects geeks, by having the option of limiting withdrawals

You can do this with bitgo https://www.bitgo.com/solutions#wallet

How it works is you have one key and they have another and co-sign your txes. You can set limits etc. However bitfinex used this company before, and a hacker hacked bitfinex and Bitgo and stole both keys and was able to bypass the withdrawal limit.

[cryptonia]

We need a new kind of wallet that protects geeks, by having the option of limiting withdrawals

You can do this with bitgo https://www.bitgo.com/solutions#wallet

How it works is you have one key and they have another and co-sign your txes. You can set limits etc. However Bitstamp used this company before, and a hacker hacked Bitstamp and Bitgo and stole both keys and was able to bypass the withdrawal limit.

But if I have one key and they have another key, then they would need to steal my key too.
Are you saying they stole the persons private key too?

[talkbitcoin]

this is such a rare thing and it probably will never happen to anyone in real life except people who publicly say "we have this much bitcoin and here is our location."

so one solution is prevention.
you never let anyone know "you" have any bitcoin, or at least never show them how much you keep in your cold storage.

One thing one can do is leave Bitcoins on an exchange that will only allow you to withdraw $1000 worth per day, but then you run the risk of the exchange being hacked....what are the other options?

that exchange service will run away and leave you wishing you never did it in the first place.

p.s. in the scenarios you are describing, a gun to your head or a kidnapped family then just contact police or give up the money before they kill you