Am I safe keeping more than 1 btc in a electrum wallet?

[jitjitmew1]

I prefer electrum cause i have a weak memory and already lost a ledger one time,but is it really safe ?
does something like that hacking of the fake update links showing for people with old electrum clients can happen again ?

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[ranochigo]

I prefer electrum cause i have a weak memory and already lost a ledger one time,but is it really safe ?

The amount of Bitcoins you hold in Electrum doesn't really matter. A hardware wallet is better because it is designed to be secure enough from most attacks.

does something like that hacking of the fake update links showing for people with old electrum clients can happen again ?

That is a social engineering attack. There is no telling of how zero-day exploits or just exploits in general can pop up. There are potential attack vectors and you can't possibly guard against all of them. An airgapped wallet should protect against most but hardware wallet is quite dummy-proof and gives sufficient protection against attacks while maintaining the convenience factors.

[BlackHatCoiner]

As long as you've installed it safely in an airgap device, you have nothing to worry. This includes that you've downloaded the software from electrum.org and that you've verified its signature.

Generally, if you don't feel safe you should install electrum on a freshly-formatted PC in my opinion. As for the phishing links, that's a past. They disabled that JSON vulnerability. Still though, there's no proof that something similar will happen again in the future. It's a matter of common sense and knowledge after all.

If you consider that 1 BTC a lot of money, just buy a hardware wallet and sleep easy.

[Pmalek]

does something like that hacking of the fake update links showing for people with old electrum clients can happen again?

For the time being, that vulnerability has been fixed. Even if something similar were to happen in the future, don't forget that it's phishing. You won't lose your coins unless you click on, download, install, and run the fake application. You see, you have to do plenty of things wrong to be affected. To be on the safe side, don't trust or click on any notifications that might pop-up in the future asking you to download a newer version. You should download the apps manually from the official website only and verify its signatures before you install and open it.

[Charles-Tim]

I prefer electrum cause i have a weak memory and already lost a ledger one time,but is it really safe ?
does something like that hacking of the fake update links showing for people with old electrum clients can happen again ?

Ledger and Trezor can give you the option to hold altcoins, but you want to hold only Bitcoin right? Electrum can be perfect for that. You can learn how to create Electrum offline wallet. If your airgapped Electrum wallet remain airgapped, then your private key is offline. But just always be careful of clipboard and QR code malware just like in case of hardware wallets.

[Lucius]

I prefer electrum cause i have a weak memory and already lost a ledger one time,but is it really safe ?

Electrum or Ledger is as safe as you are sure of all their advantages and disadvantages. A person who keeps 1 BTC in the Electrum wallet on his personal computer (hot wallet), and who at the same time knows where the danger comes from, certainly has greater security than a person who has a hardware wallet and has saved his backup (seed) to e-mail or cloud or something like that.

I kept more than that amount on Electrum before I bought the hardware wallet, although I would never do that again, regardless of all the experience I have - of course, I primarily mean Electrum as a hot wallet.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I kept more than that amount on Electrum before I bought the hardware wallet

I would wager that when you kept >1 BTC on a hot wallet, it was worth a lot less than it is worth today.

It's all down to your own risk profile, but I would guess that for the majority of people on this forum, they shouldn't be storing anywhere near 1 BTC on a hot wallet. Different story if 1 BTC to you is just chump change, but for most people 1 BTC will represent a not-insignificant amount of money. I use hot wallets every day, and have never been hacked or lost any money from them, but I'm still only storing "daily spending" money on them - a couple of hundred dollars worth, at most, unless I am specifically planning to make a larger purchase in the near future and top them up with more for this reason. Anything approaching 1 BTC is either on a hardware wallet, airgapped wallet, paper wallet, or some other much more secure solution.

Assuming 1 BTC isn't chump change for OP, then he should only be storing it in an Electrum wallet if that wallet is airgapped. Storing an amount of money which is significant for you in a hot wallet is too risky. Even if you are 100% confident that there are no more bugs or vulnerabilities in Electrum, your computer itself could still be infected by clipboard malware, keyloggers, have the wallet file stolen from it, and so on.

[jitjitmew1]

does something like that hacking of the fake update links showing for people with old electrum clients can happen again?

For the time being, that vulnerability has been fixed. Even if something similar were to happen in the future, don't forget that it's phishing. You won't lose your coins unless you click on, download, install, and run the fake application. You see, you have to do plenty of things wrong to be affected. To be on the safe side, don't trust or click on any notifications that might pop-up in the future asking you to download a newer version. You should download the apps manually from the official website only and verify its signatures before you install and open it.

I'll keep that in mind.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

If you consider that 1 BTC a lot of money, just buy a hardware wallet and sleep easy.

I'd consider that a large sum, and if I had that much bitcoin I'd probably spread it out between a few wallets just to be safe--although the suggestion of using a hardware wallet exclusively isn't a bad one at all, as long as you keep the seed phrase safe.  It all comes down to that: securing the private keys to your bitcoin once you've chosen a secure wallet.

And I think using Electrum to hold 1BTC should be fine as long as you can ensure you don't lose your backup(s) or seed words.  It's my favorite software wallet, and I've tried using a lot of them. 

Anything approaching 1 BTC is either on a hardware wallet, airgapped wallet, paper wallet, or some other much more secure solution.

Good advice.  I think for probably most members on this forum, a whole bitcoin represents a lot of money and in some cases it could be someone's entire life savings--even at today's price of $31k.  But even if it's not a huge amount to some folks, it's still probably too much to be lax about.  I don't think even wealthy people would feel good about losing $31k because they got hacked or somehow lost access to their wallet.

[dkbit98]

I prefer electrum cause i have a weak memory and already lost a ledger one time,but is it really safe ?

Safety of any wallet depends mostly from people who are using them, so you need to download Electrum from official sources and verify it.
Than it is better to install electrum on some offline computer of laptop without internet access, and you will be much safer.

does something like that hacking of the fake update links showing for people with old electrum clients can happen again ?

Something like this can potentially happen, but not if you are using airgapped computer and if you always verify all the files you downloaded from official website.

How to verify GPG signatures
GPG signatures are a proof that distributed files have been signed by the owner of the signing key. For example, if this website was compromised and the original Electrum files had been replaced, signature verification would fail, because the attacker would not be able to create valid signatures. (Note that an attacker would be able to create valid hashes, this is why we do not publish hashes of our binaries here, it does not bring any security).

In order to be able to verify GPG signatures, you need to import the public key of the signer. Electrum binaries are signed with ThomasV's public key. On Linux, you can import that key using the following command: gpg --import ThomasV.asc. Here are tutorials for Windows and MacOS. When you import a key, you should check its fingerprint using independent sources, such as here, or use the Web of Trust.

https://electrum.org/#download

[Lucius]

I would wager that when you kept >1 BTC on a hot wallet, it was worth a lot less than it is worth today.

Of course, it was worth a lot less than it is today, but I still didn't feel safe with this way of storing my private keys - and no matter how careful I was, I was always aware of the possibility that one day I would open a wallet and the balance would be 0. Although I slept much more peacefully after buying the hardware wallet, after the Ledger fiasco I began to have big doubts about that company and their devices (although the devices are not compromised), but the reputation was literally lost overnight.

It is not easy to be your own bank even for those who have experience, and I can only imagine what it is like for those who have no experience and are quite confused about everything. For them, the best advice is to invest in knowledge first, and then in Bitcoin.

[NeuroticFish]

I prefer electrum cause i have a weak memory and already lost a ledger one time,but is it really safe ?
does something like that hacking of the fake update links showing for people with old electrum clients can happen again ?

Anything can happen. It's not that Electrum would be unsafe, but it depends a lot on how (un)safe the computer/laptop is.
So unless you have the knowledge and willingness to keep 1 BTC+ on airgapped cold wallet, I also recommend you use a hardware wallet. And it doesn't matter that much if you lose your hardware wallet as long as you still have the safely kept seed (or course that after losing your hardware wallet you'll have to move your funds away, just in case)