Gold has security issues too

[cypherdoc]

as a gold/silver bug since 2005, i have finally sold off 98% of my bullion holdings and moved it into bitcoin.

it occurred to me after removing the last remaining ounces from my home safe that i am much relieved to not be storing a large stash of bullion at home anymore.  when leaving on vacations with my family like we will be doing for a week this coming Friday, i would always worry in the back of my mind that my house might get burglarized.

at one time i had a stash stored at Credit Suisse in Switzerland but got spooked about them during the banking crisis of 2008 before bringing it home.  i also considered storing it in a safety deposit box at my local bank but was advised that if the banking system went insolvent they could repossess it. 

i even looked at storing it offsite in a private vault but it was very expensive.  so i just decided to put it into 2 separate safes here at home. 

now i no longer have to worry about it.

and you know what?  i feel MORE secure storing all my bitcoins in an offline wallet, the balance of which i can check in the block chain at any time...

[1714885240]

1714885240

[BitcoinPorn]

Ah, the worry of storing physical gold in the house when going on cross country vacations, a problem I know all too well.  Viva La Bitcoin.

[Bobnova]

What if your computer containing your wallet gets stolen?
Computers are a nice theft target, after all.
That goes double for laptops, especially on vacation.

The liveCD method is good, though it depends on the label on the CD of course.  And on the CD being stored somewhere that prevents it from getting ripped off with all the rest of your cds/dvds.

Nothing is safe, really.
I think gold is rather less likely to plunge to 10% of it's current value than BTCs are, a good solid government/bank backed campaign would do terrible things to bitcoin, while gold is relatively safe in that way.

Gold in a coffee can buried in the back yard is probably the safest, really.

[cypherdoc]

What if your computer containing your wallet gets stolen?
Computers are a nice theft target, after all.
That goes double for laptops, especially on vacation.

The liveCD method is good, though it depends on the label on the CD of course.  And on the CD being stored somewhere that prevents it from getting ripped off with all the rest of your cds/dvds.

Nothing is safe, really.
I think gold is rather less likely to plunge to 10% of it's current value than BTCs are, a good solid government/bank backed campaign would do terrible things to bitcoin, while gold is relatively safe in that way.

Gold in a coffee can buried in the back yard is probably the safest, really.

i have used the Live CD Ubuntu technique with my wallet having never touched the hard drive and made multiple copies stored on Ironkeys at the bank and in a couple of other locations.  they have Silver Bullet protection which means they have to connect over the Internet to ironkey.com to open.  not more than 10 attempts can be made to the encrypted password before it locks down.  by the time they've stolen it, i'd know about it and have activated the self destruct function (Silver Bullet) which will destroy all the data on the key once opened.  most burglars won't even know whats on it and probably wouldn't steal them even if they got in.

gold and silver coins can be identified immediately and take up alot of space.

[ampkZjWDQcqT]

I would rather have encrypted the wallet with GNU PG and stored it in paper or optical disk.

[cypherdoc]

I would rather have encrypted the wallet with GNU PG and stored it in paper or optical disk.

please elaborate.

[NO_SLAVE]

I really dont see BTC being around in 5,000-10,000-25,000-2 million years.  Do you?

Gold will be laying ,or being worn, somewhere.

[CurbsideProphet]

as a gold/silver bug since 2005, i have finally sold off 98% of my bullion holdings and moved it into bitcoin.

I hope your bullion was only a small percentage of your investment portfolio.  If not putting 98% into anything, let alone something in its infancy, is a major gamble.  I hope you don't have any dependents.  The last thing I would want to see is someone getting wiped out so I wish you the best of luck but yikes....

[DamienBlack]

I really dont see BTC being around in 5,000-10,000-25,000-2 million years.  Do you?

Gold will be laying or being worn somewhere.

I'm not sure I even believe humans will be around 2 million years from now. All that matters to me is the next 20-50 years. This guy isn't trying to pass on the wealth to his descendants 5,000 years in the future.

In 5,000 year, I expect gold will be a by-product of our cold-fusion reactors. There'll be more of it than we know what to do with. There will be landfills full of the stuff.

If gold has any value in the distant future, it will be manufactured. Completely silly to think gold is a good store of value for the next 25,000-2,000,000 years.

[GeniuSxBoY]

Yeh, now you have to worry about

1) harddrive crashes
2) theft of your laptop
3) harddrive physical failures


I guess that's it.

[DamienBlack]

Yeh, now you have to worry about

1) harddrive crashes
2) theft of your laptop
3) harddrive physical failures


I guess that's it.

1 and 3 are the same thing. Encryption and backup solves everything. And it looks like he has gone above and beyond that.

[Giraffe.BC]

The problem with gold is that speculators have already driven the price way too high to be an effective hedge against inflation.  Bitcoins at least still have room to grow.

[cypherdoc]

The problem with gold is that speculators have already driven the price way too high to be an effective hedge against inflation.  Bitcoins at least still have room to grow.

precisely

[MoonShadow]

I would rather have encrypted the wallet with GNU PG and stored it in paper or optical disk.

please elaborate.

How would he do that?

[cypherdoc]

%

as a gold/silver bug since 2005, i have finally sold off 98% of my bullion holdings and moved it into bitcoin.

I hope your bullion was only a small percentage of your investment portfolio.  If not putting 98% into anything, let alone something in its infancy, is a major gamble.  I hope you don't have any dependents.  The last thing I would want to see is someone getting wiped out so I wish you the best of luck but yikes....

i said 98% OF MY BULLION.

[cypherdoc]

I would rather have encrypted the wallet with GNU PG and stored it in paper or optical disk.

please elaborate.

How would he do that?

by explaining why he thinks GPG, paper, or optical disk is a superior storage technique than what i've done.

[MoonShadow]

Gold in a coffee can buried in the back yard is probably the safest, really.

What's your address again?

(MoonShadow wonders where he put that metal detector)

[cypherdoc]

Yeh, now you have to worry about

1) harddrive crashes
2) theft of your laptop
3) harddrive physical failures


I guess that's it.

once you've moved your savings wallet offline properly you don't have to worry about those issues until you want to dig into it.  for me, that'll be at least  10 yrs from now.

[ampkZjWDQcqT]

I would rather have encrypted the wallet with GNU PG and stored it in paper or optical disk.

please elaborate.

Sure.

Regarding GNU PG, a quote from it's official site: "GnuPG is the GNU project's complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC4880" (Links added). You can use GNU PG to encrypt the wallet. I suggest diceware for the password. You can dump the encrypted file to a CD or paper with PaperBack or similar.  If you opt for this, remember to make sure the wallet don't gets into hard disk. There is no need to use a Live CD, if you use GNU/Linux (I suggest you do) just create a new user with the proper umask and /home in a tmpfs mount.

The point is to avoid banks or any other third party. Free feel to ask if you need more information in some point.

[cypherdoc]

I really dont see BTC being around in 5,000-10,000-25,000-2 million years.  Do you?

Gold will be laying ,or being worn, somewhere.

Bitcoin is for big thinkers.