Copay wallet, is a hot wallet?... unsafe or not?

[anticonformist]

I was trying out copay, but after you download the software it wont let you create a wallet without being connected to the internet. It says cannot establish connection or something. Why can you not generate the wallet offline? Whats the reason? Because from what i understand many other wallets have no problem setting up the whole thing offline, electrum for example. This would make copay a hot wallet correct? So doesn’t this mean because your forced to have the internet connected when you generate the wallet, your key can leak? Why would anyone want to risk generating their key while connected to the internet? What do you guys think about copay?

[HCP]

I believe that Copay utilises MultiSig for added security... with one of the private keys being generated/stored on the Copay servers. So it needs to be able to connect to their server to be able to complete the wallet creation process.

[aplistir]

I have been playing with copay in testnet, and at least the testnet version does not create a multiSig address, if you don''t want to specifically create a multiSig address.

If copay would create a multiSig address in secret and hide the 2nd private key, that would be really bad, because then you would not control your own bitcoins. And if copay servers would then one day vanish from the net you would lose your coins.

Luckily that is not the case. Copay is an easy wallet that works well. Although I prefer Electrum.

Strange that Copay needs internet connection when creating the wallet. That should be fixed!

[anticonformist]

i mean i just want to create a 2 of 2 multisig wallet in copay, but it will not let you do it without first being connected to the internet, and i want to know why, because that sounds like a red flag right?

[HCP]

Seems like it isn't just MultiSigs after all I just didn't read that much into it... but they seem to promote MultiSig wallets for added security... I think I was confusing Copay with the Electrum+TrustedCoin 2FA setup my bad!

i mean i just want to create a 2 of 2 multisig wallet in copay, but it will not let you do it without first being connected to the internet, and i want to know why, because that sounds like a red flag right?

After reading https://github.com/bitpay/copay/issues/5367 and https://github.com/bitpay/copay/issues/2667

It seems that because your wallet needs to be registered with the BWS (Bitcore-wallet-service)... you need to be connected. People raise valid points that you should still be able to generate a wallet offline and register later, but their service does not currently allow for this.