Storing wallet away for 5 to 10 years.

[SimonZed]

Hello everyone!!

Noob here on the forum. But not noob to bitcoins. I have one question in mind that I still need an answer to. I bought a few bitcoins one or two years ago when they were just a buck a piece and since then I have seen the price go up to 250$. I don't actually intend to get rid of my coins... At least not in a near future....

My bitcoins software runs on an old laptop. The bitcoins files is starting to take a lot of space on my hard drive. But, even if I don't intend doing anything with the coins right now, I still continue to synchronize with the network.

I was wondering if I could just store my wallet (inside a truecrypt container, of course...) on a CD and a few cloud servers and just uninstall my bitcoins software and forget about it for the next decade (or until I can sell my coins for 1000000$.... :-P ).

Will it still works?? Would I still be able to use the same wallet file, synchronize and sell my coins??

Thanks for your help!!

SZ.

[AzureEngineer]

Assuming everything stays compatible, yes, that will work. However, I don't see any reason to store it in a truecrypt after encrypting the wallet itself. Just use a 64-digit password on your wallet encryption.

[Anon136]

dont worry about compatibility. It will work 100% fine.

also optical disk is a good choice. Dont use a flash drive for that.

[troglodactyl]

You don't need to keep the whole blockchain to preserve your coins, as long as you back up your wallet that actually contains your private keys you should be fine.  Of course, you'll have to re-sync again before you can actually use the coins.  I would suggest backing up your wallet and then doing a practice restore before you actually delete anything permanently, just so you're comfortable with it and don't risk any mistakes.

[MartinReynolds]

Just download the wallet.dat file and store it on multiple hardware.

Regards,

Martin.

[MiningUnited]

Topic: Storing wallet away for 5 to 10 years.

Don't forget where you leave it. Anyone read that story of the person who had 4,600 BitCoin from back in 2011, put on flash drive, forgot about it, remembered he had it during the recent April BitCoin boom, but lost it? Will try to find link.

[AzureEngineer]

Topic: Storing wallet away for 5 to 10 years.

Don't forget where you leave it. Anyone read that story of the person who had 4,600 BitCoin from back in 2011, put on flash drive, forgot about it, remembered he had it during the recent April BitCoin boom, but lost it? Will try to find link.

USB drives, once out of sight, drop into some sort of abyss. I suspect it is the same place socks go when you put them in the dryer.

[MiningUnited]

I suspect it is the same place socks go when you put them in the dryer.

 

[Lyskar]

Topic: Storing wallet away for 5 to 10 years.

Don't forget where you leave it. Anyone read that story of the person who had 4,600 BitCoin from back in 2011, put on flash drive, forgot about it, remembered he had it during the recent April BitCoin boom, but lost it? Will try to find link.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-reformatting-a-hard-drive-cost-one-man-200000-2013-4

[Malawi]

You could also make some sort of a "paper-wallet". Think you might finnd enough info trough this tread -

I hope you have taken a backups of your wallet already btw. Laptops don't live forever ;-)

A usb disk may offc get broken.
A CD is neither the perfect medium for long storage, even though they are a lot better than they used to be, they deteriorate over time. Especially if exposed to sunlight or moisture.
Cloud services come and go with the companies that owns them. Who would have thought that hotmail would disappear two years ago?

I think that if you are to forget about it for that long, you should engrave your private key into some metal or glass and put it somewhere safe(buried in the woods?). That way you can also mention it in a testament and it will be possible for your relatives to retrieve your founds. You could put the password one place, the key another place, and make some kind of a riddle that your closest relatives would understand while being cryptic enough for outsiders not to get.

[MiningUnited]

I think that if you are to forget about it for that long, you should engrave your private key into some metal or glass and put it somewhere safe(buried in the woods?). That way you can also mention it in a testament and it will be possible for your relatives to retrieve your founds. You could put the password one place, the key another place, and make some kind of a riddle that your closest relatives would understand while being cryptic enough for outsiders not to get.

Have them go on an epic treasure hunt quest.

[ongle]

The trouble with digital media is it goes bad. Encrypt the wallet and makes lots of copies.

A paper wallet (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet) is risky unless you have something secure like a safe deposit box pre-paid for 10 years at a secure bank (uh...).

[shacky]

I suggest you encrypt the wallet and save it to dropbox, mail, and dvd. in this way you're sure that it will survive!

[themgp]

There will always be a way to convert the old wallet.dat format to the new one. If this somehow isn't available in this new crazy future, and the coins have significantly increased in value, you can pay a software developer to write some code to do the conversion for you.

[dearwakaka2013]

The trouble with digital media is it goes bad. Encrypt the wallet and makes lots of copies.

A paper wallet (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet) is risky unless you have something secure like a safe deposit box pre-paid for 10 years at a secure bank (uh...).

This must be a great idea.. worth trying

[MickeyT2008]

CDs don't last, as had already been said.  If that's what you're going to use then don't rely on it alone.  Also, make several copies and make new duplicates every year.  One more thing, don't keep all the CDs in the same building because that wouldn't keep your data safe if the place burnt down or got burgled.

[Malawi]

The trouble with digital media is it goes bad. Encrypt the wallet and makes lots of copies.

A paper wallet (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet) is risky unless you have something secure like a safe deposit box pre-paid for 10 years at a secure bank (uh...).

Just to be clear - I was not thinking of a paper wallet as in made out of paper. I was thinking that he should engrave the code to metal or glass instead of having it on paper.

[bobtlk]

Thanks for the tips

[utuxia]

I would be worried about compatibility issues. You never know what can happen in 5-10 years, that's a long time technology wise. I plan on holding my bitcoins for 5-10 years as well, but I open the multibit client up every month or so just to be sure everything works.

Its like checking your bank account balance -- you don't want to go 10 years w/o checking it and suddenly realize its gone for some reason.

[ongle]

Just to be clear - I was not thinking of a paper wallet as in made out of paper. I was thinking that he should engrave the code to metal or glass instead of having it on paper.

Unless you have a machine to do that yourself, you have to give the keys to someone to engrave. If they know what the codes mean, you just gave them your wallet.