Generating a Paper Wallet on Chromebook

[GovernmentMole]

Hi everyone,

I hope I'm putting this thread i nthe right place. Apologies if I'm not. I'm new to Bitcoin and am researching the safest way to generate a BTC paper wallet. I have watched videos, read articles, and read threads on here, and it seems everyone has a slightly different way to do it. I have a Chromebook with Linux (beta) on it, and I also have access to a Macbook. Is it necessary to get another chromebook, or to load Ubuntu on a USB and run that (On the Macbook)? I'm looking for the easiest and still safest way to do this with the devices I currently have. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. 

[jackg]

This all depends on how much btc you want to store, if it's value is more than 10x of a cheap but well built laptop, you might be better off getting one and keeping it permenantly offline.

If you're not going in with thst much just jet, I'd suggest booting Ubuntu from a USB and download electrum. Make a new standard wallet writing down your seed and put your public key on your chrome book with electrum on it so you can send funds there, keep several copied of the seed mnemonic and potentially keep a copy on another USB drive or other media (encrypted) for extra reproducibility.

[GovernmentMole]

Thanks for the response. I'm only going to be storing a small amount for now, so it seems the second option may be better.

[BitMaxz]

Generating a paper wallet is easy you just need to browse on bitaddress.org and move the mouse until you reach 100%.
After that, you can click the paper wallet and click print. So you must have a printer to generate a paper wallet.

Don't do this online you can download the opensource from https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org then open it while the chromebook is offline.
then print it while you are offline. So, you can generate a safe paper wallet.

The above suggestion is another option as a cold wallet which is also a good option if you want to save a large amount of bitcoin from your cold storage.

[o_e_l_e_o]

-snip-

This is probably the easiest method, but there are a couple of additional security precautions you should take:

The downloaded bitaddress site should be run on an offline live OS. Ubuntu from a USB stick as you mentioned would work just fine. Just make sure the live OS is always offline - transfer the bitaddress site to the live OS using a USB stick.

The printer you use to print the paperwallet should be a "dumb" printer. Modern smart printers keep copies of files that they print in their memory, and some printers are even susceptible to malware. Use an older printer without an internal memory, if you can. If you can't, make sure your smart printer is also offline, and figure out how to wipe its memory/cache.

[GovernmentMole]

Thanks,

So to summarize:

Download the bitaddress link from Github to a USB drive that has Ubuntu on it. Boot the USB on a device that is offline, and print on a dumb printer.

A couple additional questions
1. How trusted is Github? I see it's open source like bitaddress...
2. Can I do all of this on a Chromebook? I've seen others simply save the bitaddress.org site directly as a web archive on the USB drive, but chrome OS doesn't support web archives, will it support the Github file, or is that part of the function of Ubuntu?

Am I being too paranoid thinking the Ubutnu I download into the USB drive could be corrupted? lol

[jackg]

It's very unlikely Ubuntu will be cracked and you can normally verify its signature when you download it on a chromebook.

I don't know why they recommended bit address when a mnemonic seed would give you a lot of addresses and will be less likely to cause errors. It also depends on how long you store this stuff for too, I have papers from 15 years ago that are still good but if the qr code you print off is small, you run the risk of it not being scannable when you come to redeem your funds.

And from the bitcoin wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet

Paper wallet
A paper wallet is the name given to an obsolete and unsafe method of storing bitcoin which was popular between 2011 and 2016. It works by having a single private key and bitcoin address, usually generated by a website, being printed out onto paper.

It's unsafe because a tiny bit of water can damage the ink thst you write a key with and everything's gone... Writing a mnemonic isn't much better and I'd urge you to buy at least some sort of waterproof case for it.

[GovernmentMole]

Haha yeah I understand that paper itself is not very durable, but I don't think that makes paper wallets obsolete. I have heard of people engraving the private key into something, does that make sense?

[joniboini]

It does. Well, it depends on how long you plan to store your wallet. You don't have to go that far if you plan on renewing your paper wallet every year or so. Not to mention you can laminate it to extend the durability.

There are people selling metal for this if you want to check them out. Keep in mind that you still need to think about how to securely store them.

[pooya87]

there is a decision that you have to make before you start making a paper wallet and that is about when and how you are going to spend the bitcoins you are storing in that paper wallet.
* if you are going to store some amount for a long time (a couple of years) then spend it 1 time in the future then choose bitaddress method to generate 1 private key which you print on a paper.
* if you are going to do the same but you may want to spend the coins more regularly than just once, then you should choose a different path which i will explain below.

the second option:
the reason for it is because after you use a paper wallet you should throw it away which means for example if you store 1BTC in that paper and wanted to spend 0.6BTC you have to send the 0.6 to wherever it is and send the remaining 0.4BTC to a new paper wallet that you create.
to solve this, you can use a seed which you derive different keys from. you can download a secure HD wallet software, generate a mnemonic and print that on paper. a good option would be Electrum.
now each time you want to spend, you can create a new key pair and send the remaining funds to that new address instead.

one more point:
you may want to think about encrypting whatever you print (a single private key or a mnemonic) to add an extra layer of security.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I agree with above: storing a seed phrase is a better option than storing a single private key, as it makes it easier to spend the coins in the future with less risk that you lose your change, and it also means you can avoid using a printer altogether and just hand write the seed phrase. Here is the process I would follow if I was going to do this today:

Use an old laptop which is permanently airgapped by physically removing the WiFi card.
Boot to a live OS from a USB stick (I would probably use Tails since I am familiar with it, but Ubuntu is fine provided it is a clean download and verified).
Download Ian Coleman's BIP39 site from GitHub here (https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39/releases), verify it, and transfer it to the airgapped machine on another USB stick, SD card, etc.
Run it, generate your own entropy manually by flipping a coin or rolling some dice, enter the entropy in to the site, and write down the seed phrase by hand on two separate pieces of paper.
Generate a long and complex passphrase, either using a similar random process such as flipping a coin, or perhaps using an open-source password generator such as KeePass (again, transferred to the airgapped machine via a USB stick or similar).
Write this passphrase down by hand on two separate pieces of paper.
Enter your seed and passphrase in to the Ian Coleman site to generate a receiving address to send funds to.
Store the 4 pieces of paper securely and separately.