Hi all! This post is about making paper wallets to safely store our coins with Cryptolife's UPWG (Universal Paper Wallet Generator) Website.
I recently found Cryptolife's UPWG website to help me generate paper wallets to store my altcoins (
http://cryptolife.net/upwg/). I looked on the bottom of the website and it says, "Copyright bitaddress.org. Brought to you by CryptoLife.net."
So I thought to myself, this is great, actually I have already come across bitaddress.org and use their website to generate paper wallets to store my bitcoins since last year and so far, its kept all my bitcoins safe and everything is perfect! I have retrieve the funds, send them back to the exchanges and back and forth, etc. Just yesterday, I used bitaddress.org to generate more paper wallet keys to store my bitcoins. It is simply great!
My procedures are as follows:- After I arrived at the bitaddress.org website, I move my mouse around the screen to generate all those dots, once it stops it will be ready to generate addresses for me!
I click on the PAPER WALLET tab, and then always check the "HIDE ART" and "BIP38 ENCRYPT" boxes. Then I will type in my passphrase, which I will need to use later to successfully sweep (retrieve the funds from the paper wallet) the paper wallet addresss. I normally think of multiple words and phrases and numbers to be used as my passphrase and write them down somewhere.
After this is done, I will click the generate button and then it will automatically generate the number of paper wallets I need. For each paper wallet, I will get a public key and a private key along with the corresponding QR codes. My question here is, I do this while the computer is online, will this pose as a security problem since I also have the passphrase set up? Any comments or recommendations will be greatly appreciated, thanks so much!!!
Ok, so end of discussion on bitcoin wallets, let me talk about generating paper wallets for altcoins.
As I mentioned, I came across Cryptolife's UPWG (Universal Paper Wallet Generator) website for generating paper wallet addresses for altcoins. I thought to myself, this is great! I want to generate paper wallets to store all my altcoins, as I feel having the coins in a paper wallet and actually holding the keys in your possession offline is the safest method.
I arrive at the UPWG website and on the first page, which is the SETUP page, it ask you to select the decimal version by referring to the chart!
Okay, so the first altcoin I want to create paper wallets for is DOGECOIN. I went to my Poloniex account and clicked on the receive funds button under Dogecoin to see what a standard Dogecoin address starts with, and I see it starts with, "D". Okay, so I look at the chart on the UPWG set up page and it gives me a few choices, 29, 30, 31, and 32. I wasn't sure if I tried all of them, but I eventually scrolled down and selected 30 and clicked SUBMIT. It will then say ,"Value Set! You can now generate wallets."
Great, so next, I clicked on the PAPER WALLET tab, and I do this because I always wanted to generate multiple paper wallets, and I think this setup is the most easy for me to keep track and maintain.
So, I check the boxes that says "HIDE ART" and "BIP38 ENCRYPT". and click 7 for the total number of paper wallets I want to generate on one page, which I will print out. And I type in my passphrase for these wallets. Then I click the generate button, and VIOLA! IT's done!
Next, to make sure the paper wallet address works, this is what I do to double check!
First, I highlight and copy the first public address on the page. then I goto dogechain.info and check the address. It will identify it as an address, and it will also give the following informations:
Balance 0.00000000 DOGE
Transactions received 0
Received 0.00000000 DOGE
Transactions sent 0
Sent 0.00000000 DOGE
I'm really not a tech person, but I guess this would confirm it is a valid address which I can send funds to! So my next step is to send some funds to this paper wallet! I goto the exchange where I had purchased the DOGECOINS, and sent 20 DOGECOINS to this address. I then go and check the address again on dogechain.info, and this time, it shows the balance I sent there less 2 dogecoins for transaction fees. Yeah!
Now, here's the tricky part! I need to retrieve the funds back out from the paper wallet, so I need to find a wallet that will sweep the funds (import the private key). I registered and opened a wallet at dogechain.info, and tried to use their import keys function, however, when I tried to import my private key for this paper wallet with the test balance I just sent there, it gives me this message," PLEASE SPECIFY A VALID PRIVATE KEY". I wonder why this is so, and beginning to worry! What could have went wrong?
Okay, so my next option was to find another wallet. I remember I have the coinomi wallet on my android phone, so I tried that as I remembered dogecoin is on their list.
I used their import keys, sweep the QR code, and it asked for the passphrase. I entered the correct passphrase, and VOILA, the 17 dogecoins was imported into the coinomi wallet ready for me to send it anywhere I want. Yeah!
SO I have successfully stored the dogecoins in the paper wallet created on Cryptolife's UPWG website with BIP38 ENCRYPT passphrase, successfully retrieved the coins back out to a standard wallet ready for me to send the funds back onto the exchange or to anyone I want.
My question is, would this be considered a success in creating a paperwallet for this altcoin? I have created a total of 7 dogecoin addresses on one page, and used the first address to test its validity as well as if the pass phrase is correct, and it seems it is worked just fine, so would it be safe for me to send funds to the other 6 addresses on the page?
Another big question I have is why did the dogechain.info wallet NOT let me sweep the paper wallet and gave me the message " PLEASE SPECIFY A VALID PRIVATE KEY". But I was able to use the Coinomi Wallet on my android phone to successfully sweep the paper wallet?
Since I generated the paper wallets while the computer is online, are my paper wallet addresses safe? As also consider I used BIP38 Encrypt and have a strong passphrase.
Any comments or technical recommendations and suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thank you so much for reading my post!
Once this works out successfully, I am looking to generate paper wallets on Cryptolife's UPWG website for other altcoins, but I have many technical uncertainties like, what decimals to use, how to verify the address is valid before sending a small amount to test the paper wallet, how to check the balance, which wallet will sweep the paper wallet so that the funds can be retrieved, etc.
Anyway, thanks again~! Please feel free to comment and make appropriate recommendations and suggestions, I look forward to further discussions regarding this topic which I am sure we all have an interest in finding a safe and reliable way to store our coins!
all the best!
Dave
