Is it dangerous to store all bitcoin in 1 address?

[ulhaq]

Should I divide them among multiple addresses and how many?

Separate question - is this a standard practice?

[HabBear]

Yes, it's very risky to keep all of you bitcoin in one wallet. And Yes, it's standard practice to keep your entire holdings in multiple wallets.

The risk is based on the fact that if you lose access to your wallet you lose your bitcoin. So if you have all of your bitcoin in one wallet that wallet could be stolen, lost, password/private key forgotten, etc.

As for how many wallets you should have, there's no single right answer. But a test you can apply is how much of your bitcoin would you be willing to lose if you had to do to theft or lost access? This could be your threshold for how much you keep in each wallet. Further, a lot of people keep the bulk of their holdings in a more secure wallet offline while using an online wallet to facilitate transactions, given its convenience to use.

What other questions do you have?

[Immakillya]

What's the difference? Bitcoin cannot be store on address. Its the wallet itself. But that depends also where you are comfortable. Me, im comfortable on one wallet because im confident that its safe. My suggestion is, store it to paper wallet and duplicate the private keys and store it to safe box. That's super safe.

[hajimasan]

Should I divide them among multiple addresses and how many?

Separate question - is this a standard practice?

In my opinion it is not risky if you already made backup of your wallet or just made the copyof the private key of your Bitcoin address .
Because this is only the Bitcoin adress private key that can help you to handle your all btc .
But you have not much better space to save your private key of your Bitcoin address then I will suggest you  to have your Bitcoin in multiple places and save them in the Google drive ( with totally different email id that is never exposed by you to anyone ) .
Or just make print out of your Bitcoin private key for the save in the offline of your data .
If you will never share your Bitcoin private key and email address then no one will be able to havk your Bitcoin .
And you will remain full safe without any tension .

[nativehasher]

just make a bip38 encrypted paper wallet for cold storage. Store it's pictures in email/google drive/etc

[HabBear]

just make a bip38 encrypted paper wallet for cold storage. Store it's pictures in email/google drive/etc

This doesn't prevent me from stealing the paper wallet, emptying the bitcoin, and leaving the OP or anyone else with nothing!

To the OP, do some reading. There's plenty of information available on this Forum and others that will help you sort through bitcoin wallet and bitcoin storage best practices.

[dunfida]

Should I divide them among multiple addresses and how many?

Separate question - is this a standard practice?

Depending on the address that you have stored those bitcoins. Addresses on desktop wallets would be somehow safe since you do have the full control of your keys and if you are talking or using about web wallets then storing your bitcoins in one place is very risky that's why its always advisable to make use of hardware wallets/cold storage because this is the safest way do I think to secure up your bitcoin.

[mocacinno]

I personally belief this question doesn't have a one-size-fits-all sollution.

I'd rather have all my funds on a single bip38 encrypted (strong password) paper wallet, from which i have 2 copies, both stored in 2 different banks than having all my funds dispersed over 10 online wallets...

It's a question about privacy, the broadcasting of your public key and risk management, IMHO.

privacy => using a couple wallets, using mixers, always using newly generated address and change addresses drasticly increases your privacy, while using a single address in a single wallet decreases your privacy

broadcasting of your public key => As soon as you spent unspent outputs, you need to include your public key in the transaction... As long as you generate an address, and use this address as output for transactions, but never use these outputs, you can avoid getting your public key known to the public.
There is a discussion about this, basically if ECDSA encryption ever gets broken, it would be technically less chalenging to recalculate the private key when you have the public key. Since the address is only a hash of the public key, it's safer if only your address is known on the network, since an attacker would have to work back from address to public key to private key... This is very futuristic stuff tough, for the time being, i don't think there's a lot of risk in exposing your public key.

risk management => It's all about which wallets you store where, how much funds, how many backups, which types of encryption... Like i said: it would be better to have a single paper wallet, BIP38 encrypted with a 30 letter password, 2 copies stored in the safe of 2 banks than it would be to have 10 online wallets... From a safety point of view, i think this setup would outbeat allmost all types of storage.

[siampumpkin]

I would use a secure wallet like A Trezor. That is the only safe way to store coins.

[Digitalbitcoin]

Ya it is dangerous to keep all your bitcoins in single wallet. But still user can store all BTC in wallet. For that it needs higher security level and own wallet address private key.

Private key gives more control over users  BTC wallet as to send or receive BTC after synchronizing with network.

But still my suggestion will don't put all eggs in one basket.

[cheezcarls]

As the famous quote says:

"Don't put all eggs in one basket"

It is why I never rely on 1 wallet alone. It's better to have multiple ones in case one of them is malfunctioning or not available.

Simple as that.

[NorrisK]

As long as you are using 1 wallet, it doesn't matter if you use multiple addresses. If the wallet is compromised, all addresses derived from the same private key are exposed.

You will need to make different wallets if you want to reduce the risk.

Using multiple addresses in 1 wallet does make you less of a target as there is no way to link those addressses to belong to you.

[Velkro]

Should I divide them among multiple addresses and how many?

That depends, if you keep all that addresses in one place/wallet it doesnt matter really, if one will get stolen all will get stolen.
If you keep them separately, not only in diffirent address but on diffirent machines/phones/paper wallet. That is making a diffirence.

[suddenblow]

A friend got his wallet stolen one time. He was lazy and hadn't used a good password or 2FA. However the same laziness meant all his coins were spread among many other wallets, which he eventually planned to gather all in one(the one that got stolen) so he only lost a part of his funds. Learn from others mistakes, don't store everything at the same place or at least use adequate security measures.

Also if you hold everything in one place and lose your private key/JSON file or whatever you use to log in, it's game over.

[kolloh]

Storing all your coin in a single address isn't dangerous as long as you take the proper steps to secure that address/wallet. Spreading the coins over several addresses is better for privacy but likely won't increase the security by that much. There are addresses with hundreds of thousands of coins in them, just see https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html for example.

[otrkid70]

Don't trust one wallet with your BTC especially the Core wallet it's screwed me over so many times by becoming corrupted.

[mrcash02]

I like to split the Bitcoins among some investments, it's upon to you to decide how many places you want to store your Bitcoins, but for me I prefer to let it always generating passive income even if it's too little, better than nothing and my money is growing on long term. To let all money together in one place is too dangerous, don't do it. Find some legit investments you have interest and split your money, that is my hint.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

Should I divide them among multiple addresses and how many?

Separate question - is this a standard practice?

How many addresses you choose to use does not matter
you need to understand the whole idea behind multiple addresses is to ensure privacy and security on your side
and in one way or another minimizes loss should you lose your private key

[cryptomartin]

By the way, I have a question about wallets. Can wallet become a scam someway?

[mrcash02]

By the way, I have a question about wallets. Can wallet become a scam someway?

Yes, especially if it's online. They can down their site and you will be unable to withdraw your coins or even have access to it. Who uses online wallets is taking an extra risk if we talk about security.

However using a trusted wallet, even online, the risks to be scammed are lower and we can always split our money to decrease the risks.