brain wallets - good or bad

[bob123]

Brain wallets are something a good idea. This is the most trustable wallets to use.

What do you mean with "most trustable wallets" to use?
With brainwallet OP referes to wallets generated from a password which will be stored in your brain.
So 1) there is noone you would have to "trust" as a 'walletprovider'. And 2) There are far better options for a wallet.
With normal passwords you are cutting the search space for the priv key to ~1/20 compared with some RNG (considering enough entropy).

[karmakeddon]

Best way to use brain wallets? Create your own language, just like how Tolkien created his own language for the elves. With your own language, it would be very hard to brute force as this would not exist in any dictionaries or any documents online or written in books.

[valeru.aver]

To create a strong password-remember-record-record again and record it)

[VegaAISolutions]

If you wanna get crazy you could just use a Diceware passphrase. Look it up. one in 1,719,070,799,748,422,591,028,658,176 chance

Or just use a 12 word phrase of random people, places, things, slang and make up your own saying that slips off your tongue easy. Say it over and over again to yourself when nobody else is around.

And don't piss someone off with a quantum computer.  

[paparadis]

IMHO - not a very good idea..

[salihno71]

This is awful idea to say at least. The very nature of such passwords would make them guessable by potential attacker if only he/she would invest sufficient amount of time and energy to investigate owner's life and preferences. And you can always forget a part especially if you're not using it for a long time.

[Jerry Patterson]

Brain wallets are not as reliable as TREZOR!

I have three Trezor wallets and have spread my cryptos across all the three.

[Jake052478]

I guess this is very dangerous if you are not really good at memorizing.  I have read some article regarding this brainwallet that if you forgot it, your bitcoins will be lost forever.  I don't think this is a good idea after all. Only if you have good memory techniques for you to easily recall you bitcoin address or so.

[shadow123]

Hello.. Nowadays what is the secure wallet for digital currency?

[hopeAo]

ive been reading a fair amount  about brain wallets. they fascinate me

ive heard some pros and some cons. the main reason against them seems to be that

1- people use very common phrases (lyrics to songs etc)
2- people have poor memory

but if one were to use an uncommon phrase (say a foreign language idomatic expression) and they securely stored the phrase, would the brain wallet fail

additionally ive seen some brain wallets add an extra password to help the seed

given the above assumptions, at a technical level, is there reason to believe brain wallets are not to be used other than what popular opinions feel?

A Brain Wallet is the one when user remembers their mnemonic phrase or the private key and never writes it down. That is, all is stored in the brain only for security reasons.

So why have a brain wallet and still write you private key or mnemonic phrase down on a piece of paper?

To me brain wallet is not good because it is difficult to manage in case the user forgets his/her mnemonic paraphrase or private key due to any mishap such as  accidents, brain diseases/ damage or even mental stress, he /she will lose his/her crypto-coins and funds.

[hatshepsut93]

ive been reading a fair amount  about brain wallets. they fascinate me

ive heard some pros and some cons. the main reason against them seems to be that

1- people use very common phrases (lyrics to songs etc)
2- people have poor memory

but if one were to use an uncommon phrase (say a foreign language idomatic expression) and they securely stored the phrase, would the brain wallet fail

additionally ive seen some brain wallets add an extra password to help the seed

given the above assumptions, at a technical level, is there reason to believe brain wallets are not to be used other than what popular opinions feel?

It's a well-known fact that humans are usually a bad source of randomness, but our memory is actually not as bad as it might seem. Yes, we almost always forget passwords that we've created a few months ago and typed only once, but if you are repeating some words every day, you won't forget them unless you will forget about repeating them for some period of time. I myself memorized my 12 word seed that was generated by Electrum and I've never forgotten it since I started doing it, although I've messed up the order of 2 words when I wasn't doing this exercise for a few days. While this method should never be your main backup for your seed, it's a great additional backup - if your house will burn and your hardware wallet, piece of paper with seed, paper wallet and PC will get destroyed, the seed in your memory might save your coins. There's also additional benefits to memorizing your seed, like the ability to cross borders without risking carrying your wallet/backup with you.

[ricky68]

brain wallet is the most secure of all only if u don loose your mind

[Samarkand]

...I myself memorized my 12 word seed that was generated by Electrum and I've never forgotten it since I started doing it, although I've messed up the order of 2 words when I wasn't doing this exercise for a few days. While this method should never be your main backup for your seed, it's a great additional backup - if your house will burn and your hardware wallet, piece of paper with seed, paper wallet and PC will get destroyed, the seed in your memory might save your coins. There's also additional benefits to memorizing your seed, like the ability to cross borders without risking carrying your wallet/backup with you.

I´m envious of your good memory!

However, I think even if you are able to memorize the mnemonic seed you should still keep an additional backup somewhere.
You have no guarantee that your memory will work as good as it does now when you are older. This is not even taking into account
the onset of an illness that would compromise your ability to successfully retrieve the mnemonic seed (e.g. Alzheimer or dementia).

I concede that the use of a brain wallet is great for carrying a huge amount of BTC across a border. This should be doable within a few hours
and therefore the potential pitfalls of a brain wallet like the onset of an illness or an accident and so on don´t really apply.

[rexter]

Brain Wallets have a significant disadvantage that means they have a higher probability of being hacked. That is that us humans are pretty predictable in what we use as a passphrase and password, and hacking technology has got a lot better through the use of rainbow tables and dictionary attacks. Also a few large databases of passwords have been leaked meaning so it is quite easy to hash all these passwords and then see if their corresponding address exists as an active address on the blockchain – if so you have the private key and therefore access to the funds.

[marky89]

brain wallet is the most secure of all only if u don loose your mind

I can understand why beginners think this is true, because they only think of Bitcoin wallet hacks as "computer intrusions." The problem is that your mind is not capable of being truly random when you are generating the brain wallet.

Brain wallets usually end up being very low entropy because of the way the human mind works. In turn, you are always at a much higher risk of a dictionary attack or similar kind of brute forcing to decrypt your private key.

Also a few large databases of passwords have been leaked meaning so it is quite easy to hash all these passwords and then see if their corresponding address exists as an active address on the blockchain – if so you have the private key and therefore access to the funds.

That's interesting. It never occurred to me that the massive bitcointalk leaks, for instance, might be valuable as brain wallet decrypters. I wonder how many people generate a brain wallet based on compromised passwords/passphrases, only to have them immediately wiped when they fund them.....

[dacsee]

If used with high-entropic-generated passwords, Brain wallets can be extremely effective. Otherwise they can be quite dangerous

[Pavelec]

Brain Wallets have a significant disadvantage that means they have a higher probability of being hacked...

[mrproblem]

For brain wallets a hard social engineering work can be the key.
Phrases in your brain can be consist of your history and your future.
If you have something which doesn't known by a second one that means "the secret of you" you can use it as a phrase, but then this would mean you uncovered "your secret" and now it means it is not a secret.
If it is not a secret that means it can be found.
So randomization can be more safer then brain wallets.. 

[FundFantasy]

ive been reading a fair amount  about brain wallets. they fascinate me

ive heard some pros and some cons. the main reason against them seems to be that

1- people use very common phrases (lyrics to songs etc)
2- people have poor memory

but if one were to use an uncommon phrase (say a foreign language idomatic expression) and they securely stored the phrase, would the brain wallet fail

additionally ive seen some brain wallets add an extra password to help the seed

given the above assumptions, at a technical level, is there reason to believe brain wallets are not to be used other than what popular opinions feel?

Hey friend

Every wallet has its pros and cons, were adding you a link to few top recommended wallets. Good luck !
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/10-bitcoin-wallet-apps-you-should-consider-using-today_us_5999ed74e4b033e0fbdec566

[dogs2thefilm]

Definitely bad in my opinion. At least, this shouldn't be the only way you store your words. Seems riskier to me than just leaving on an exchange if you're going to do this.