about bitcoin cold storage

[Mulder_the_truth_is_here]

Am I able to just move the appdata / roaming / Bitcoin wallet.dat  onto a USB drive, and take that offline for personal storage?

[takilleur]

Yes, and you have to update it anytime you add a new key to your wallet

[Sonny]

Yes, and you have to update it anytime you add a new key to your wallet

Not anytime.
Bitcoin-qt pre-generate 100 keys for you...

[trumbadera]

Am I able to just move the appdata / roaming / Bitcoin wallet.dat  onto a USB drive, and take that offline for personal storage?

It is wallet backup, not cold storage.
You might use paper wallets or Armory offline for better cold storage

[Mulder_the_truth_is_here]

It's not a wallet backup if I move the entire wallet.dat into a usb that I take offline right?

How come I cant get a straight answer here.

The truth is out there.

[Colin Miner]

If this is the only copy of the wallet you can easily loose your coins. USB flash drives fail at the worst time. Its not recommended.

[Holliday]

It's not cold storage if the wallet was created on a networked computer. Cold storage is born offline and remains offline.

Use multiple backups, you wouldn't want to lose your bitcoins thanks to data loss.

[Mr. Socko]

You are probably secure enough but if you are talking about huge sums of cash the best way to go about it is to download one of the paper wallet generators online, boot up to a computer not connected to the internet with something like "hiren's bootcd" and generate a paper wallet or three.. I personally would not put any more than 5% of my total bitcoin balance into any given paper wallet myself I'd spread them out into multiple ones. Once you have these addresses set up you can transfer your coin to them from your online wallet and they should be fairly secure.

Then you encrypt these paper wallet images into a truecrypt drive or file, make copies of them with a printer while using hiren's bootcd , laminate them, stick a copy in a safe deposit box, or whatever. Secure offline cold storage.

[Meuh6879]

It's not a wallet backup if I move the entire wallet.dat into a usb that I take offline right?

i use the same process to secure my bitcoins amount from a compromise PC.

1) run bitcoin-QT
2) save wallet.dat in multiple SAME files in different USB (i use microSD).
3) delete the wallet.dat in the PC
4) run bitcoin-QT (with 0 BTC and unsecure wallet)

when i want to view the evolution of my wallet

1) shutdown the unsecure bitcoin-QT
2) delete the wallet.dat
3) copy-paste the (real) wallet.dat in the PC (from the USB location)
4) run bitcoin-QT
5) check the "upgrade" automated received from the bitcoin network

---

In this bitcoin network, only the door (compromise PC) can stealth the bitcoin amount.
Not the "trace" of your bitcoin (wallet.dat)





At the end, i think that i will create a single PC with a RAM/ROM loader to only launch bitcoin-QT with a wallet.dat on a stick (and so, the blockchain main folder).

[chaserjames1]

just to be clear, cold storage refers to paper wallet right?

[sssubito]

No, as far as I remember cold storage refers to offline handling of a bitcoin wallet, i.e. it is not used on an online computer which has a 'hot' wallet.

Offline generated paper wallets can be also seen as cold storage. You can deposit bitcoins inside from hot wallets. As long as the associated private keys of those paper wallets aren't imported to an online bitcoin client or get stolen, they remain safe cold storage.

I may be wrong, please correct me. I don't own enough bitcoins to go through all this hassle. I care a lot for the security of my computer and don't blindly click here and there or install unsafe crap from anywhere that screams at me to do so. (Consider using safer and less prominent OS than Windows...)

[acoindr]

just to be clear, cold storage refers to paper wallet right?

Cold storage is a term now thought of as the safest way to store coins.

To understand the safest way to store coins you have to understand how coins can be stolen. The private key is the key to the coins. Anyone who has access to the private key has access to the coins. This means if some company uses all paper wallets but is careless about who has access to them it's probably not safe, and this can't be thought of as 'cold storage'.

Cold storage generally means not only are the private keys not on a computer with any Internet exposure, but they are typically locked away too, like in a safe/safe deposit box. As long as the private keys are printed on some medium (or multiple mediums) which will not typically become unreadable, the coins they protect are then thought to be in cold storage.

Note: addresses can continue receiving coins while the private keys are safely locked away in cold storage.

[Sonny]

No, as far as I remember cold storage refers to offline handling of a bitcoin wallet, i.e. it is not used on an online computer which has a 'hot' wallet.

Offline generated paper wallets can be also seen as cold storage. You can deposit bitcoins inside from hot wallets. As long as the associated private keys of those paper wallets aren't imported to an online bitcoin client or get stolen, they remain safe cold storage.

I may be wrong, please correct me. I don't own enough bitcoins to go through all this hassle. I care a lot for the security of my computer and don't blindly click here and there or install unsafe crap from anywhere that screams at me to do so. (Consider using safer and less prominent OS than Windows...)

Cold storage is a term now thought of as the safest way to store coins.

To understand the safest way to store coins you have to understand how coins can be stolen. The private key is the key to the coins. Anyone who has access to the private key has access to the coins. This means if some company uses all paper wallets but is careless about who has access to them it's probably not safe, and this can't be thought of as 'cold storage'.

Cold storage generally means not only are the private keys not on a computer with any Internet exposure, but they are typically locked away too, like in a safe/safe deposit box. As long as the private keys are printed on some medium (or multiple mediums) which will not typically become unreadable, the coins they protect are then thought to be in cold storage.

Note: addresses can continue receiving coins while the private keys are safely locked away in cold storage.

Thanks for your clarifications, both of you.