How can we expect "average Joe" to remember passphrases to his Bitcoins?

[YuginKadoya]

Well anyone would simply make a lot of backups especially the passphrase that are highly consist of capital and small letters and numbers, like myself I guarantee that I will forget passphrase like these, that is why I am having multiple backups for my passphrase, but if you don't want doing so much back up that might let someone sneak to your things and get you passphrase then try to memories it and make it a hobby in using it as a password to your account in social media, email address, at first you will need a copy of your passphrase, but repeating the process will surely let you remember it.

[Marma Kalari]

It's something which seems crucial to me for reaching mass adoption (in addition to scalabilty of course...).
Already on this forum there is a shitload of people losing their Bitcoins by forgetting passphrases, the private keys, the dat file etc...

Even if you forget your passphrase and loose your dat file if you are capable of saving your private keys then it is more than enough to use your coins and if you are not capable of doing that then you are not good enough to use any service .It is quite difficult to memorize the passphrases and the only solution is the save everything in a safe place.

[Wandering Soul~]

To be honest, I didn't even bother to remember all my passphrase as I said to myself that I can just make a back up on it . I only have 3 backups, the two is on my desktop and mobile (both of them are encrypted) and then the other one is on the back of the photos, To be exact every photo in a photo album has at least one word .

It's not really a problem if a person didn't bother to back it up . It's a common sense to not put money into something that you have little knowledge of .

[BrewMaster]

To be honest, I didn't even bother to remember all my passphrase as I said to myself that I can just make a back up on it . I only have 3 backups, the two is on my desktop and mobile (both of them are encrypted) and then the other one is on the back of the photos, To be exact every photo in a photo album has at least one word .

It's not really a problem if a person didn't bother to back it up . It's a common sense to not put money into something that you have little knowledge of .

now we know where to look when we pay you a visit

but jokes aside, make sure to not keep any backups on a hot computer (connected to the internet) because it doesn't matter if it is encrypted, at some point you put in the password and decrypt it and that can be a weakness.

go 100% cold and never worry about anything.

[The One]

Back up the wallet and passphrase and make two copies and each stored in 2 different locations. This is to protect against fire in one location, ie your house.

[monsanto]

Embed an encrypted passive rfid chip in "Joe" or his dog that contains the passphrase. Then take a hundred unencrypted rfid chips with the password to the encrypted embedded rfid chips, and scatter them in a field somewhere. If Joe forgets the passphrase all he has to do is go to the location where he scattered the other chips. Apparently rfid has a 3 foot range so it shouldn't be hard to find one of the hundreds of rfid tags he scattered previously.  Once found he will have the password to his embedded chip, so he can then unencrypt the passphrase held in the embedded chip in his body, and recover it. Something tells me I just made that way more convoluted than necessary  

edit: okay, new, even worse idea.. embed 4 rfid tags... one in each hand and one in each foot. Only the rfid tag in your right foot is unencrypted. It contains the password to unencrypt the rfid tag in your left foot... which contains the password to unencrypt the rfid tag in your left hand.. which contains the password to unencrypt the rfid tag in your right hand which.. you got it.. contains the passphrase to your wallet. So you go clockwise with the rfid detector.. right foot (unencrypted), left foot, left hand, right hand and passphrase.

[Wesimon]

Is this a very big issue at all? It is not even our problem, it's the wallet owner's problem. Why the hell did he/she uses a password that is too difficult that even he cannot even remember it? Sounds stupidity to me.

Simple solution:
- do not encrypt wallet.
- write down your password on a piece of paper and hide it somewhere safe. (uh another problem, he cannot remember where did he kept the paper)
- have password hints
- use all the letters in the alphabet as password or use your name in reverse as a password.

There are many ways, just do what is comfortable for you. Do not let foolishness makes you lose bitcoin.

[SHAWN-MIDWAYS]

It's something which seems crucial to me for reaching mass adoption (in addition to scalabilty of course...).
Already on this forum there is a shitload of people losing their Bitcoins by forgetting passphrases, the private keys, the dat file etc...

Even if you forget your passphrase and loose your dat file if you are capable of saving your private keys then it is more than enough to use your coins and if you are not capable of doing that then you are not good enough to use any service .It is quite difficult to memorize the passphrases and the only solution is the save everything in a safe place.

this solution would only work for some addresses like a vanity address and the alike but wallets like  blockchain would require the passphrases which very few of us
even bother to remember/memorize, its just to random. the best,less expensive and risky solution would be to have a paper wallet

[unamis76]

How can we expect? Just like he remembers the password of his email account... Exactly the same.

So I would like to know what technological solutions could be proposed for this problem.

What problem? I don't see any problems or issues here. This isn't certainly a Bitcoin problem, at least... People still have to remember things and exercise their mind. We can't come up with tech solutions for each and every human error or fault. Creating such will only make matters worse.

This makes me remember when those cars with autosteer/autopilot functionality crash due to human error and since the system was on, human blames the machine because of "bugs". We cannot blame technology for our faults. If one forgets to make a backup of his wallet or his password, it's sad, but it was his fault for forgetting.

A weird idea
can we somehow use our fingerprints as a secret phrase? Any limitations for this?

This is generally considered to be a very weak "secret phrase" as you leave your fingerprint in many places. This has already been discussed a while back.

Simple solution:
- do not encrypt wallet.
- use all the letters in the alphabet as password or use your name in reverse as a password.

This is generally not recommended.

Simple solution:
- have password hints

This might be bad too.

There are many ways, just do what is comfortable for you. Do not let foolishness makes you lose bitcoin.

Good advice

[akamit]

It's something which seems crucial to me for reaching mass adoption (in addition to scalabilty of course...).
Already on this forum there is a shitload of people losing their Bitcoins by forgetting passphrases, the private keys, the dat file etc...
So I would like to know what technological solutions could be proposed for this problem.

To make a comparison, a lot of people are forgetting their credit card code (even if it's only 4 digits...) or losing the card and the centralized solution to this is the bank providing new card/code.

Which decentralized solutions to this problems could you think of?

Simple solution for average Joes..
Don't use bitcoin, if you can't remember password, passphrase, private keys or dat file.
Don't use c. card, if you can't remember pin.

Maybe in future we will get finger print, retina scan, face detection etc etc in the bitcoin tech.

[Harry Callahan]

Simple solution:
- do not encrypt wallet.
- write down your password on a piece of paper and hide it somewhere safe. (uh another problem, he cannot remember where did he kept the paper)
- have password hints
- use all the letters in the alphabet as password or use your name in reverse as a password.

It is not a secure solution ,you must always encrypt your wallet but you can always save your password and pass phrase in a note pad which is not that difficult and keep in a safe location,never use password hints and easy ones since you are dealing with money and make sure you put in a very good password so that no one is able to crack it easily.

[squatz1]

If they can't remember their password, AND don't have a seed or private keys, AND don't have a backup file prior to encryption then they probably don't deserve to use Bitcoin.
The simplest (but not greatest, due to obvious side effects) of all solutions would be simply to just not encrypt your wallet.

Even an average Joe won't be worse enough to forget password. If he can't then as suggested he doesn't deserve it, let him get fixed to the conventional system that gives him a much easier access than bitcoin. Because everything with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were completely technology and internet based where even a small mistake can put you into big loss.

Personally, I'd be expecting an average joe like this to be using some sort of online wallet that all he has to do is remember his username and password to be able to get into his bitcoin. I wouldn't understand why he'd need to just remember his private keys and such like this, if hes an average Joe and doesn't fully care if someone else has control over his keys (partially at least in the case of BitGo.

Back up the wallet and passphrase and make two copies and each stored in 2 different locations. This is to protect against fire in one location, ie your house.

This is a good idea, though I'd doubt people would be making sure to have both of these at all times if they'd be making transactions regularly.

So, if I was an average Joe I'd be using Blockchain.info or Bitgo. Two easy to use online wallets.

[andrei56]

It's something which seems crucial to me for reaching mass adoption (in addition to scalabilty of course...).
Already on this forum there is a shitload of people losing their Bitcoins by forgetting passphrases, the private keys, the dat file etc...
So I would like to know what technological solutions could be proposed for this problem.

To make a comparison, a lot of people are forgetting their credit card code (even if it's only 4 digits...) or losing the card and the centralized solution to this is the bank providing new card/code.

Which decentralized solutions to this problems could you think of?

You could just backup your files, if you use a smartphone and you want to save your selfies and music you backup your phone and you can do that with a few clicks, they could backup their wallets during that process and forget about  losing their coins, but people are lazy and don’t want to even do that.

[MingLee]

It's something which seems crucial to me for reaching mass adoption (in addition to scalabilty of course...).
Already on this forum there is a shitload of people losing their Bitcoins by forgetting passphrases, the private keys, the dat file etc...
So I would like to know what technological solutions could be proposed for this problem.

To make a comparison, a lot of people are forgetting their credit card code (even if it's only 4 digits...) or losing the card and the centralized solution to this is the bank providing new card/code.

Which decentralized solutions to this problems could you think of?

Simple solution for average Joes..
Don't use bitcoin, if you can't remember password, passphrase, private keys or dat file.
Don't use c. card, if you can't remember pin.

Maybe in future we will get finger print, retina scan, face detection etc etc in the bitcoin tech.

I don't know why you'd want to try and use anything along the lines of FP scanner, eye scanners or facial detection features, sure they might be kind of cool and "futuristic" but there are still leaps to get to something like that, and even once we get to that point it's going to be hard for companies and users to convince governments that it's a good thing to let the average person have access to those kinds of technologies (for various reasons I won't detail right now).
I personally prefer just using what we have now. Really keeps the anonymity as opposed to having to tie something in directly with what you have.

[Amph]

simply don't make any password, just store your bitcoin offlien and you are done, i'm doing this since years and i'm fine

if you need password for your bitcoin in your computer that are online, put the wallet in another machine that is used only for bitcoin

If they can't remember their password, AND don't have a seed or private keys, AND don't have a backup file prior to encryption then they probably don't deserve to use Bitcoin.
The simplest (but not greatest, due to obvious side effects) of all solutions would be simply to just not encrypt your wallet.

or they could use bitcoin like they use their fiat money, through coinbase or other secure online wallet(xapo etc), if they can't take the patience to learn how to secure their coin with their wallet and everything

How is this a 'problem' exclusive to bitcoin? If they forget their passwords or pins then they'll likely forget them from every other thing including cards and websites. Sometimes there's only so much you can do for people but if you can't be trusted to keep this sort of info safe and secure then you probably shouldn't be trusted to use the internet by yourself let alone use bitcoin.

this is again not a bitcoin fault, but i know that this is another problem hinder bitcoin to take the next step for mass adoption, beacuse you can't compare losing a password for facebook with losing it with money(bitcoin)

and losing a password for your bank account can be retrieved easily, original poster is looking for decentralized way to restore your password, which is impossible you need to trust someone else, which si not decentralization anymore

[ROT13]

"average Joe" can at best be expected to pay a company that does what Xapo et all do- take away the need for knowledge and responsibility in exchange for convenience and a hefty fee.

Cryptocurrency in all its current incarnations is not built for "average joe".  Either some unforeseen social or technological change will occur, or we will have "average Joe" money- fiat, traditional banking, credit cards and the like, and "elite joe" money- a more desirable medium or exchange and store of value that denotes a more privileged place in society the same way a college education, luxury items or property ownership does at present. 

Because of the influence that technology and capitalism have in the world at present I truly believe that the ability to understand, use and properly manage cryptocurrency is likely to be a significant source of social division in our lifetime.

[7788bitcoin]

I guess we can't expect everyone in the world understands how bitcoin works, how to import private keys, how to create transaction before bitcoin becomes successful.

This is why we still need online wallets, such as Coinbase, Xapo etc, which have password/passphrase recovery feature.

[NorrisK]

For full blown acceptance of bitcoin more user friendly methods for storing and safekeeping bitcoins are needed..

Stuff like hardware wallets a great step in this direction, but in the end there will always be a backup required though.

[Pursuer]

when you go and use a new system then you also have to adapt yourself to the new situation. it won't happen easily. it is like when the first car came out and people switched from using horse and carriage to vehicle, "how can you expect 'average Joe' to remember where he put the handle to his car to start it in the morning?"

[DoublerHunter]

Passphrase is not designed to remember it is designed for us to put it on the safest place that we know so when we forgot our password in our bitcoin wallet then it will be easy for us to recover our funds. I think you don't need to remember or memorize the passphrase, all you need is to put a copy on a clean sheet of paper and keep it so you will not be bother in memorizing it.