Whats the most secure wallet outside of hardware?

[Skrodk]

So, I'm quite confused at the moment.

I have ordered a hardware wallet, but what do I use til then? I don't plan on moving too much money around til then, and a paperwallet seems difficult to do any i don't have a printer?

I will be storing BTC and Eth mostly.

I have seen recommendations of:

https://www.coinbase.com/vault
https://www.myetherwallet.com/
BitGo

And just keeping them on coinbase, as they have "insured" any losses somewhat.. What do you think?

I'm also wondering if Phone wallets is considered safer than desktop / exchange wallets?

Right now I'm think Desktop should be most secure ye?, what do you all use?

[1715458275]

1715458275

[TryNinja]

Just don't use Coinbase. They are more of a place to buy and sell Bitcoins. You don't have control of your private keys, so they can go offline, freeze your account or don't let you spend your coins whenever they want.

MyEtherWallet is safe. But it's an Ethereum only wallet. If you just want to store ETH, use them. For Bitcoins you will need to use another wallet.

What you should do: Download Electrum and store your Bitcoins there. When your hardware wallet arrives, transfer your coins to your new address.

[avatar_kiyoshi]

Storing in hardware wallet or paper wallet is the best rather than on desktop/phone/exchange wallet, although it's difficult to set up it's better than you lose your coin, especially if you store a lot coin.
If you want to store not much coin you can go electrum wallet they have nice security feature, desktop/phone wallet, but their phone wallet interface not really catchy eyes.

Don't use exchange wallet like coinbase for storing your coin, they will collapse/hacked anytime, use for exchange only.
Myetherwallet is good but it's just storing ETH.
You can use jaxx if you want to use multiple wallet, but I don't have much experience with them so I can't tell they legit or not.
Bitgo have more fees and AFAIK you can't custom the fees (CMIIW).

[Iranus]

What you should do: Download Electrum and store your Bitcoins there. When your hardware wallet arrives, transfer your coins to your new address.

Absolutely.  Online wallets like Coinbase are far from ideal and Electrum is definitely easy to use.

More importantly, both the TREZOR and Ledger are compatible with Electrum, so you can continue using Electrum after you get your hardware wallet if you want.  Electrum is an extremely good interface for using your hardware wallet and the TREZOR one can be a little slow at times.

[gentlemand]

Coinbase insurance only covers losses at their end. You being hacked is not a loss at their end. You wouldn't receive a penny if you were hacked.

I also wouldn't particularly like to see their insurance put to the test. The first duty of insurer is to find a way not to pay.

[BitMaxz]

If you have cellphone you can use it to save you bitcoin and anytime you can bring your bitcoin anywhere..
Try Mycelium  for mobile  this is i think you can use for safety of your bitcoin..

What you should do: Download Electrum and store your Bitcoins there. When your hardware wallet arrives, transfer your coins to your new address.

Absolutely.  Online wallets like Coinbase are far from ideal and Electrum is definitely easy to use.

More importantly, both the TREZOR and Ledger are compatible with Electrum, so you can continue using Electrum after you get your hardware wallet if you want.  Electrum is an extremely good interface for using your hardware wallet and the TREZOR one can be a little slow at times.

I think op is just looking for temporary to hold his bitcoin before he can order and buy a hardware wallet..
Electrum was good choice but there are still many alterntive wallet and we can use android or apple mobile bitcoin wallet.

[Hazir]

I don't get why people are so paranoid about the best wallet or the most secure wallet. As long as you are the sole owner of your private keys and security of your machine is not breached you will be fine.
You can use Electrum, Multibit, Bitcoin Core, Armory and be as safe as with any hardware wallet. You want to be totally safe, transfer your coins to address linked to your paper wallet.
Remember to use a strong password to encrypt your wallet and make a copy of it. That is the basics of safely storing your coins.

[gentlemand]

I don't get why people are so paranoid about the best wallet or the most secure wallet. As long as you are the sole owner of your private keys and security of your machine is not breached you will be fine.

How many people can guarantee that with absolute certainty? I most certainly cannot. I seriously doubt anyone on this planet can if their machine goes anywhere near the internet.

There's no shortage of people on here who simply cannot figure out how their wallets managed to get emptied. That's why we have hardware and paper.

[richardsNY]

I also wouldn't particularly like to see their insurance put to the test. The first duty of insurer is to find a way not to pay.

In my opinion, the worst part is that if they do end up paying, people will get compensated in fiat according to what the value was at the time a hack, inside theft, or whatever happened. I would only be interested in getting my coins back, and not fiat. Sure, everything is better than not getting compensated at all, but the point is that people shouldn't expose themselves to such unnecessary risks. People for once shouldn't choose convenience over security and total control over their coins -- it doesn't make any sense, really.

OP -- paper wallets don't require a lot work at all, and you don't necessarily need a printer. If you're using Bitcoin Core, just use the dumpprivkey command to extract the private key from an existing address, or you can request a new one and extract the private key from that one. Then just write the private key(s) on a piece of paper, and there you have it. Or manually engrave the key(s) on a piece of metal. It's up to you.

[Iranus]

I think op is just looking for temporary to hold his bitcoin before he can order and buy a hardware wallet..
Electrum was good choice but there are still many alterntive wallet and we can use android or apple mobile bitcoin wallet.

Electrum is a temporary solution.  If the OP was talking about months, I would have suggested Bitcoin Core.

Electrum works well for this case because it's light for you to download (just an SPV wallet), and it will also be compatible with the hardware wallet once you have it, so you don't need to stop using it.  It would be a good idea to check it out.

I also wouldn't particularly like to see their insurance put to the test. The first duty of insurer is to find a way not to pay.

In my opinion, the worst part is that if they do end up paying, people will get compensated in fiat according to what the value was at the time a hack, inside theft, or whatever happened. I would only be interested in getting my coins back, and not fiat.

There were news articles about Mt. Gox being "solvent" recently - what that means is that the coins they stole/the ones that they hold is now worth enough fiat to compensate what the users had at the time.  But because of how much the price of BTC has rose, it's a huge loss for them.

No matter how much talk Coinbase has about being US based and having regulations, I wouldn't trust another exchange to have a proper system. 

[shinratensei_]

So, I'm quite confused at the moment.

I have ordered a hardware wallet, but what do I use til then? I don't plan on moving too much money around til then, and a paperwallet seems difficult to do any i don't have a printer?

I will be storing BTC and Eth mostly.

I have seen recommendations of:

https://www.coinbase.com/vault
https://www.myetherwallet.com/
BitGo

And just keeping them on coinbase, as they have "insured" any losses somewhat.. What do you think?

I'm also wondering if Phone wallets is considered safer than desktop / exchange wallets?

Right now I'm think Desktop should be most secure ye?, what do you all use?

No, using the phone to be your wallet will be involved a high risk, The most secure wallet is a paper wallet. or you can try to print your myether private key and store them in the safe place. Paper wallet is really secure like you are using the hardware wallet. Desktop can't be considered as the secure place to save your amount. As you can see there is a lot of the spam email contain the malware that is stealing your data.

[LTU_btc]

Your mentioned services isn't a safest place to keep coins. Coins will be safe if you have full control of it - for this you need to have private keys. So, desktop wallet is a good choice, but be sure that your device isn't infected with a virus.
Phone wallets is mainly for smaller amounts of coins which you are planning to use, not hold.

[pooya87]

maybe you should explain what you find hard about a paper wallet. it may be a simple thing that we can explain and help you with.

for example if you don't have a printer you can still
- use bitaddress.org,
- generate a new key pair
- and then copy the private key then go to the wallet details tab
- paste the private key there and encrypt it using the BIP38 provided option.
- copy that in a text and take it out to print or just save it on your computer.

(i used 123 as password just to show a quick preview, use a very strong password)

[reflector]

Your mentioned services isn't a safest place to keep coins. Coins will be safe if you have full control of it - for this you need to have private keys. So, desktop wallet is a good choice, but be sure that your device isn't infected with a virus.
Phone wallets is mainly for smaller amounts of coins which you are planning to use, not hold.

Once electrum wallet also little bit lagging and then they released the updated version. After electrum also been a good desktop wallet as of now. We cannot consider desktop wallet are also safe like paper or hard wallet. To precaution yourself you should not share the private key and wallet seed to anybody. From my view, you can use any wallet for it.

[jhenfelipe]

I'm not a Coinbase user to be honest. I use MyEtherWallet for Eth and recently Electrum for BTC. Both seems to work well and ofcourse you have the private keys in you. For any other BTC wallet options for mobile/desktop, you can check and compare the wallets listed/suggested in bitcoin.org (HERE)

Don't store your coins in exchanges for a long time, it's not advisable.

[RamBahadur.Gurung]

Coinbase insurance only covers losses at their end. You being hacked is not a loss at their end. You wouldn't receive a penny if you were hacked.

I also wouldn't particularly like to see their insurance put to the test. The first duty of insurer is to find a way not to pay.

At least they will cover the losses if the entire site is hacked. Anyway, it is up to us, to ensure the safety of our coins. The chances of someone stealing the coins can be reduced significantly, if we use 2FA. That said, I wouldn't recommend storing Bitcoin in an exchange site such as Coinbase.

[amacar2]

Coinbase is just shit, so don't trust them with large amount of bitcoins.

Myetherwallet is just like bitaddress but unlike bitaddress you can move your ETH through their user interface, if your laptop is free from malwares, keyloggers than myetherwallet might work as temporary ETH wallet for you.

I am using Jaxx.io wallet which is multicoin wallet and quite secure till now, I still don't recommend it to store huge amount of bitcoin, ethereum but if you are in hurry and would like to store both coin in one wallet than you can use them.

Hardware wallet is the most secure wallet till now if it is not tempered in its way to you.

[SONG GEET]

And just keeping them on coinbase, as they have "insured" any losses somewhat.. What do you think?

I'm also wondering if Phone wallets is considered safer than desktop / exchange wallets?

Right now I'm think Desktop should be most secure ye?, what do you all use?

A big NO, coinbase are known for freezing accounts without any prior notice. Insured 

Phone can also get affected just like desktop so there is not much difference however light weight clients are more secure than exchange/online wallets.

For BTC you can use electrum as desktop wallet but for ETH I don't have any idea, might be myetherwallet can be considered safer.

[phr0stbyt3]

No one can tell you which online wallet is best as keeping bitcoin online even in coinbase is still a risky option as coinbase can tell they got hacked and take your coins or they actually end up getting hacked. Not to forget the fact that coinbase is not a wallet but is a exchange and keeping money in exchange is still a risk.
About myetherwallet they seem trusted to me when compared with all online wallets

[richardsNY]

There were news articles about Mt. Gox being "solvent" recently - what that means is that the coins they stole/the ones that they hold is now worth enough fiat to compensate what the users had at the time.  But because of how much the price of BTC has rose, it's a huge loss for them.

Not entirely the same since Bitfinex hasn't gone down like MtGox did, but a very interesting coincidence point is that Bitfinex 'fully' cleared its dept at the time the value of the stolen coins doubled in value. In normal circumstances it would cost Bitfinex many years to collect enough financial resources to fully clear its debt, but they miraculously managed to do it in such a short period of time. This is basically the new standard when it comes to exchanges dealing with coin losses as result of "hacks". I still can't understand how people trust Bitfinex with their coins....