[Guide] Saving your wallet.dat to PAPER

[jrwr]

Basics
A program called PaperBack(Win32 at this time, Open Source'd) allows a user to encrypt and  print a paper copy of a file, to restore the file you scan or provide a image of the printed paper and it dumps out the file

How to use with you wallet.dat
1) Download PaperBack from the location provided before
2) Open PaperBack
3) Open Options and select the options you wish to have (For more info, read the page provided above)
4) Drag and drop the file (wallet.dat) into the window for printing
4.5)File -> Save to bitmap, It will ask you what file to encode, and then where to save the bitmap

Restoring your Wallet.dat
1)Scan or provide the bitmap of the backup
2)Wait for processing
3)Save wallet.dat

Example
(Due to me not having a printer, I had to kinda fake it)
Here is the first Image: http://imgur.com/8b7nz
Its a empty wallet.dat with Encryption on (AES-256), standard options past that
Here is the damaged copy, Opened in GIMP saved as a JPEG at 4% Compression, then converted back into a Bitmap
http://imgur.com/nKKLO

ECC had to correct 56bytes of bad data.. once decoded the md5 hashes where the same!

Here is a screenshot asking for the password (The password is "bitcoin")
http://imgur.com/OEj6G

Extras

Found this while googling around,

http://ronja.twibright.com/optar/ Its GPL'd and seems to be better for data storage and recovery, but I hear its harder to use

[foo]

Very cool! I have been meaning to try this program, nice to hear that it actually works.

[davout]

Theoretically you can do much simpler, just print out the keypair after sending coins to the public key

[Horkabork]

For ultimate security, you can encrypt your wallet, use paperback, then get a tattoo of the bitmap.

Don't put it on your back, though, or you'll have to trust someone else take the picture when you want to recover the wallet.

Hmm. I wonder if you could do the Waterworld thing and shave your hair, get the tattoo on your scalp, and then let your hair grow back so that the tattoo is hidden. I guess for full security, however, you'd have to murder the tattoo artist afterward.

[Timo Y]

For ultimate security, you can encrypt your wallet, use paperback, then get a tattoo of the bitmap.

Bad idea. In all likelihood, Paperback will be defunct and forgotten 30-40 years from now.  Good luck retrieving the information from the bitmap then!

See:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6265976.stm

To be safe, you would have to tattoo the entire source code (or at least pseudocode) of Paperback in addition to the bitmap. 


A much better idea is to convert the wallet keypair to a QR code and tattoo that code in UV ink.

QR codes are ISO-standardized, so even if they become obsolete, you will always be able to find the old technical papers that tell you how to convert them back to the keypair.

[nazgulnarsil]

+1 foreverD

[davout]

+1 to UV ink tattoo

[LeFBI]

i'm pro encrypted ass branding

[Alex Beckenham]

Theoretically you can do much simpler, just print out the keypair after sending coins to the public key

How? Please explain how that is simple, as I really have no idea how to "print out a keypair".

[Yeti]

I printed out the following keypair to paper and deleted my wallet.dat


Now, how do I scan it and get my 10,008.15 BTC back???!?

[Bunghole]

Seriously, can you tell me how to extract the keypair from the wallet?

[FlipPro]

Awesome find. +1 for the community.

[Yeti]

Nope. And davout only said "theoretically". You could go all the way and look at the source code just to get the keys, but then again you could also just back up the entire wallet.dat of a few 100 KB. That's what I do. (Apart from printing out random Google search pictures)

[Alex Beckenham]

Seriously, can you tell me how to extract the keypair from the wallet?

Don't worry, davout said it's simple... simple enough for a newbie with 10 posts I assume.

NFI how though.

[istar]

Print it on toilet paper with invisible ink.

Then noone will suspect anything, I mean. Who would be that stupid.

[Shad3dOne]

I printed out the following keypair to paper and deleted my wallet.dat


Now, how do I scan it and get my 10,008.15 BTC back???!?

ha!....well played, sir.

-shad3d

[davout]

How? Please explain how that is simple, as I really have no idea how to "print out a keypair".

Well, you extract it from your wallet using gavin's bitcoin tools, and then you... print it ?

Don't worry, davout said it's simple... simple enough for a newbie with 10 posts I assume.

A newbie that knows how to run a plain script with a couple of arguments could do it I guess

Nope. And davout only said "theoretically". You could go all the way and look at the source code just to get the keys, but then again you could also just back up the entire wallet.dat of a few 100 KB. That's what I do. (Apart from printing out random Google search pictures)

Well, this thread is about printing wallets to paper, if you're not interested, please refrain from polluting it.

[ErgoOne]

JRWR -- perhaps you could put your post on the Bitcoin wiki?  That seems a better place for it than here....

[Alex Beckenham]

Don't worry, davout said it's simple... simple enough for a newbie with 10 posts I assume.

A newbie that knows how to run a plain script with a couple of arguments could do it I guess

Damn, that rules me out... 15 years in Windows, no Linux experience yet... I can't decipher that bitcoin tools page yet.

I'm going to say .py = python? Total guess; Never seen python code

Simple when you know how.

[jerfelix]

Damn, that rules me out... 15 years in Windows, no Linux experience yet... I can't decipher that bitcoin tools page yet.

I'm going to say .py = python? Total guess; Never seen python code

Simple when you know how.

Python runs fine in Windows.

The general steps for an adventurous windows user:

1. Download Python 2.7.x from Python.org
2. download Bitcoin tools
3. Exit Bitcoin
4. Back up your wallet.dat file
5. run Python
6. write a few lines (probably 2 to 5) to open the wallet file and extract the key pair and print it


Not saying it's easy, but it's really not that hard either if you want to give it a try.