Cold storage/Offline storage

[czechkid]

Hello,
For about 3 years now I had electrum wallet on my laptop. I always kept my bitcoins there. Now there will be this August 1st thing with Bitcoin and Segwit and all that.
There are many articles recommending to keep Bitcoins in cold storage or offline wallet.

Now since I have Electrum program do I have to do anything about my bitcoin? If so please let me know what I need to do to protect my Bitcoins

Thank You

[lizardbtc]

Hello,
For about 3 years now I had electrum wallet on my laptop. I always kept my bitcoins there. Now there will be this August 1st thing with Bitcoin and Segwit and all that.
There are many articles recommending to keep Bitcoins in cold storage or offline wallet.

Now since I have Electrum program do I have to do anything about my bitcoin? If so please let me know what I need to do to protect my Bitcoins

Thank You

Simply don't create any transactions and you should be okay. If the chain splits you will end up having the same coins on the both chains (keep in mind that stronger chain might pull the weaker chain, which will result in some transactions to be invalid that should be valid). Thats why it is advised to not keep your coins on an online wallet/ exchanges and simply to wait.

Cold storage they advise prob because you are sure that you have your private keys with you, same here with electrum you have control over your coins. So simply don't create any outgoing transactions and you should be fine, after some time situation will get sorted out and we will all know that we will be able to use bitcoin again. This will simply upgrade it so that we will be able to send transactions with lower fees and faster confirmation times.

[czechkid]

Hello,
For about 3 years now I had electrum wallet on my laptop. I always kept my bitcoins there. Now there will be this August 1st thing with Bitcoin and Segwit and all that.
There are many articles recommending to keep Bitcoins in cold storage or offline wallet.

Now since I have Electrum program do I have to do anything about my bitcoin? If so please let me know what I need to do to protect my Bitcoins

Thank You

Simply don't create any transactions and you should be okay. If the chain splits you will end up having the same coins on the both chains (keep in mind that stronger chain might pull the weaker chain, which will result in some transactions to be invalid that should be valid). Thats why it is advised to not keep your coins on an online wallet/ exchanges and simply to wait.

Cold storage they advise prob because you are sure that you have your private keys with you, same here with electrum you have control over your coins. So simply don't create any outgoing transactions and you should be fine, after some time situation will get sorted out and we will all know that we will be able to use bitcoin again. This will simply upgrade it so that we will be able to send transactions with lower fees and faster confirmation times.

Ok great thank you for your answer. I was kinda hoping for this solution. I will just keep the wallet closed for awhile

[HI-TEC99]

If you don't move your coins to a new address before a fork you don't have to do anything to protect your coins. Afterwards they would be valid on both chains, so if you wanted you could spend the same coins twice, once on each forked chain.

There were worries about an earlier fork that never happened. To cover that possibility electrum's dev wrote instructions explaining how to spend the same coins twice. You can find them at this link. They could easily be adapted for any fork that may occur.

http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/hardfork.html?highlight=fork

[czechkid]

If you don't move your coins to a new address before a fork you don't have to do anything to protect your coins. Afterwards they would be valid on both chains, so if you wanted you could spend the same coins twice, once on each forked chain.

There were worries about an earlier fork that never happened. To cover that possibility electrum's dev wrote instructions explaining how to spend the same coins twice. You can find them at this link. They could easily be adapted for any fork that may occur.

http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/hardfork.html?highlight=fork

Its getting confusing to me. I dont want to spend it twice I just want to keep my BTC a BTC

[HI-TEC99]

If you don't move your coins to a new address before a fork you don't have to do anything to protect your coins. Afterwards they would be valid on both chains, so if you wanted you could spend the same coins twice, once on each forked chain.

There were worries about an earlier fork that never happened. To cover that possibility electrum's dev wrote instructions explaining how to spend the same coins twice. You can find them at this link. They could easily be adapted for any fork that may occur.

http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/hardfork.html?highlight=fork

Its getting confusing to me. I dont want to spend it twice I just want to keep my BTC a BTC

IMO it's unlikely you will ever have the opportunity to spend it twice, so you probably don't need to worry about it. The only way that could happen is if two forks occurred, neither died, and at least one exchange started a market for the alternative fork.

If there's an imminent risk of a fork just don't move your coins until the dust has died down.

[momochang]

hey hi-tec, I need only to save the seed for that wallet and I'll be safe right and I can restore it and log in it to other computers if I'm out of town?

[lizardbtc]

hey hi-tec, I need only to save the seed for that wallet and I'll be safe right and I can restore it and log in it to other computers if I'm out of town?

Depending if the other wallet you are using use same algorithms for seeds but yes. There are even tools online whcih can generate your private and public keys from your seed if for any reason you will need this. Here is one website for example : https://bip32jp.github.io/english/ , if you opt to do this however it is advised to download the web page html and run it offline, same as when you make paper wallets for security reasons so that you are sure that your private keys are not exposed.

[HI-TEC99]

hey hi-tec, I need only to save the seed for that wallet and I'll be safe right and I can restore it and log in it to other computers if I'm out of town?

Yes you can install electrum on another computer and restore your wallet from its seed words. All your transactions and coins will show up in it. If you restore from seed you can use any new password you like. You don't need a wallet's password, only the seed.

[HCP]

hey hi-tec, I need only to save the seed for that wallet and I'll be safe right and I can restore it and log in it to other computers if I'm out of town?

Just for the record... this is a really "Bad Idea"™ from a security stand point. You should never restore your wallet on someone else's computer... You have no way of knowing if the computer is infected with malware or keyloggers etc... and no way of preventing them from using data recovery techniques to recover your wallet file even if you delete it.

Don't create multiple copies of your wallet unless you absolutely have to.