How do make a Paper Copy of my Bitcoins ?

[Simon Whelan]

Hi :

I just posted this message to :

“Bitcoin Discussion”.

I just realized that I probably should have posted this message to :

“Technical Support”.

So … I’m reposting to Technical Support and I do apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused anyone.

I’m new to this site and, actually new to both Bitcoins specifically & digital crypto currencies more generally.

The question I have may have already have been answered.

The problem is that if such answers exist I’m not sure how to go about finding them.

If you know where the answer to my question has already been posted then please let me kbnow where I may find those answers.

I recently bought some bitcoins and I have them in a wallet on the machine that I’m normally connected to the Internet with.

This is probably NOT the smartest way to protect your wallet.

So my question is :

“How do I make paper backup copies of my bitcoins” ?

My computer is a Mac Mini running  mac OSX 10.9.5 .

I’d like to thank everyone in advance for any constructive advice, help and suggestion you may be so kind as to send me.

Thank You Very Much !

   All the best & I look forward to hearing from you … Simon

[achow101]

You can make a paper backup of your wallet by getting all of the private keys in that wallet and printing them out on a piece of paper. However, I do not recommend that you do this as anyone who finds that paper can get access to your Bitcoin and the private keys containing your Bitcoin will change over time so your backup will become outdated. If you use an HD wallet and put the seed or master private key on the paper, that is slightly better, but means that anyone who finds the paper can steal all of your Bitcoin.

If you want to have your Bitcoin on paper instead of on a computer, I recommend that you create a paper wallet. A paper wallet is a private key (which can and should be encrypted) and address printed on a piece of paper. This can be done offline and the private key is not stored on your computer at any point in time. Once you create the paper wallet, you send all of your Bitcoin to it. This is more secure, but also much more difficult for you to spend your Bitcoin in the future. You can make a paper wallet through bitaddress.org. You will need to download the website (they have a github repo you can download from) and run it on an offline machine.