What's the safest way to store BTC?

[prezbo]

You can keep your wallet in a flash drive and make sure you also put the wallet password in a text document inside the drive as well.

I'm sorry but this is terrible advice.

The most secure way of storing bitcoins is using an offline wallet, strong password and a paper backup in a safe.

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[byt411]

If you are still paranoid, you could still use something like WinRAR to compress the file and split it. Place them in a few USBs. When you need your wallet, you will have to get all the files together. But if you lose 1 of them, then you cannot recover it.

[okaynow]

From the wiki:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_to_set_up_a_secure_offline_savings_wallet

[Abdussamad]

Remember that bitcoin-qt wallet backups need to be refreshed every 100 or so transactions. Meaning you have to redo the backups. If you want backups that only need to be made once and are good for life you need to look at a deterministic wallet like Electrum or Armory.

To restore your bitcoin-qt wallet from backup you just place the wallet.dat file in your data directory:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory

[empoweoqwj]

If you are still paranoid, you could still use something like WinRAR to compress the file and split it. Place them in a few USBs. When you need your wallet, you will have to get all the files together. But if you lose 1 of them, then you cannot recover it.

Again, pretty terrible advice as to how securely store your bitcoins.

[tsoPANos]

google itJust make a paper wallet(google it)
Only a paper wallet can guarantee safety

[Sydboy]

You could run the wallet.dat through GPG and store the output.  Remembering you will then need to backup your privkeys to.
Every thing would need to be stored on different media types.  Including printouts, in a safe. A cheap $40 fireproof safe would be OK.

The most important aspect is to keep secure off site backups. If your house gets robbed or anything happens its no good if your 18 backup devices are missing !

If you are just storing a Bitcoin or two it might be over kill. Better to be safe than sorry I suppose. When DVD drives and USB are no longer supported in the future, like current day floppy drives and Bitcoin is $80,000 a coin one or two might be a sound investment.

[Colin Miner]

Safest way is to encrypt your wallet with a strong password and store it offline, so you are correct in thinking you can store the wallet.dat on a USB flash drive.

Be sure to make more than one backup of your wallet if you plan on storing long term - you never know if the USB drive will stop working after 3 years, or your house burns down, taking your safe contents with it.

I have an online wallet for everyday spending, and an offline wallet for long term savings, with my wallet.dat backups on USB drives I have stored in different places.

2 Factor-Authentication is good, but this still relies on you using a 3rd party service to keep your funds safe, and is still connected to the internet.

If you are really paranoid you can Truecrypt your USB drive with a long passphrase, as well as encrypting your bitcoin wallet through the bitcoin client.

thats it . encrypt it and use a usb stick. and only use high quality usb sticks and more than one. you can also safe it on a cd.

some people love paper wallets. you can google that too.

Flash drives fail, even high quality ones. The problem with flash or any eraseable/rewritable media it that you can loose data off it. This is not a very secure backup  because the data my not be there when you need it most.

[Sydboy]

google itJust make a paper wallet(google it)
Only a paper wallet can guarantee safety

The paper wallet is good, well TBH I would have no problem creating a new wallet I intend to use for cold storage, using a Bitcoin client running on a fresh linux install  - even connected to the net!.

For people new to Bitcoin what if they create a paper wallet but don't fully understand and save the wrong information. A year later they find out they can not load the wallet. Testing the wallet in a client would defeat the purpose of using a pure paper wallet. Again, I'd be happy to test my own.

I think people getting hacked are the ones signing up to scam sites that gather passwords, or click links they should not be clicking, or they don't use a form of 2FA.

People should Install vmware and create random accounts and email addresses if they want to mess around with suspicious emails and websites or not bother to enable security features

[Newar]

Instead of splitting the wallet.dat with winrar (nono), you could split the (possibly BIP38 encrypted) private key(s) using secret sharing. Here's a demo: http://point-at-infinity.org/ssss/demo.html . That way even if a thief steals one part he will still not be able to get to your coins.

[Newar]

google itJust make a paper wallet(google it)
Only a paper wallet can guarantee safety

For people new to Bitcoin what if they create a paper wallet but don't fully understand and save the wrong information. A year later they find out they can not load the wallet. Testing the wallet in a client would defeat the purpose of using a pure paper wallet. Again, I'd be happy to test my own.

Of course run a few test paper wallets with small amounts until you are entirely comfortable with the complete process. For easy spending from a paper wallet check out Mycelium for Android (see my sig).

[Abdussamad]

google itJust make a paper wallet(google it)
Only a paper wallet can guarantee safety

Paper wallets are a bad idea. There are so many gotchas with them:

- You get only one address.

- Spending coins safely is hard. If you make a mistake spending your coins you could end up sending large amounts as fees, have change end up in insecure addresses or worse.

Paper wallets IMO are a primitive device. People just parrot this advice that paper wallets are a good thing but they are not. They are only good for those people selling paper wallet kits. For most users an offline wallet on a dedicated device is infinitely better. You get unlimited addresses and a full fledged bitcoin client that can spend, receive and sign messages as well.

[U1TRA_L0RD]

Just put it in a flash drive and in a safe or bank safe, Seems a little radical people are recommending extreme ideas. -_-

[empoweoqwj]

Just put it in a flash drive and in a safe or bank safe, Seems a little radical people are recommending extreme ideas. -_-

Agreed, with proviso have 2 copies, in case one flash drive goes "rogue"

[U1TRA_L0RD]

Just put it in a flash drive and in a safe or bank safe, Seems a little radical people are recommending extreme ideas. -_-

Agreed, with proviso have 2 copies, in case one flash drive goes "rogue"

Thats right, I would also suggest putting a little needle on it with poison just in case someone grabs it.

[maxman190]

Just put it in a flash drive and in a safe or bank safe, Seems a little radical people are recommending extreme ideas. -_-

Agreed, with proviso have 2 copies, in case one flash drive goes "rogue"

Thats right, I would also suggest putting a little needle on it with poison just in case someone grabs it.

What if I forget that the needle is there and it poisons me. o.o

[U1TRA_L0RD]

Just put it in a flash drive and in a safe or bank safe, Seems a little radical people are recommending extreme ideas. -_-

Agreed, with proviso have 2 copies, in case one flash drive goes "rogue"

Thats right, I would also suggest putting a little needle on it with poison just in case someone grabs it.

What if I forget that the needle is there and it poisons me. o.o

Then you better rush to the hospital, because the person who grabs it wont even know its poison, and they screwed without knowledge that it is poison, you gettin me?

[Newar]

google itJust make a paper wallet(google it)
Only a paper wallet can guarantee safety

Paper wallets are a bad idea. There are so many gotchas with them:

- You get only one address.

- Spending coins safely is hard. If you make a mistake spending your coins you could end up sending large amounts as fees, have change end up in insecure addresses or worse.

Paper wallets IMO are a primitive device. People just parrot this advice that paper wallets are a good thing but they are not. They are only good for those people selling paper wallet kits. For most users an offline wallet on a dedicated device is infinitely better. You get unlimited addresses and a full fledged bitcoin client that can spend, receive and sign messages as well.

You can have as many paper wallets as you like. Check out the "bulk" tab on https://www.bitaddress.org/

For easy spending from a paper wallet check out Mycelium https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=293472.0

[Valle]

Please move this topic to the correct section if this is not the right place.

Alright, so I've been reading some threads saying they got their wallet hacked from blockchain and/or local wallet. Paper wallet isn't an option for me because I lose every single paper I own.... How safe is the 2-factor authentication? Can it be hacked somehow? Is it possible to store the wallet into a flash drive? Because I can just put it on my flash drive and keep it in my safe.

Paper wallet doesn't have to be a paper. It can be, for example, a huge stone with an encrypted private key engraved on it.

[prezbo]

Seems a little radical people are recommending extreme ideas. -_-

When you have hundreds of thousand of dollars worth of bitcoin you can never be too safe. Of course the level of safety depends on the amount of money you have, you probably don't need an offline wallet for 5$.