Why is the brain wallet not better than regular paper wallet?

[LoyceMobile]

@pooya87: I didn't mean to send it to an address owned by a family member. The private key is stored in the paper wallet accompanying the signed message.

[pooya87]

@pooya87: I didn't mean to send it to an address owned by a family member. The private key is stored in the paper wallet accompanying the signed message.

i guess i missed that. i thought the paper wallet was the cold storage.
removed my post because the solution makes sense now
i still think playing with SIGHASH types is a cool way of doing it though.

[o_e_l_e_o]

With your set up Loyce, you would also need to remember to update the transactions every time you removed from your cold storage, so the transaction remained valid. You could add to your cold storage safely enough, but obviously the new coins wouldn't be included until you updated. I suppose you could keep your cold storage inputs split up in to, say, 0.5 BTC sized UTXOs rather than consolidating in to one input to partially mitigate this.

Now, would there be a way to set up a time locked "sweep all" transaction? That would be interesting.

[SirLancelot]

Remember that cryptocurrency is not the only thing that you come across every day or you have engaged yourself in, you cannot over work your brain, ordinary password to email, people do forget it over time as time goes on.

I remember that I created an access database one day which we used for a year, I actually memorized the password during that time that I and the people I developed it for used it, but we had an issue that took us away for 2 years, fighting to win the company back from government, you would not imagine that I forgot the password completely and everything that I tried to remember it till date was to no avail, so sometimes, no matter how smart you are, brain wallet can fail, but the only thing you can do is to make use of both brain and paper wallet.

[funchiestz]

I don't understand why people say BTC brain wallet is a bad idea.  Of course I have to be careful how I write the seed words.  For example, if I used words such as "roof Tokyo 1313 cucumber ....  wrestling 62 blue," there is no way someone can guess them intentionally or otherwise.  If I wrote the words down on a piece of paper somewhere safe, and if water damage smeared a bunch of the characters, the chance of me guessing the correct characters would be immensely better than guessing random characters. Am I missing something? 

I can't say that the brain wallet is not a good option. But I also have to say that the paper wallet is one of the safest options. Actually, I've been using a paper wallet for years, and I haven't had the slightest problem.

[LoyceV]

With your set up Loyce, you would also need to remember to update the transactions every time you removed from your cold storage, so the transaction remained valid.

Correct. But for the "hit by a bus"-scenario I don't think every small transaction matters, it's about securing access to the majority of your coins.

I thought it was more or less common sense to know this method, since it's so "standard", but considering the positive response in this topic, I'm going to create a dedicated thread for it when I have the time (inclusing a real example).

Now, would there be a way to set up a time locked "sweep all" transaction? That would be interesting.

I think that is possible with the Time lock thing, but you won't be able to access it on your own before the Time lock expires. And I feel far too uncomfortable with it to try it. I don't like storing Bitcoin in methods I don't completely understand.

[kryptqnick]

Do you really think is it worth to do all this effort, instead of just buy a hardware wallet because you want to customize?
The key here is safety, and for now the hardware wallets are one of the best methods available and it's simple

I believe my 1 btc will be worth $100,000 in 10 years.  So, I don't mind having to do all that work if I have to.  Just for the sake of education, would you disagree with me that the wallet method I described is less secure than a Ledger nano S?  If you do disagree, can you explain why?  Thanks.   

Look, leaving clues about the remaining words and not having them written down anywhere makes your money safe, sure. But what if you somehow forget the words, stop understanding the clues? Then your investment is lost forever. And it might be that the probability of you forgetting the words is higher than your wallet getting hacked. I use 2FA and I feel pretty safe. There are a confirmation link on my email address and a temporary personal code sent to my phone. Oh, and also a password which is a mixture of words and symbols. The password is stored in a way I find secure. There's a chance that it can be stolen and hacked, but the chance is low, and I am okay with that.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Correct. But for the "hit by a bus"-scenario I don't think every small transaction matters, it's about securing access to the majority of your coins.

Sure, but if your cold storage is one big input, even if you spend a single Satoshi from it then your printed transactions will now be invalid and need updated.

I thought it was more or less common sense to know this method

I've never put much thought in to inheritance, since my back up is my wife knowing how to access all our wallets and knowing where all our seed phrases are stored.