hold btc for 2 years with Electrum

[network99]

hello
good time

i want to hold btc for 2 years or 3 years !
i want to use Electrum Wallet

There is no problem with this wallet ?

once, i hold btc with anothere wallet for 1 years and finaly after 1 years, i open wallet and saw my btc was 0.0 mBTC !!! and for this reason I'm very scared and i dont like to use  Bitaddress.org and cold wallet


help me

Best Regards

[1714997688]

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[1714997688]

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[1714997688]

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[OmegaStarScream]

Did you run Bitaddress locally  (after cutting off your internet)? If so, then someone must've got access to your paper wallet and retrieved the funds.

There is nothing wrong with running a cold-storage with Electrum but if you're planning to store a large amount, then I would personally recommend you to buy a hardware wallet instead. A ledger nano X or a trezor would be a great choice.

[Botnake]

Hardware wallet is mostly recommended, your bitcoin will be safe since it's always in your possession and anytime you can access it. If you'll hold at least 1 btc for years, I think you can afford to buy a hardware wallet, always focus on security when it comes to holding, electrum is good but you should look for a safer one, and poster above is right, hard wallet is recommended.

[Chikito]

There is no problem at the moment. I used electrum for about 2-3 years. but if you use the same pc, better to reinstall your OS. I'm worried the scammer still watching your pc.

If you setting up your electrum first, better to do it offline, and don't forget to verify your download

[o_e_l_e_o]

Electrum itself is a perfectly safe piece of software provided you ensure you verify it before use, encrypt your wallet with a password, and follow the instructions on using it properly.

However, the biggest risk to you here isn't from a bug or vulnerability in Electrum, but rather from your computer becoming infected with malware or otherwise being targeted by an attacker. There are countless reports of people downloading fake copies of Electrum, or having clipboard malware, or some malware stealing their private keys, and so on. If you are planning to hold a significant amount of bitcoin, then I would look in to running Electrum on a dedicated airgapped (offline) device.

[sheenshane]

i dont like to use  Bitaddress.org and cold wallet[/i]

I suggest not choose this as your cold wallet because it is very tricky to use and might have an error if you are a newbie and might vulnerable to hacks.
If you created your paper wallet properly you might safe but if this your first time, try to send small amount if that is work.  Alternatively, hardware wallet is also good but you need to purchase and spend a few bucks for this.

i want to hold btc for 2 years or 3 years !
i want to use Electrum Wallet

Yes, it considered as good.  As people say above, it been years too I'm using Electrum wallet, so far so good and I don't have encounter any problem, as long as you downloaded correctly and properly created your wallet, you're safe.  As much as possible keep your private key in a safe place.

[ranochigo]

Did you run Bitaddress locally  (after cutting off your internet)? If so, then someone must've got access to your paper wallet and retrieved the funds.

Depends on how you accessed it. I would just download it directly from Github and verify the signature myself minimally, else the script is quite fast to skim through and it would be way better than generating it offline. A certain paper wallet website is known to intentionally introduce a weak RNG and thus generating predictable private keys and that can be injected into the website without the user ever knowing. Not to mention if you get a MITM attack.
Paper wallets are tougher to use as compared to most cold storage methods and/or desktop wallets. Spending them securely is not simple for most and it would be fairly difficult to secure it as well.

[Mariusbtc]

Installed a portable version of electrum in mid 2017 to receive some BTC and then basically forgot about it. Opened it again a few months ago (still the 2017 portable version) and everything was still there.

[NeuroticFish]

There is no problem with this wallet ?

No, but the history shows until now that you may not understand safety.
This means that if you use just Electrum and you're not cautious, you'll lose your coins just as easy as you did with Bitaddress.

Hence I recommend you seriously consider buying a hardware wallet. It can be a cheap one for Bitcoin only, hence under 100 EUR.
Just be careful, since even with a hardware wallet you can lose your coins. You'll have to:
1. Keep your seed always safe and offline.
2. Always use a wallet downloaded from the official site and also verified (I use verified Electrum with HW) to avoid surprises.

Installed a portable version of electrum in mid 2017 to receive some BTC and then basically forgot about it. Opened it again a few months ago (still the 2017 portable version) and everything was still there.

Beware, if you use Electrum on a computer with malware you can easily lose your funds.
The easier approach is to save separately (in a text file) the address/addresses you know you have funds in and check them on a block explorer (since it's only addresses that's public info and no harm can be done).

Also beware, the 2017 Electrum have big issues and may trick you into downloading a malicious Electrum-like looking software. I advise you download the latest version (https://electrum.org/#download) and verify it (https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-verify-your-electrum-download/).

[Stalker22]

If I can hijack this topic for a moment (although my question is not off-topic).

What's the worst that can happen if the Electrum wallet ceases to exist in 5 or 10 years, e.g., the servers shut down and there are no new upgrades?
Will I always have access to my funds? Or is seed backup the only way out from such a scenario?

[Chikito]

What's the worst that can happen if the Electrum wallet ceases to exist in 5 or 10 years, e.g., the servers shut down and there are no new upgrades?
Will I always have access to my funds? Or is seed backup the only way out from such a scenario?

No problem if you own the private keys. The problem is electrum seed is different than others, you couldn't import it to another wallet (BIP39), in this scenario if you were paranoid about that, you must prepare to backup all the private key or just Master Private Key > getmasterprivate in the console.

[ranochigo]

What's the worst that can happen if the Electrum wallet ceases to exist in 5 or 10 years, e.g., the servers shut down and there are no new upgrades?

You can run your own server with little difficulty. I don't foresee it being a problem; the source code should be archive and you can probably build your own copy and run your own server.

Will I always have access to my funds? Or is seed backup the only way out from such a scenario?

If you want to use the seed to extract your private keys, Electrum doesn't follow BIP39 seed format but it's easy to convert their seed phrase into a BIP32 seed and would give you access to your master keys as well as the derived child keys.

[pooya87]

Electrum is not that different from BIP39 when it comes to deriving the BIP32 seed. They both use the same PBKDF2 with same setting and UTF8 decoded mnemonic as its password and for salt they use the optional passphrase that user entered. The only difference is BIP39 adds the word "mnemonic" to it while Electrum adds the word "electrum".
That means you can use any BIP39 code with Electrum mnemonics you just have to remove the checksum validation and make change i mentioned above.

[Mariusbtc]

Beware, if you use Electrum on a computer with malware you can easily lose your funds.
The easier approach is to save separately (in a text file) the address/addresses you know you have funds in and check them on a block explorer (since it's only addresses that's public info and no harm can be done).

Also beware, the 2017 Electrum have big issues and may trick you into downloading a malicious Electrum-like looking software. I advise you download the latest version (https://electrum.org/#download) and verify it (https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-verify-your-electrum-download/).

Thanks for the advice, although an infected computer is generally not a good basis of doing anything finance related.

The more I read about wallets the more I read about hardware ledgers which seem to deliver superior safety. I had another idea of just using a old Laptop with a fresh Linux Mint system to manage the wallets and transactions and nothing more. Risks of malware/trojans would be close to 0, not only because of Linux, but because of no other usage.

[NeuroticFish]

I had another idea of just using a old Laptop with a fresh Linux Mint system to manage the wallets and transactions and nothing more. Risks of malware/trojans would be close to 0, not only because of Linux, but because of no other usage.

If you have a laptop for this job, a laptop that you can guarantee it will never ever go online, you can make yourself a nice cold storage.
All you'll need is a mean of transferring the unsigned transaction to this and the signed transaction from this. Usually an USB stick does the job, although some argue that it's not 100% safe (imho it's close to that though).
Although it's done for a previous version of Electrum, this doc will help you to understand what you have to do: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html
Remember, the laptop that holds the seed/priv.keys has to never ever go online.

[o_e_l_e_o]

There is no need to back up your master private key or individual private keys from an Electrum wallet.

You could use any old copy of Electrum software to restore an Electrum seed phrase and extract the relevant private keys. Even if the devs abandon the project, the GitHub disappears, and your own devices are destroyed, there are thousands of people who would pretty quickly upload copies of the Electrum code for other people to download.

Even if no one did that, you can use any open source piece of software with two very minor changes as explained by pooya87 above to restore an Electrum seed phrase. For example, with https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39, simply open src/js/jsbip39.js, change line 116 to return true; and at line 144 change the word "mnemonic" to the word "electrum". The derivation paths will be different (m/0 for legacy and m/0'/0 for segwit), but it will generate your Electrum addresses just fine.

[HCP]

Even if no one did that, you can use any open source piece of software with two very minor changes as explained by pooya87 above to restore an Electrum seed phrase. For example, with https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39, simply open src/js/jsbip39.js, change line 116 to return true; and at line 144 change the word "mnemonic" to the word "electrum". The derivation paths will be different (m/0 for legacy and m/0'/0 for segwit), but it will generate your Electrum addresses just fine.

Like this: https://github.com/HardCorePawn/electrumBIP39
or the more complete version that validates the checksum: https://github.com/FarCanary/ElectrumSeedTester

The point is... the knowledge on how to go from Electrum seed phrase -> BIP32 seed -> Bitcoin Private Keys is not going to disappear unless the internet disappears... in which case, your bitcoin private keys are worthless anyway

[Pmalek]

The problem is electrum seed is different than others, you couldn't import it to another wallet (BIP39),

Besides the seed conversion method explained above, an Electrum seed can be imported in another wallet as well. It can be imported to BlueWallet. The only condition is that the wallet you want to import can't be empty. I remember this from a post in a similar thread from last year.   

[10_sjdovn_10]

and for this reason I'm very scared and i dont like to use  Bitaddress.org and cold wallet[/i]

Actually the best way to keep bitcoin for long time (for security reason) is cold wallet, that way you should write your private key on paper (if you want)
, and electrum can generate many addresses for you.  first create standard wallet then create a new seed.  menu>addresses

[o_e_l_e_o]

Actually the best way to keep bitcoin for long time (for security reason) is cold wallet, that way you should write your private key on paper (if you want)
, and electrum can generate many addresses for you.  first create standard wallet then create a new seed.  menu>addresses

You seem to be a little confused about how wallets work.

Writing down a private key on a piece of paper is a perfectly reasonable way of creating a cold wallet for long term storage. However, you can't then use Electrum to generate "many addresses" from that wallet. A private key only creates a single address. It is a seed phrase which is used to create many addresses. If you want to back up an entire Electrum wallet or turn an entire Electrum wallet in to a paper wallet, then write down the seed phrase, not individual private keys. If you just want to back up a single address or create a paper wallet of a single address, then write down the associated private key.

Although "classic" paper wallets are a single private key backing up a single address, I would argue that writing down a seed phrase is better for a number of reasons - less prone to errors, don't need to sweep the entire wallet when you spend, no concerns regarding lost change.