Thinking of separating my holdings into two physical locations.

[Poker Player]

I wasn't quite sure how to summarize it in the title just as I'm not quite sure if this is the exact place where the thread should go. Let me explain and you tell me.

So far I have been managing my Bitcoin holdings using a HW in a location and in the same location I have had the seeds well hidden and written down on a piece of paper.

As I accumulate, I have been thinking of buying another HW and storing it in a vacation home, just like the seeds, in the same way, written down and hidden. It would be about handling half of my holdings at each site.

What do you think? I don't think it would make sense, for example to have copies of the seeds of both HW's at both sites because in a $5 wrench attack I could lose everything.

One drawback I see is that if the house burns down I would lose everything I manage with one HW, but well, that risk I also had now, having 100% of the management of my holdings in one site.

[jackg]

The safest thing to do is probably to split the funds between two hardware wallets and store one at your regular house and one at your vacation home (each with their respective seeds).

There are other alternatives too. You could store both phrases in the same place and extend them with words you can remember (such as 4 words you keep encrypted) keeping an eighth of each of the money on the "normal" nmemonics in a way they could be attacked but you might want to do something special with the larger amounts of funds (such as mixing them or delaying a withdrawal after you've bought) to try to hide the link between them still if one can be made. You could store the extended seed words in self storage, a vault or with a relative of you have one you can trust well.

[Sarah Azhari]

As I accumulate, I have been thinking of buying another HW and storing it in a vacation home, just like the seeds, in the same way, written down and hidden. It would be about handling half of my holdings at each site.

What do you think? I don't think it would make sense, for example to have copies of the seeds of both HW's at both sites because in a $5 wrench attack I could lose everything.

If I were you I don't want to buy many HW for just to keep my holding. So, if you have a safe place and safety to write down the seed then you just have to think how to keep the seed safe to restore it to HW if you need it. HW is just media or agent, you can easy to swept and reset it into the new or old seed in every time.

You can create a new seed on the old HW, generate an address and send the fund then reset it. You can repeat it many times as how many you can split the holding.

[pooya87]

I personally don't like splitting the coins in the storage among more than one storage, instead I spread the backup into multiple locations. Obviously it can not be a simple seed phrase anybody can read and possibly steal if they get their hands on it, so I simply wrote a small script that would encrypt the seed phrase then convert it back to a mnemonic which I then write on the paper which can be safely stored anywhere.

[Poker Player]

I personally don't like splitting the coins in the storage among more than one storage, instead I spread the backup into multiple locations. Obviously it can not be a simple seed phrase anybody can read and possibly steal if they get their hands on it, so I simply wrote a small script that would encrypt the seed phrase then convert it back to a mnemonic which I then write on the paper which can be safely stored anywhere.

The bad thing about this is that it doesn't save you from a $5 wrench attack. You have to have a lot of willpower if they are hitting you in the head with the wrench to not give them the seeds and decrypt them right there.

Separating into two sides, you would lose 50% only. Although in this case the best thing to do is to be cautious, nobody knows that you have Bitcoin, but you can never be sure.

I have no idea about encryption. Is it difficult?

There are other alternatives too. You could store both phrases in the same place and extend them with words you can remember (such as 4 words you keep encrypted) keeping an eighth of each of the money on the "normal" nmemonics in a way they could be attacked but you might want to do something special with the larger amounts of funds (such as mixing them or delaying a withdrawal after you've bought) to try to hide the link between them still if one can be made. You could store the extended seed words in self storage, a vault or with a relative of you have one you can trust well.

I will keep this in mind for the future. As your Bitcoin savings grow it's nice to consider other possibilities. Plus I think it's a good idea to have something at hand for potential robbers. Usually if they get something they are more likely to leave.

[pooya87]

The bad thing about this is that it doesn't save you from a $5 wrench attack. You have to have a lot of willpower if they are hitting you in the head with the wrench to not give them the seeds and decrypt them right there.

Separating into two sides, you would lose 50% only. Although in this case the best thing to do is to be cautious, nobody knows that you have Bitcoin, but you can never be sure.

That's true.
Here is an idea: how about using the BIP39 extra word? That way you can create two wallets from the same seed phrase. The one without the extra word could contain a tiny amount and the one with the extra word could contain the rest.
In an attack you just give up the seed phrase which they see the funds in and steal like $10 without knowing there is an extension that holds the rest without having any way of extracting it either.

I have no idea about encryption. Is it difficult?

The hardship is about getting it right since there is no standard for it and generally speaking inventing your own cryptography algorithm is not a good idea. I basically got the inspiration from BIP38[1] but instead of encoding the result using base58 I encode it like BIP39 to get words. The salt would add an extra word (128-bit entropy and a 32-bit salt to get 15 words) which could be increased in size to get 24.

[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0038.mediawiki

[BenCodie]

I wasn't quite sure how to summarize it in the title just as I'm not quite sure if this is the exact place where the thread should go. Let me explain and you tell me.

So far I have been managing my Bitcoin holdings using a HW in a location and in the same location I have had the seeds well hidden and written down on a piece of paper.

As I accumulate, I have been thinking of buying another HW and storing it in a vacation home, just like the seeds, in the same way, written down and hidden. It would be about handling half of my holdings at each site.

What do you think? I don't think it would make sense, for example to have copies of the seeds of both HW's at both sites because in a $5 wrench attack I could lose everything.

One drawback I see is that if the house burns down I would lose everything I manage with one HW, but well, that risk I also had now, having 100% of the management of my holdings in one site.

I would suggest a small, key/combination locked case to store your HW device/paper wallet to conceal the fact that you are even storing a wallet. This way it's not showing you have cryptocurrency in plain sight/if it is found from its hiding place. Of course it still shows something valuable is being hidden but at least it isn't instantly known to be your wallet.

I don't have a better suggestion for storage though I am sure there is a way with lower risk/more efficient way than keeping 50% in another location as current...though if you stick to this, then I think more thought into a viable emergency backup is necessary in the event that something as unlikely as a fire does actually happen. If you don't have to be exposed to potentially losing 50% of your holdings by having an emergency plan in place, then have an emergency plan in place. Even if it means encrypting portable storage with the entire seed phrase (or with a few words missing that you are sure not to forget) and putting it in a safety deposit box or storing/hiding it with a trusted family member. That way if something occurs, you can race there to recover what you otherwise would have lost. If it's encrypted well it would be unlikely that it would be a point of failure having this in place too.

[witcher_sense]

That's true.
Here is an idea: how about using the BIP39 extra word? That way you can create two wallets from the same seed phrase. The one without the extra word could contain a tiny amount and the one with the extra word could contain the rest.
In an attack you just give up the seed phrase which they see the funds in and steal like $10 without knowing there is an extension that holds the rest without having any way of extracting it either.

Nowadays attackers are already aware of such tricks that involve hiding your real funds behind additional passphrases, which means if they find something that looks like mnemonic words and check it with their software, they may still suspect you're playing with them and may somehow coerce you to reveal your actual secret. In other words, if your acting skills aren't good enough to pretend you are a stupid and poor person, don't even try to employ the strategy of plausible deniability.

The hardship is about getting it right since there is no standard for it and generally speaking inventing your own cryptography algorithm is not a good idea. I basically got the inspiration from BIP38[1] but instead of encoding the result using base58 I encode it like BIP39 to get words. The salt would add an extra word (128-bit entropy and a 32-bit salt to get 15 words) which could be increased in size to get 24.

[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0038.mediawiki

Are you encrypting a seed phrase with this algorithm and not just single private keys? Why not just follow it pedantically instead of modifying some parts like encoding? What if, several years from now, you forget what encoding you used when constructing your encrypted words? Maybe I am wrong, let alone I am not a security or cryptography expert, but I see many shortcomings in this approach.

[o_e_l_e_o]

In an attack you just give up the seed phrase which they see the funds in and steal like $10 without knowing there is an extension that holds the rest without having any way of extracting it either.

Additional passphrases are always a good idea, but I would make a different suggestion here. There is no point owning a hardware wallet to protect $10 worth of bitcoin. An attacker knows this. If you reveal a seed phrase under duress which contains only $10 worth of bitcoin, they are going to keep hitting you until you reveal more. The amount you give away has to be large enough to plausibly be your holdings, and certainly be large enough to be worth buying a hardware wallet for.

Even better if you can use multiple different passphrases. 0.1 BTC on the seed phrase which you can give up under duress. If they keep hitting you, 0.5 BTC under an additional passphrase which you can give up as well. Meanwhile 5 BTC under a much stronger different passphrase which you keep hidden.

And obviously you need to use mixing or coinjoins to break the blockchain links between all these wallets. If you give up your seed phrase and attacker sees a transaction moving 5 BTC somewhere else, they are going to keep hitting you.

[Wind_FURY]

What do you think? I don't think it would make sense, for example to have copies of the seeds of both HW's at both sites because in a $5 wrench attack I could lose everything.

One drawback I see is that if the house burns down I would lose everything I manage with one HW, but well, that risk I also had now, having 100% of the management of my holdings in one site.

It depends on you. I personally have my main cold-storage seeds in encrypted USBs, hidden in different secret locations. One secret location is in my house, another one in my car, another at work, and the last one in my old room in my parents' house. They all look cheap, ordinary USBs, with directories named "My Files" with old useless/random files from work scattered with the encrypted folder nested in another folder with more random files that contains the seeds. The USBs can only be opened in Linux

[m2017]

What if you do like this:
- keep 1st device with a small amount sufficient for your current tasks and which you are ready to lose.
- if a situation arises with $5 wrench attack , then you will give this 1st wallet without regret and get off with minimal losses.
- although I don't like the idea of keeping HW and the seed-phrase in the same location, but the seed-phrase from 1st device can be kept side by side. All the same, this will have to be given away during the $5 wrench attack.
- Move the seed-phrase from the 2nd device to a vacation house or to another place and also carefully hide it.
- I would prefer to keep the 2nd device reset to factory settings and store it in the 1st location as a spare. If necessary, you can always restore from the seed-phrase.

- If the $5 wrench attack method is applied to you, then by giving 1st device, you will have time to restore access to the 2nd device from the 1st seed-phrase and quickly move it to another wallet. And then - run away until the attackers come back to you again.

In general, having 2 devices is a good idea and preferably from different manufacturers.

[crwth]

You are more of taking care of the security of your holdings, not just securing your assets but the total holdings value, because you are going to take half of your risk and have additional protection on top of it. It's like diversification mixed with security with an added bonus, easier track recording if you take care of tax for financial planning, etc.

This would be harder for someone that you would pass it on to.

[NeuroticFish]

One drawback I see is that if the house burns down I would lose everything I manage with one HW, but well, that risk I also had now, having 100% of the management of my holdings in one site.

That can be addressed too. Instead of saving your backup seed(s) only onto paper, if the amount of funds worth it you can also save onto steel - from CryptoSteel Capsule to Willi's steel plate or, if you want it cheaper or in a way that doesn't draw attention, then onto washers.

[pooya87]

Are you encrypting a seed phrase with this algorithm and not just single private keys? Why not just follow it pedantically instead of modifying some parts like encoding?

Yes, I encrypt the seed because I need a deterministic wallet not a single key.
I also used the BIP39-type encoding because it returns words and I can write them down with pen and paper otherwise I'd need a printer since writing down a base58 string (what BIP38 does) is hard and making mistakes is easy.

What if, several years from now, you forget what encoding you used when constructing your encrypted words? Maybe I am wrong, let alone I am not a security or cryptography expert, but I see many shortcomings in this approach.

Although the details I changed are minimal but that's a valid concern and maybe I should try publishing the algorithm someday and have others comment on it or just have it on public domain.

[Poker Player]

In the comments I see good ideas to consider for the future. Now I am starting to have an amount that makes me consider splitting my holdings in two, so far not even that. In the future I could consider additional measures such as encrypting, hiding the holdings in different layers with passphrases, buying a CryptoSteel capsule, etc.

The point is to be proactive in case improbable events occur, but I consider the possibility of a $5 wrench attack near to 0 at this point.

What I see as logical is to increase security measures as you get more Bitcoin.

[bettercrypto]

I wasn't quite sure how to summarize it in the title just as I'm not quite sure if this is the exact place where the thread should go. Let me explain and you tell me.

So far I have been managing my Bitcoin holdings using a HW in a location and in the same location I have had the seeds well hidden and written down on a piece of paper.

As I accumulate, I have been thinking of buying another HW and storing it in a vacation home, just like the seeds, in the same way, written down and hidden. It would be about handling half of my holdings at each site.

What do you think? I don't think it would make sense, for example to have copies of the seeds of both HW's at both sites because in a $5 wrench attack I could lose everything.

One drawback I see is that if the house burns down I would lose everything I manage with one HW, but well, that risk I also had now, having 100% of the management of my holdings in one site.

 Do you mean that what is the Seed phrase that you use in your HW is the same one you will use in the new HW that you will buy? That's why I asked this because if they use the same seed it seems that the only thing that will happen is 2 in 1. This is if my understanding is correct.

    But I know that you have often read that most people say that you should not put all the eggs you have in one basket, maybe it is better to divide them to be safer.

[Wind_FURY]

For safety from $5.00 wrench attacks, or any kind of robbery that involves violence, what's everyone's opinion in keeping away from purchasing, and owning any hardware devices that are directly associated with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? I believe that it's going to be a problem when some people see you own a hardware wallet, the presumption would be = you own "a lot of Bitcoin".

[Maslate]

That's a good idea, actually, it's the practice in the banks where I work before that the backups are stored in different locations, that is to ensure that in terms of business disruption like flood and fire in one area, we can still get the other back up and would help the business to operate.

If we apply it in crypto, we know that data in a hard wallet is important to access our holdings, so if the hard wallet is destroyed due to fire or food, that means we also lose our funds.

So it's a great idea mate, I'm happy that you are thinking of a way to secure your holdings.

[o_e_l_e_o]

For safety from $5.00 wrench attacks, or any kind of robbery that involves violence, what's everyone's opinion in keeping away from purchasing, and owning any hardware devices that are directly associated with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?

It depends how far you want to take this line of thinking. Using a hardware wallet in public could certainly be seen as a potential advert to criminals that you hold a not insubstantial amount of bitcoin. So you only use your hardware wallet in private. However, when you bought that hardware wallet, you probably handed over your real name and address to the manufacturer. That information could very well have been sold, shared, or leaked, and so now your real name and address are linked to ownership of a hardware wallet. So maybe instead you bought the hardware wallet using a pseudonym, paying with anonymized bitcoin, and shipped to a PO box or other pick up location not directly linked to your real address. So far so good. But then all the bitcoin you have bought and sent to the hardware wallet were bought using fully KYCed accounts on centralized exchanges who we know sell your data to a huge number of third parties, not to mention being hacked for this data as well.

Not flashing your hardware wallet in public is probably a smart move, but you will never be able to completely mitigate against $5 wrench attacks unless all your use of bitcoin is completely anonymous, and almost nobody does this. It is wise, therefore, to have a system of plausible deniability set up just in case, such as the one I outlined above - additional passphrases which can be revealed to an attacker while your main stash remains safe behind different passphrases.

[witcher_sense]

For safety from $5.00 wrench attacks, or any kind of robbery that involves violence, what's everyone's opinion in keeping away from purchasing, and owning any hardware devices that are directly associated with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? I believe that it's going to be a problem when some people see you own a hardware wallet, the presumption would be = you own "a lot of Bitcoin".

The same reasoning can also be applied to credit/debit cards, leather wallets, and other "containers" of money: people who have or use them in public are clearly not that poor. Yet, we rarely see people being attacked just after paying at the checkout of a grocery store. Even worse, unlike banknotes or credit cards, a hardware wallet as such is almost useless and impossible to spend from because it is unlikely that a victim will provide a PIN code voluntarily.

[Poker Player]

The same reasoning can also be applied to credit/debit cards, leather wallets, and other "containers" of money: people who have or use them in public are clearly not that poor. Yet, we rarely see people being attacked just after paying at the checkout of a grocery store.

Well, because paying with cards is the norm, but if we go the similar way, if every time you pay, even $20 amounts, you take a wad of bills out of your pocket for a total of $5k you become an easy target for thieves. It's only a matter of time before they try to mug you. Cards are different because they would have to hijack you, go to the ATM get you to put in the PIN and take money out.

Even worse, unlike banknotes or credit cards, a hardware wallet as such is almost useless and impossible to spend from because it is unlikely that a victim will provide a PIN code voluntarily.

In the face of a $5 wrench attack, it depends on your resistance to pain and anxiety.  Most people would transfer their funds to the robbers right away after a couple of hard blows to the head.

[Wind_FURY]

For safety from $5.00 wrench attacks, or any kind of robbery that involves violence, what's everyone's opinion in keeping away from purchasing, and owning any hardware devices that are directly associated with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? I believe that it's going to be a problem when some people see you own a hardware wallet, the presumption would be = you own "a lot of Bitcoin".

The same reasoning can also be applied to credit/debit cards, leather wallets, and other "containers" of money: people who have or use them in public are clearly not that poor. Yet, we rarely see people being attacked just after paying at the checkout of a grocery store.

Because they have grown to be very common in modern society. Especially the usage of Credit Cards today, they're more viewed as something that's holding debt to the banks than a status symbol. Perhaps 70 years ago when the first Credit Cards were issued to important clients, they were good targets for robberies. Currently, no. Credit Card holders usually have more debt than wealth.

I'm debating because of the novelty of cryptocurrencies, and how some of its HODLers are probably in a path of accumulating wealth because they are HODLing the right coins. A smart criminal would target them, and one way to find that target? Hardware Wallets.

[NotATether]

One drawback I see is that if the house burns down I would lose everything I manage with one HW, but well, that risk I also had now, having 100% of the management of my holdings in one site.

Don't keep your backup HW wallet inside Florida (floods) or California (wildfires) then 

Your best bet is to store it inside a basement in an area that is not known to have frequent natural disasters.

I mentioned the basement specifically to avoid tornados if that's a thing in your backup location.

However, it is not worth it to rent out or buy a property just for the storage of seed phrases, unless you also plan on using it for other things.

The same reasoning can also be applied to credit/debit cards, leather wallets, and other "containers" of money: people who have or use them in public are clearly not that poor. Yet, we rarely see people being attacked just after paying at the checkout of a grocery store.

Because they have grown to be very common in modern society. Especially the usage of Credit Cards today, they're more viewed as something that's holding debt to the banks than a status symbol. Perhaps 70 years ago when the first Credit Cards were issued to important clients, they were good targets for robberies. Currently, no. Credit Card holders usually have more debt than wealth.

That doesn't really matter because credit card fraud is still a very real thing and they will not only drain all the money in your cards but also max out your credit limit as well.

[Poker Player]

However, it is not worth it to rent out or buy a property just for the storage of seed phrases, unless you also plan on using it for other things.

Obviously, I don't think it is worth buying another house just for that, but if you already have them, if you have two houses, why not take advantage of that to store the HW with their corresponding seeds separately?

[o_e_l_e_o]

Obviously, I don't think it is worth buying another house just for that, but if you already have them, if you have two houses, why not take advantage of that to store the HW with their corresponding seeds separately?

The second biggest consideration when storing a back up off site (second obviously to the security of that location), is how you would be notified of compromise, and how long that would take. If I buried a back up somewhere under cover of darkness (for example), then the only way I'm going to know if someone has dug it up is if I visit that site to check. That in itself might lead someone to my back up, or I might go weeks or months without realizing that someone has accessed by seed phrase and is currently searching for or trying to brute force my passphrase.

What is the set up of your vacation home? Does anyone else use it? Do you rent it out? Does anyone check on it when you are not there? Does it have a security system you can log in to remotely to check? If someone breaks in, will you be notified immediately, and can take immediate steps to move any coins to a new wallet?

[Poker Player]

Does anyone else use it? Do you rent it out?

Close family only. Don't rent it out.

Does anyone check on it when you are not there? Does it have a security system you can log in to remotely to check? If someone breaks in, will you be notified immediately, and can take immediate steps to move any coins to a new wallet?

They broke into that house once, there was money hidden there and they didn't even find it. The main point here is that if thieves break in again it's most likely they will not be looking for Bitcoin. They won't find the seeds among a mountain of papers, and I think I can camouflage the HW quite well too.

I don't see how I could move the funds if I leave the HW and the seeds there.

[o_e_l_e_o]

They broke into that house once, there was money hidden there and they didn't even find it.

And how long did it take your family to be alerted to the break in?

The main point here is that if thieves break in again it's most likely they will not be looking for Bitcoin. They won't find the seeds among a mountain of papers, and I think I can camouflage the HW quite well too.

I've spoken about this before, but there are dozens of places you could hide a seed phrase on a piece of paper in a house that would be near impossible for an attacker to find unless they knew exactly what they were looking for and had days or weeks to take apart your entire house. Unscrew some electrical socket or light fitting and stuff the piece of paper inside your wall or ceiling (just be careful of the cables, obviously). Slice a tiny hole in to some piece of fabric furniture such as a sofa, put it inside, and sew it back up. Drill a hole in to to some piece of wooden furniture which would not ordinarily be visible and stuff it in - for example on the top of an internal door, or the join between a table leg and the top of the table.

A hardware wallet is obviously more bulky, but many of the same possibilities are still viable.

I don't see how I could move the funds if I leave the HW and the seeds there.

You couldn't obviously if you had no other back ups. I personally prefer to have all my back ups in at least two locations.

[Poker Player]

You couldn't obviously if you had no other back ups. I personally prefer to have all my back ups in at least two locations.

So, how would you resist a $5 wrench attack? Willpower?

And how long did it take your family to be alerted to the break in?

Not too long. Maybe a couple of hours. It is an area where there are many vacation homes. Of middle class people let's say, not ultra-rich. Some have home alarms, but those have also been broken into. The modus operandi is that they make sure no one is home, enter, and look for something of value to take, but they do it quickly. I would say that in 5 or 10 minutes they are gone.

I think we agree that the best protection against attempts to steal your bitcoins is that no one knows you have them.

[o_e_l_e_o]

So, how would you resist a $5 wrench attack? Willpower?

Deniability, and giving the attacker what they want.

I have my stash split among a range of wallets. These wallets are a range of single-sig, multi-sig, passphrased, etc., as well as a range of software, hardware, paper, airgapped, etc. I can easily hand over a couple of these wallets to an attacker. Meanwhile, all the wallets are completely separate, both from a physical perspective and a blockchain perspective, so no wallet gives any indication as to the presence of any other wallets.

This is part of the reason I am such an advocate for good privacy. Good privacy lends itself to good security. If an attacker does not know your addresses, your wallet configuration, or even if you have bitcoin at all, then you are less of a target.

The modus operandi is that they make sure no one is home, enter, and look for something of value to take, but they do it quickly. I would say that in 5 or 10 minutes they are gone.

Seems unlikely then that they would find a well hidden seed phrase, but personally I would still be looking to move any coins from any seed phrases hidden in that location to a new wallet.

I think we agree that the best protection against attempts to steal your bitcoins is that no one knows you have them.

Absolutely.

[Saint-loup]

The hardship is about getting it right since there is no standard for it and generally speaking inventing your own cryptography algorithm is not a good idea. I basically got the inspiration from BIP38[1] but instead of encoding the result using base58 I encode it like BIP39 to get words. The salt would add an extra word (128-bit entropy and a 32-bit salt to get 15 words) which could be increased in size to get 24.

[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0038.mediawiki

Are you encrypting a seed phrase with this algorithm and not just single private keys? Why not just follow it pedantically instead of modifying some parts like encoding? What if, several years from now, you forget what encoding you used when constructing your encrypted words? Maybe I am wrong, let alone I am not a security or cryptography expert, but I see many shortcomings in this approach.

You're right it implies to take care of your script or at least to be able to write it back again, even in several years from now, if you lose it.  
So it's maybe safer to use Bitcoin eXplorer and "your hands" instead.

As it is explained here in the BX manual, you can encrypt a fresh generated entropy, or your own 256bits one, with the BIP38 encryption algorithm by using this command :

$ bx seed -b 256|bx ec-to-ek "my passphrase"
> 6PYN8wh8nNr18UvTf78s95cwNAgdd3zBsiB1b1H3vdn7A5SHmUb7XnHjqd


So now, you need to transform this string into a phrase with BIP39 words, you can do that this way :
First, thanks to bx base58check-decode you can get the hexadecimal value of this string.

Now you will "just" need to convert this hexadecimal number into a binary one, and with your hands, to split it into groups of 11 bits, each encoding a number from 0-2047, serving as an index into a wordlist as BIP39 does and to find the word corresponding to the index(+1) into the BIP39 dictionary of the language of your choice.


For decyphering your seed you'll consecutively take the index(-1) from the dictionary of each word of your phrase, convert each decimal index into its 11bits binary value (with enough 0 for padding) , group de 11bits words into a whole binary number that will be converted into its hexadecimal value, apply bx base58check-encode to this value and finally decrypt it with your passphrase thanks to bx ek-to-ec "my passphrase".

From the entropy, you just need to use bx mnemonic-new to get the bip39 mnemonic seed.

[Pmalek]

If we apply it in crypto, we know that data in a hard wallet is important to access our holdings, so if the hard wallet is destroyed due to fire or food, that means we also lose our funds.

The device itself is just a means to get to your crypto. It's not that important. It's the seed backup that is the main worry. One piece of software or hardware can easily be exchanged for something similar but the lost seed words are irreplaceable (if no other backups exist). 

So, how would you resist a $5 wrench attack? Willpower?

Completely removing the ability to give thieves a part of your bitcoin holdings isn't the smartest way to go about it. Would you rather die and have parts of your body chopped off, or give the thieves an already prepared amount of BTC that isn't passphrase-protected? You are not going to have much pleasure with your bitcoin if you are blind or deaf from the beating you took. Not to mention the guilt that could be eating at you if something happened to your family members because you didn't have what the robbers wanted.

[alexeyneu]

[quote ]

So now, you need to transform this string into a phrase with BIP39 words, you can do that this way :
First, thanks to bx base58check-decode you can get the hexadecimal value of this string.

[/quote]
it's garbage. you need base58 not base58check. this guy doesn't have a clue

[Saint-loup]

Don't troll please, why you couldn't use base58check-decode? Feel free to explain it. Did you try it at least? When I try it, it works perfectly for me as you can see below. You can use bx base58-decode and bx base58-encode instead if you want but base58check-decode/encode works nicely too, and it shows the real (hexadecimal) value of the key at least, not a fake/virtual one. If you've got an error with bx base58check-encode it's certainly because you forgot to add the version argument (-v1) https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-explorer/wiki/bx-base58check-encode

This is what I get :

Code:

$ bx seed -b 256|bx ec-to-ek "my passphrase"
> 6PYVhGuMvof7SDQpy598QRuSUhChaoimM4YzoX4VYBJ4veWBqLAUTHHR69

$ bx base58check-decode 6PYVhGuMvof7SDQpy598QRuSUhChaoimM4YzoX4VYBJ4veWBqLAUTHHR69
> wrapper
{
    checksum 2325530819
    payload 42e0d8294d0ed28bc97dc3d319e1c1dd67b32f3f0c4882394c88a5c0bec5c4979793fb72a0d1
    version 1
}

$ bx base58check-encode -v1 42e0d8294d0ed28bc97dc3d319e1c1dd67b32f3f0c4882394c88a5c0bec5c4979793fb72a0d1
> 6PYVhGuMvof7SDQpy598QRuSUhChaoimM4YzoX4VYBJ4veWBqLAUTHHR69

[alexeyneu]

you're talking this dude that this stuff is his 32-byte seed base58 encoded while it's his public key from which he'll never get his coins back. fuck you

[Wind_FURY]

The same reasoning can also be applied to credit/debit cards, leather wallets, and other "containers" of money: people who have or use them in public are clearly not that poor. Yet, we rarely see people being attacked just after paying at the checkout of a grocery store.

Because they have grown to be very common in modern society. Especially the usage of Credit Cards today, they're more viewed as something that's holding debt to the banks than a status symbol. Perhaps 70 years ago when the first Credit Cards were issued to important clients, they were good targets for robberies. Currently, no. Credit Card holders usually have more debt than wealth.

That doesn't really matter because credit card fraud is still a very real thing and they will not only drain all the money in your cards but also max out your credit limit as well.

Then it wouldn't matter. Everyone who can be attacked will be attacked. If the target is a user of cryptocurrencies, then it would be easier to find them if they own a hardware wallet. Because you debate that "it's also common that users of credit/debit cards are attacked" doesn't mean that hardware wallet users will be safe from robbery and theft. It's more reason to protect yourself from being exposed as a Bitcoin HODLer. To be honest, one of my regrets is telling close friends and family that I have Bitcoin.

[Saint-loup]

you're talking this dude that this stuff is his 32-byte seed base58 encoded while it's his public key from which he'll never get his coins back. fuck you

Where have you seen that bro?   Please don't troll, try to be civilized instead even if you don't speak english very well, ask questions if you don't understand something and explain with arguments if you disagree with it.  

bx seed -b 256 generates a 256bits seed in hexadecimal radix. https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-explorer/wiki/bx-seed

bx ec-to-ek "my passphrase" just takes this seed from the pipe and encrypt it with the passphrase "my passphrase" through the BIP38 algorithm. https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-explorer/wiki/bx-ec-to-ek

It's just an encryption of the seed with a password basically, and you can use your own 256bits seed instead of generating a new one. So when you will deciphering it using the opposite function bx ek-to-ec "my passphrase" you will get back your initial 256bits seed.

You can try it yourself buddy

Code:

$ bx seed -b 256
> 67b2b4678c92df31befed008aa0007d3d93ab42cafb4f5a819fcf804e1492088

$ bx ec-to-ek "I love orange juice (with vodka)" 67b2b4678c92df31befed008aa0007d3d93ab42cafb4f5a819fcf804e1492088
> 6PYKb4e2HmmmtwuSYiBEknFv2XdaGmu1Ad4DmA4ypjg22FdRPKh1V5vJNk

$ bx ek-to-ec "I love orange juice (with vodka)" 6PYKb4e2HmmmtwuSYiBEknFv2XdaGmu1Ad4DmA4ypjg22FdRPKh1V5vJNk
> 67b2b4678c92df31befed008aa0007d3d93ab42cafb4f5a819fcf804e1492088

$ bx mnemonic-new 67b2b4678c92df31befed008aa0007d3d93ab42cafb4f5a819fcf804e1492088
> guilt noble boring bomb combine occur winner sure anger exotic acid police neck foam razor walk volcano dolphin left useless evoke pig lion amount

[Accardo]

If we apply it in crypto, we know that data in a hard wallet is important to access our holdings, so if the hard wallet is destroyed due to fire or food, that means we also lose our funds.

The device itself is just a means to get to your crypto. It's not that important. It's the seed backup that is the main worry. One piece of software or hardware can easily be exchanged for something similar but the lost seed words are irreplaceable (if no other backups exist). 

So, how would you resist a $5 wrench attack? Willpower?

Completely removing the ability to give thieves a part of your bitcoin holdings isn't the smartest way to go about it. Would you rather die and have parts of your body chopped off, or give the thieves an already prepared amount of BTC that isn't passphrase-protected? You are not going to have much pleasure with your bitcoin if you are blind or deaf from the beating you took. Not to mention the guilt that could be eating at you if something happened to your family members because you didn't have what the robbers wanted.

Most of the things we worry about 99 percent of the times don't happen, OP and everyone else should take the necessary precautions of securing their bitcoin rather than worrying about getting beaten up by thieves. It's a weird thought and could lead to unnecessary panic even when nobody has the intention of attacking us. Separating his bitcoin in different locations can help in situations like emergency, offering his loved ones help when on vacation or traveled for something else they can be instructed to access the little amount of bitcoin kept in the room to solve a money related problem till he is back. Things like that can help ease the mind instead of worrying about fire and floods.

[Poker Player]

Completely removing the ability to give thieves a part of your bitcoin holdings isn't the smartest way to go about it. Would you rather die and have parts of your body chopped off, or give the thieves an already prepared amount of BTC that isn't passphrase-protected?

No. From the beginning I am talking about having my holdings or rather the management of my holdings divided in two places, that is to say that they would take 50% of my holdings. If we add the layers according to the advice of the thread it could be less.

Anyway. If you have a lot of bitcoin and they know it, if they are bitcoin savvy people who think you have 50 Bitcoins, they are not going to stop cutting off your body parts because you show them 0.3 Bitcoins in your HW.

Most of the things we worry about 99 percent of the times don't happen, OP and everyone else should take the necessary precautions of securing their bitcoin rather than worrying about getting beaten up by thieves.

Yes, I think so. The situations that we pose are movie situations, violent or even horror, but it's always good to be cautious. In any case, they are not going to come to cut my legs off to get my bitcoin because most of my net worth is in KYC assets that are not instantly transferable, but in this forum there are those who have a very important part of their net worth in Bitcoin and also have a considerable net worth, so it is understandable that they are concerned about their privacy to the maximum.

[Pmalek]

To be honest, one of my regrets is telling close friends and family that I have Bitcoin.

I guess it depends on who or what you consider family. You have your immediate family members and non-immediate or extended family members. Immediate family is your wife/husband, the kids, brothers, and sisters. Extended family is everything from cousins, uncles, aunts, etc.

None of my non-immediate family members knows about my interest in bitcoin. And there is no reason why they should know. It's not that I don't trust any of them, but my interests and theirs are completely different. My immediate family, of course knows. Someone needs to inherit my assets and possessions if something were to happen to me, so I have no regrets on that front. I hope you didn't make a mistake choosing your spouse.

When it comes to friends, I categorize them in different groups depending on how close we are.
Those who are really close know about my work with bitcoin and crypto and there are no problems there. They have been vetted thoroughly though to belong in a close circle of trust.

<Snip>

Keeping your seed in geographically different locations is highly recommended. Look at the devastating earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria last week. Now imagine that if by a stroke of luck you survived, but everything you owned got destroyed together with your apartment building. All your crypto assets are gone and somewhere in the rubbles because your backups were in the same location. But maybe just maybe you could have kept a copy at your parents or grandparents house who live hundreds of kilometers away.

Anyway. If you have a lot of bitcoin and they know it, if they are bitcoin savvy people who think you have 50 Bitcoins, they are not going to stop cutting off your body parts because you show them 0.3 Bitcoins in your HW.

That's true, but that's also one reason why you should keep your real identity separate from anything that can be connected to your bitcoin wealth.

[Wind_FURY]

To be honest, one of my regrets is telling close friends and family that I have Bitcoin.

I guess it depends on who or what you consider family. You have your immediate family members and non-immediate or extended family members. Immediate family is your wife/husband, the kids, brothers, and sisters. Extended family is everything from cousins, uncles, aunts, etc.

None of my non-immediate family members knows about my interest in bitcoin. And there is no reason why they should know. It's not that I don't trust any of them, but my interests and theirs are completely different. My immediate family, of course knows. Someone needs to inherit my assets and possessions if something were to happen to me, so I have no regrets on that front. I hope you didn't make a mistake choosing your spouse.

When it comes to friends, I categorize them in different groups depending on how close we are.
Those who are really close know about my work with bitcoin and crypto and there are no problems there. They have been vetted thoroughly though to belong in a close circle of trust.

Immediate family, very close/trusted friends, girlfriend/spouse. I believe NONE of them should know that you're active in Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency, or you're a shitcoin trader. It's bad that they know you're losing fist-value during the bear market, and it's VERY bad during the bull market because they believe you're very rich in fiat-value.

The bull market could be very dangerous for the HODLer. We don't know what people that know you have Bitcoin are thinking, especially if you notice that they believe you have more that what you truly HODL. I always tell them I don't HODL a lot, they won't believe me.

[o_e_l_e_o]

girlfriend/spouse

So if you've been with someone for years or even decades, you've got kids or even grand-kids together, you still think you should hide your bitcoin activities from them? Maybe a new partner or spouse you've been with for only a few months, sure, but at some point when you build a life with someone, you share your finances with them.

I'm one of the strongest privacy advocates on this forum, but at some point, this just becomes common sense to let your spouse know. Why would I want to risk me suffering from memory loss or dying and none of my family being able to access or benefit from my bitcoin? My wife is fully aware of all my wallets, all my back ups, all my security, etc. Why would I want to keep that from her? If you are having so many doubts about your relationship that you think you need to keep a large part of your finances completely hidden, then you should have signed a prenup.

[Saint-loup]

girlfriend/spouse

So if you've been with someone for years or even decades, you've got kids or even grand-kids together, you still think you should hide your bitcoin activities from them? Maybe a new partner or spouse you've been with for only a few months, sure, but at some point when you build a life with someone, you share your finances with them.

I'm one of the strongest privacy advocates on this forum, but at some point, this just becomes common sense to let your spouse know. Why would I want to risk me suffering from memory loss or dying and none of my family being able to access or benefit from my bitcoin? My wife is fully aware of all my wallets, all my back ups, all my security, etc. Why would I want to keep that from her? If you are having so many doubts about your relationship that you think you need to keep a large part of your finances completely hidden, then you should have signed a prenup.

Unfortunately I don't think a prenuptial agreement is enough to protect your assets if you are wealthy and if your spouse meets an evil lover. If she knows all your backups and your security tricks, she won't even need to steal them herself, she will just need to explain it to his lover and he/they will be able to steal your funds when you're out. Moreover you can't be 100% sure she won't repeat all those critical things to anyone else, especially your children if you have any. I wouldn't recommend that, I agree with Wind_FURY, it's not safe. There are way safer things to do if you are concerning about your legacy or a memory loss.

[Welsh]

I'm one of the strongest privacy advocates on this forum, but at some point, this just becomes common sense to let your spouse know. Why would I want to risk me suffering from memory loss or dying and none of my family being able to access or benefit from my bitcoin? My wife is fully aware of all my wallets, all my back ups, all my security, etc. Why would I want to keep that from her? If you are having so many doubts about your relationship that you think you need to keep a large part of your finances completely hidden, then you should have signed a prenup.

I share the same opinion, I mean if you don't trust your spouse then who do you trust? Since, you've picked them to spend your life with presumably. Memory loss is a real problem to contend with, and statistically a lot of us will develop a certain degree of it, whether or not it'll get bad enough that you lose complete control of it is another thing, but it definitely isn't the risk.

However, it comes from a trust point of view from me. I'd trust my spouse since I've let them in my life. Same as children, it would be completely selfish in my opinion, to have Bitcoin stuffed away in secret, and not have a way of getting your spouse or children that money.

Personally, I see certain people in my life as an extension to my security, and by that I mean they can help you if you ever lose access, whether that's through memory loss or sudden life altering accidents. They are the one's you can rely on, and therefore instead of compromising your security they enhance it. Obviously, you have to be sure you can trust them, but if you can't trust them then they probably aren't part of your daily life in the first place.

[Pmalek]

Immediate family, very close/trusted friends, girlfriend/spouse. I believe NONE of them should know that you're active in Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency, or you're a shitcoin trader.

Do you think the same way about fiat or anything else of value that you have. I guess you work somewhere and you are paid a certain sum every month. Is that also something you think should be confidential and not shared with immediate family? Many partners open join bank accounts because it's easier. A family makes big decisions together. That also includes investments. I don't they should be kept in the dark and that the bitcoin should die with you.

Having said that, I also have certain rules. My family knows what to do and where to go for the backups to recover my digital assets. But they don't have my permission to do it. More precisely, they can't do it for the fun of it, or to see if it will work, etc. And while I am alive and healthy, I am the one that works the crypto thing. It might sound silly, but they respect that. It wouldn't take me long to notice they have accessed the hiding places depending on where we are at the moment. And we are usually in the same places.     

[BlackHatCoiner]

Immediate family, very close/trusted friends, girlfriend/spouse. I believe NONE of them should know that you're active in Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency

Look, close family like your mother, father, brother, wife, child should have this information, in my opinion. However, I'd argue not disclosing it to the entire kinfolk. Like, okay, why should your brother-in-law know every little detail about you and cryptocurrencies? It's not he the problem, it's the fact that he may disclose it to people whom you would not approve of disclosing, and result into this thing none of us want to; becoming a target.

[Welsh]

Look, close family like your mother, father, brother, wife, child should have this information, in my opinion. However, I'd argue not disclosing it to the entire kinfolk. Like, okay, why should your brother-in-law know every little detail about you and cryptocurrencies? It's not he the problem, it's the fact that he may disclose it to people whom you would not approve of disclosing, and result into this thing none of us want to; becoming a target.

It's going to vastly differ for everyone. You might not trust even immediate family members, but almost everyone has someone they can trust. There's always that chance; where you might trust them to leave the Bitcoin alone, and only act upon it if something were to happen to you, but unfortunately if you don't want other people knowing you own Bitcoin, that could be harder to trust that someone doesn't mention it. However, you could just make that clear, and if people did find out, you just remove access since that was one of the requirements for trusting them.

I don't know though, blabbing about your Bitcoin probably isn't worth jeopardizing family. I feel like most people that are worth trusting, and you'd consider trusting in the first place would know that.

[Saint-loup]

Immediate family, very close/trusted friends, girlfriend/spouse. I believe NONE of them should know that you're active in Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency, or you're a shitcoin trader.

Do you think the same way about fiat or anything else of value that you have. I guess you work somewhere and you are paid a certain sum every month. Is that also something you think should be confidential and not shared with immediate family? Many partners open join bank accounts because it's easier. A family makes big decisions together. That also includes investments. I don't they should be kept in the dark and that the bitcoin should die with you.

Having said that, I also have certain rules. My family knows what to do and where to go for the backups to recover my digital assets. But they don't have my permission to do it. More precisely, they can't do it for the fun of it, or to see if it will work, etc. And while I am alive and healthy, I am the one that works the crypto thing. It might sound silly, but they respect that. It wouldn't take me long to notice they have accessed the hiding places depending on where we are at the moment. And we are usually in the same places.      

I don't think we are talking about the same thing actually, you seem to talk about funds/investments belonging to your couple/family while Wind_FURY and me are talking about your own funds, money that you want to keep for yourself. If someone wants to "target" you as BlackHatCoiner says because you owe him money or because you're wealthy. Don't you think it would be unfair that he tries to target your wife or your children instead of you, because he knows or he thinks you are the kind of guy sharing your crypto seed with his family and it will be easier to use social engineering tricks on them or worse things than that? Sharing things with people can expose them to dangers related to those things unfortunately.      

[o_e_l_e_o]

I don't think we are talking about the same thing actually, you seem to talk about funds/investments belonging to your couple/family while Wind_FURY and me are talking about your own funds, money that you want to keep for yourself.

But I don't have anything I want to keep from my family. What good is my money to me after I'm dead? Why would I not want my family to have access to it?

Don't you think it would be unfair that he tries to target your wife or your children instead of you, because he knows or he thinks you are the kind of guy sharing your crypto seed with his family and it will be easier to use social engineering tricks on them or worse things than that?

If someone knows enough about you to target you for your bitcoin holdings, they aren't going to care if your spouse does or does not know your wallet passwords, the location of your back ups, etc. They will be quite happy to kidnap and hit either of you until one of you tells them what they want to know.

As I said previously, this is part of the reason I argue so strongly for good privacy. If no else knows you own bitcoin, then you are less of a target. But at the same time I trust my wife not to tell everyone she meets that we hold bitcoin, just as I trust her not to tell everyone she meets our credit card details.

[Synchronice]

I wasn't quite sure how to summarize it in the title just as I'm not quite sure if this is the exact place where the thread should go. Let me explain and you tell me.

So far I have been managing my Bitcoin holdings using a HW in a location and in the same location I have had the seeds well hidden and written down on a piece of paper.

As I accumulate, I have been thinking of buying another HW and storing it in a vacation home, just like the seeds, in the same way, written down and hidden. It would be about handling half of my holdings at each site.

What do you think? I don't think it would make sense, for example to have copies of the seeds of both HW's at both sites because in a $5 wrench attack I could lose everything.

One drawback I see is that if the house burns down I would lose everything I manage with one HW, but well, that risk I also had now, having 100% of the management of my holdings in one site.

1. First of all be sure that no one knows your identity on this forum because in that case you are posting quite sensitive information.
2. Vacation home is a secondary residence. I assume you don't visit your vacation home frequently, that means it's left without attention most of the time. Because of this, thieves often target vacation homes. I suggest you to find a better place but since I don't know where are you from, what's the crime rate and the structure of the cities, towns, it's hard to confidently give advice.
3. Higher the security, higher the responsibility.
4. In case to not worry much about fire, water and unpleasant cases, have a look at Trezor Hardware Wallet Accessories.

[m2017]

Look, close family like your mother, father, brother, wife, child should have this information, in my opinion. However, I'd argue not disclosing it to the entire kinfolk. Like, okay, why should your brother-in-law know every little detail about you and cryptocurrencies? It's not he the problem, it's the fact that he may disclose it to people whom you would not approve of disclosing, and result into this thing none of us want to; becoming a target.

It's going to vastly differ for everyone. You might not trust even immediate family members, but almost everyone has someone they can trust. There's always that chance; where you might trust them to leave the Bitcoin alone, and only act upon it if something were to happen to you, but unfortunately if you don't want other people knowing you own Bitcoin, that could be harder to trust that someone doesn't mention it. However, you could just make that clear, and if people did find out, you just remove access since that was one of the requirements for trusting them.

I don't know though, blabbing about your Bitcoin probably isn't worth jeopardizing family. I feel like most people that are worth trusting, and you'd consider trusting in the first place would know that.

You can talk about your btc only to those friends and relatives to whom you are ready to give and leave it as a legacy. First you need to have a conversation with them with basic information about bitcoin, and even better, so that they learn how to use and store safely. These should be people you fully trust and will have access to btc in case of unforeseen circumstances with you.

There is an unspoken rule that you can invest in bitcoin only the money that you are ready to lose. I will try to continue this thought and say that you can give access to information about your bitcoin only to those people to whom you are ready to give your btc for free.

This is an indicator of personal trust and value of these people for you.

[Saint-loup]

I don't think we are talking about the same thing actually, you seem to talk about funds/investments belonging to your couple/family while Wind_FURY and me are talking about your own funds, money that you want to keep for yourself.

But I don't have anything I want to keep from my family. What good is my money to me after I'm dead? Why would I not want my family to have access to it?

You don't need to share your security secrets with your wife to let her inherit your cryptos after your death. You can simply encrypt your seed with a password (or use a split seed) and write this password in your will left at a notary or in a sealed envelope given to relatives. You can also schedule a mail to her birthday for example, and cancel it every year if you are not dead or amnesiac, or you can simply use a service that allow your heirs or trusted people to access your datas after your death or after being inactive during a given amount of time, like this one for example.

Don't you think it would be unfair that he tries to target your wife or your children instead of you, because he knows or he thinks you are the kind of guy sharing your crypto seed with his family and it will be easier to use social engineering tricks on them or worse things than that?

If someone knows enough about you to target you for your bitcoin holdings, they aren't going to care if your spouse does or does not know your wallet passwords, the location of your back ups, etc. They will be quite happy to kidnap and hit either of you until one of you tells them what they want to know.

As I said previously, this is part of the reason I argue so strongly for good privacy. If no else knows you own bitcoin, then you are less of a target. But at the same time I trust my wife not to tell everyone she meets that we hold bitcoin, just as I trust her not to tell everyone she meets our credit card details.

Well unfortunately there is not only one way to use violence for extorting money or informations from people. Anyway I'm not sure people are kidnapped and tortured everyday for this purpose, but I'm sure people are scammed everyday, so IMO there are more chances for your spouse to be scammed than being kidnapped thankfully. So what will you do, if someone is able to imitate your voice and ask her by phone to immediately send all your funds to a given address because you've been hacked and you are away, for example?

[Pmalek]

Look, close family like your mother, father, brother, wife, child should have this information, in my opinion. However, I'd argue not disclosing it to the entire kinfolk. Like, okay, why should your brother-in-law know every little detail about you and cryptocurrencies?

That's what I said as well. Not everyone belongs to the same circle of trust. Your immediate family should be in the inner circle. Most other people fit on some of the outer rings.   

I don't think we are talking about the same thing actually, you seem to talk about funds/investments belonging to your couple/family while Wind_FURY and me are talking about your own funds, money that you want to keep for yourself.

Your stuff becomes hers, and hers becomes yours. Anything else, won't work long term. I don't see how a successful marriage could work if you told your wife this is mine and that's yours. Stay on your side of the room. I am exaggerating with the last part.

If someone wants to "target" you as BlackHatCoiner says because you owe him money or because you're wealthy. Don't you think it would be unfair that he tries to target your wife or your children instead of you, because he knows or he thinks you are the kind of guy sharing your crypto seed with his family and it will be easier to use social engineering tricks on them or worse things than that?

I will answer that with a counter question. If someone wants to hurt your family because they think that could earn them money, don't you think they will do it despite what your wife knows? As a threat so that you pay, and a warning what will happen if you don't.

Anyway I'm not sure people are kidnapped and tortured everyday for this purpose, but I'm sure people are scammed everyday, so IMO there are more chances for your spouse to be scammed than being kidnapped thankfully. So what will you do, if someone is able to imitate your voice and ask her by phone to immediately send all your funds to a given address because you've been hacked and you are away, for example?

If kidnapping doesn't occur that often, what are the chances someone who speaks and sounds just like you calls your wife and asks her to send all your crypto somewhere? Or even uses some software that sounds like you?

[Poker Player]

Those of you who talk about your wife knowing everything about your bitcoin holdings, I hope you have them declared to the authorities, as I recently heard about a case where the wife upon divorce reported to the authorities that the ex-husband had undeclared bitcoin that he should have declared.

Besides, I personally know of a couple of close cases of divorces where the men told me that they did not know the person they had loved so much in the past because of how she behaved in the process. With divorce rates in industrialized countries being very high and 70-80% of divorces being initiated by women, depending on the location, it is something to be cautious about.

Edit: I just saw a quote that comes up.

Of course we follow the law to the extent that it makes sense, but we do not follow it to the extent that we turn out to be fools who pay taxes to the extent that someone takes half of what we have made as profit. For example, in my country I would have to file taxes every week when I get paid from my signature campaign because it is considered other income and must be declared upon receipt within a few days. Not only do I not want to spend time on it every week, I also do not want to finance corrupt politicians from the prime minister down to the lowest levels with more money than I already do.

In the case of Lucius, who I believe is the only one in the entire forum who does not declare what he earns in his signature campaigns, as the rest of us are responsible, law-abiding citizens, I say that in his case, his wife knowing the Bitcoin he earns, how he earns it and how he keeps it can become very dangerous in a potential divorce proceeding.

[Welsh]

Those of you who talk about your wife knowing everything about your bitcoin holdings, I hope you have them declared to the authorities, as I recently heard about a case where the wife upon divorce reported to the authorities that the ex-husband had undeclared bitcoin that he should have declared.

Besides, I personally know of a couple of close cases of divorces where the men told me that they did not know the person they had loved so much in the past because of how she behaved in the process. With divorce rates in industrialized countries being very high and 70-80% of divorces being initiated by women, depending on the location, it is something to be cautious about.

I mean, I hope users have declared their earnings regardless of the threat of a divorce. Although, divorces often get ugly, especially if it's not a mutual agreement. Usually, there's plenty of rows over who gets what, and it's a rather lengthy process too. Although, honestly most marriages you can see it happening, and there's certain reasons why it leads to that. Obviously, for the minority it's a little more complicated than that. However, I'd like to think that most couples can get through most of their difficulties, and once you've been with someone long enough, as long as you show them the same attention, and are very much still connected the same, you should be able to trust them indefinitely.

Divorce is tricky, since usually it's not by mutual agreement, and then one party is out to hurt the other. Usually, the person who's been handed the divorce letters, feels betrayed, and therefore looks to gain everything they can, and actively hurt the other since they've been hurt. I've seen this a few times now in life. Although, that's the agreement you sign up for. Technically, you're saying what is mine is yours, and you should be expected to split everything equally, no matter who bought what. Plus, for me if things did fall apart towards the end, I'd want them to be set up for their next chapter in life, I wouldn't want to see them struggle.

[Pmalek]

Those of you who talk about your wife knowing everything about your bitcoin holdings, I hope you have them declared to the authorities, as I recently heard about a case where the wife upon divorce reported to the authorities that the ex-husband had undeclared bitcoin that he should have declared.

Besides, I personally know of a couple of close cases of divorces where the men told me that they did not know the person they had loved so much in the past because of how she behaved in the process. With divorce rates in industrialized countries being very high and 70-80% of divorces being initiated by women, depending on the location, it is something to be cautious about.

Of course, we have. I speak for everyone when I say that all our countries have been so helpful and open-minded with everything Bitcoin. They have offered free education, tax benefits, and a simple reporting and administrative process to declare our crypto holdings. It's a one-click task. It's so good giving back when you have had so much support by your local authorities.      Not

Divorces get ugly, no one can deny that. But if your partner has some dirt on you, they can use that against you if the situation escalates to that point. It doesn't have to be anything related to crypto. Maybe you have a stash of cash somewhere that you saved over the years whenever customers paid in cash (that you didn't declare) in your business. Some people do that. Maybe you smoke marihuana and she will rat you out on that. Maybe your boss gifted you an expensive watch for a successful project, but you never declared it, etc., etc.

The point is, everyone has done something that isn't legal, and that can be used against them by those closest to them unfortunately.

[o_e_l_e_o]

You can simply encrypt your seed with a password (or use a split seed) and write this password in your will left at a notary

True, and that's a good system for someone who does not have anyone they can trust. But if you do have someone you can trust, you don't need to do this. It also doesn't help very much in the situation where I suffer memory problems but am still very much alive, which happens to literally millions of people a year, and can be a very long and complex process to gain access to the assets of someone who is still alive.

Handing a sealed envelope to a relative is no different to just telling them how to access your coins in the first place. Both depend 100% on trust.

You can also schedule a mail to her birthday for example, and cancel it every year if you are not dead or amnesiac, or you can simply use a service that allow your heirs or trusted people to access your datas after your death or after being inactive during a given amount of time, like this one for example.

I would be very careful trusting any third party with any part of my recovery process. A regulated lawyer is maybe acceptable - a service ran by one of the worst offenders when it comes to privacy (Google) definitely is not.

So what will you do, if someone is able to imitate your voice and ask her by phone to immediately send all your funds to a given address because you've been hacked and you are away, for example?

Well, first she couldn't, because my back ups are not in one location, so it would take her time to recover all the necessary pieces in order to gain access to the wallets. Secondly, she's not an idiot so that wouldn't happen. There are literally thousands of questions she could ask to which only I could answer to confirm it was me. And third, if this was a realistic prospect, then there is nothing stopping the same thing happening to all our fiat accounts too.

[Saint-loup]

Handing a sealed envelope to a relative is no different to just telling them how to access your coins in the first place. Both depend 100% on trust.

I wouldn't give my seed to relatives, even in a sealed envelope, and I wouldn't recommend anyone to do it. Because if someone steals it from them, you will lose all your funds. I was just suggesting to give them the password of the encrypted seed(or a share of your split seed) you want to bequeath to your wife, instead of a notary. Even if they open the envelope and guess it's a password of an encrypted seed, they won't be able to find it if you don't say to them where it is located.

You can also schedule a mail to her birthday for example, and cancel it every year if you are not dead or amnesiac, or you can simply use a service that allow your heirs or trusted people to access your datas after your death or after being inactive during a given amount of time, like this one for example.

I would be very careful trusting any third party with any part of my recovery process. A regulated lawyer is maybe acceptable - a service ran by one of the worst offenders when it comes to privacy (Google) definitely is not.

Why? What Google could do with a password of an offline encrypted seed ? You think an employee could guess it's a password of an encrypted Bitcoin seed and could break into your house, to find and steal it?

So what will you do, if someone is able to imitate your voice and ask her by phone to immediately send all your funds to a given address because you've been hacked and you are away, for example?

Well, first she couldn't, because my back ups are not in one location, so it would take her time to recover all the necessary pieces in order to gain access to the wallets. Secondly, she's not an idiot so that wouldn't happen. There are literally thousands of questions she could ask to which only I could answer to confirm it was me. And third, if this was a realistic prospect, then there is nothing stopping the same thing happening to all our fiat accounts too.

Bank transfers can be reversed if the money hasn't been withdrawn, instant transfers have a maximum limit and normal transfers take one working day to be executed. You can't open a bank account without giving your ID in addition.
Besides that, if there is already a risk that your wife does that with your fiat money why do you want to add an extra risk with your cryptos?

[larry_vw_1955]

Even better if you can use multiple different passphrases. 0.1 BTC on the seed phrase which you can give up under duress. If they keep hitting you, 0.5 BTC under an additional passphrase which you can give up as well. Meanwhile 5 BTC under a much stronger different passphrase which you keep hidden.

you got alot of people that merited this point of view but i'm not so sure i agree with the philosophy of having staggered amounts in various wallets. on one hand, i guess it could limit your losses if an armed thug is not so determined and happy with getting $2000 without really pressing you for more. but what happens if the 0.1BTC is not enough? how much are you willing to go through before you admit to the 0.5BTC wallet and turn that over? once they see that you're playing this game, the sky is really the limit and then the real risk becomes that they don't believe you when you say the 5BTC wallet was the biggest one you had because you said that about all the other ones too.  then you're really in trouble. could be in trouble.

also i guess it goes without saying that you would need to have a way of memorizing and producing the passphrases in a certain order of increasing btc content value. another difficulty in this scheme.

obviously no one wants to give up a huge stash to the first thug that threatens them with a wrench but i say just have a 0.1BTC or 0.5BTC wallet and be done with it. that should be enough. unless they have a reason to believe you are worth far more...

[Pmalek]

you got alot of people that merited this point of view but i'm not so sure i agree with the philosophy of having staggered amounts in various wallets. on one hand, i guess it could limit your losses if an armed thug is not so determined and happy with getting $2000 without really pressing you for more. but what happens if the 0.1BTC is not enough? how much are you willing to go through before you admit to the 0.5BTC wallet and turn that over? once they see that you're playing this game, the sky is really the limit and then the real risk becomes that they don't believe you when you say the 5BTC wallet was the biggest one you had because you said that about all the other ones too.  then you're really in trouble. could be in trouble.

It's a combination of a few factors. First of all, the thieves shouldn't even know you have 0.1 BTC, let alone, 0.5 or 5 BTC. If they already know that, you have messed up somewhere and the question now is how far are they willing to go? Killing someone isn't the same as robbing someone. You get life imprisonment for the former and maybe 5 or 10 years for the latter. It depends, of course, on the country. 

Your acting skills will also affect the outcome. Make it believable you don't have more than 0.1 BTC. If they know you do, they will tell you about it. Based on that you can figure out if they really know or if it's a game of phishing. 

[o_e_l_e_o]

I was just suggesting to give them the password of the encrypted seed(or a share of your split seed) you want to bequeath to your wife, instead of a notary. Even if they open the envelope and guess it's a password of an encrypted seed, they won't be able to find it if you don't say to them where it is located.

And if you don't tell them what it is or where your encrypted seed is located, then how will they recover it after your death? Either you tell them your whole set up, in which case you are trusting them just like I trust my wife, or you don't tell them the set up, in which case you run the risk of them never being able to recover your coins.

If you don't have a family member you can trust, then there are trustless ways to set up inheritance, such as by using timelocked transactions. This is a better solution than giving out passwords in envelopes.

Why? What Google could do with a password of an offline encrypted seed ?

Leak it over the entire internet, as they've done with plenty of data in the past? Store it in plaintext, as they were caught doing with users' passwords for 14 years? Or maybe just shut down the service you are relying on, meaning your data is lost forever.

Besides that, if there is already a risk that your wife does that with your fiat money why do you want to add an extra risk with your cryptos?

Because she is not an idiot. If she is at risk of falling to such a low level scam, then so is everyone on this forum and nobody's bitcoin is safe. Not to mention that it would be significantly more difficult and time consuming for her to collect all the necessary back ups to start emptying various bitcoin wallets than it would be to log in to a fiat account and empty it out.

[Saint-loup]

And if you don't tell them what it is or where your encrypted seed is located, then how will they recover it after your death? Either you tell them your whole set up, in which case you are trusting them just like I trust my wife, or you don't tell them the set up, in which case you run the risk of them never being able to recover your coins.

If you don't have a family member you can trust, then there are trustless ways to set up inheritance, such as by using timelocked transactions. This is a better solution than giving out passwords in envelopes.

You just need to tell your wife where is located your encrypted seed, then she will be able to access your encrypted seed but not being able to decrypt it while your relatives will be able to access your password (if they unseal the envelope at least) but not being able to locate your encrypted seed.

AFAIK you can't spend anymore funds included in a timelocked transaction before its expiry date once your timelocked transaction has been mined. In addition, it implies to know at which date you will die. That's not convenient at all.

Leak it over the entire internet, as they've done with plenty of data in the past? Store it in plaintext, as they were caught doing with users' passwords for 14 years? Or maybe just shut down the service you are relying on, meaning your data is lost forever.

You can check the service from time to time before losing your memory or dying, if you are afraid of that.

Because she is not an idiot. If she is at risk of falling to such a low level scam, then so is everyone on this forum and nobody's bitcoin is safe. Not to mention that it would be significantly more difficult and time consuming for her to collect all the necessary back ups to start emptying various bitcoin wallets than it would be to log in to a fiat account and empty it out.

Yes I think nobody is safe with his Bitcoin funds, even you, because obviously other people than you have plain access to your funds. That's disappointing, but we have to admit that Bitcoin is risky for everybody.

You can simply encrypt your seed with a password (or use a split seed) and write this password in your will left at a notary

True, and that's a good system for someone who does not have anyone they can trust. But if you do have someone you can trust, you don't need to do this. It also doesn't help very much in the situation where I suffer memory problems but am still very much alive, which happens to literally millions of people a year, and can be a very long and complex process to gain access to the assets of someone who is still alive.

AFAIK most countries laws allow people to update and modify their will, so you would certainly be able to make a codicil and thus to read your own will, even if you have lost your memory actually.

[o_e_l_e_o]

You just need to tell your wife where is located your encrypted seed, then she will be able to access your encrypted seed but not being able to decrypt it while your relatives will be able to access your password (if they unseal the envelope at least) but not being able to locate your encrypted seed.

You are just trusting two people instead of one. If you don't want to trust anyone, then trustless solutions are better.

AFAIK you can't spend anymore funds included in a timelocked transaction before its expiry date once your timelocked transaction has been mined.

You can spend the coins any time you like. The timelocked transaction can only be mined after the timelock has passed. If you need to spend the funds, then you can do so and then simply replace the timelocked transaction.

In addition, it implies to know at which date you will die. That's not convenient at all.

Not at all. Create the transaction for 6 months in the future. If you are still alive, invalidate it and create a new one another 6 months in the future.

You can check the service from time to time before losing your memory or dying, if you are afraid of that.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems absolutely crazy to me that you wouldn't trust your own wife to even know that you own bitcoin, but you are quite happy to trust a bunch of complete strangers (with a track record of terrible security and privacy) to store part of your back ups.

[larry_vw_1955]

I'm one of the strongest privacy advocates on this forum, but at some point, this just becomes common sense to let your spouse know.

this is how it works in the united states:

Under the law, no one can be required to disclose any information, whether verbal or written, that was confidentially exchanged within the following relationships:

husband and wife
lawyer and client
doctor and patient, and
religious advisor and advisee (although this privilege is often referred to as "priest-penitent," it applies more generally to any confidential conversation between a member of the clergy of a recognized religion and a person seeking spiritual counsel).

Thing is that doesn't stop someone from suing you and then their lawyer begins a discovery process to uncover all of your assets. And you might be required to provide a list of all your assets including any cryptocurrency holdings. But there seems to be some grey area about that where courts have ruled one way in one situation and another way in another...

So dont forget about protecting yourself from stupid lawsuits they can happen at any time some may be valid others may be not!  but how you would go about that i'm not too sure.

[Poker Player]

Of course, we have. I speak for everyone when I say that all our countries have been so helpful and open-minded with everything Bitcoin. They have offered free education, tax benefits, and a simple reporting and administrative process to declare our crypto holdings. It's a one-click task. It's so good giving back when you have had so much support by your local authorities.      Not

I didn't quite catch what you were saying until this second time I read it again, so the delayed merit is for that.

this is how it works in the united states:

Under the law, no one can be required to disclose any information, whether verbal or written, that was confidentially exchanged within the following relationships:

husband and wife
lawyer and client
doctor and patient, and
religious advisor and advisee (although this privilege is often referred to as "priest-penitent," it applies more generally to any confidential conversation between a member of the clergy of a recognized religion and a person seeking spiritual counsel).

AFAIK similar laws exist in most industrialized countries but those kind of laws do not prevent your ex-wife (or your still wife but in the process of divorce) from testifying against you if she willingly wants to.

[Pmalek]

this is how it works in the united states:
Under the law, no one can be required to disclose any information, whether verbal or written, that was confidentially exchanged within the following relationships:

doctor and patient

There has to be exceptions to that law, right? A psychologist is a doctor. They can't disclose the information you have confided to them. But if the information concerns someone's life, they are allowed to notify the authorities and probably to testify against you. What if you tell your doctor you are thinking of killing someone or that you have killed someone. The doctor could maybe be considered an accomplice if they do nothing with that knowledge. I don't know what the law says about having knowledge of financial crime and can the information be used against you.   

[larry_vw_1955]

AFAIK similar laws exist in most industrialized countries but those kind of laws do not prevent your ex-wife (or your still wife but in the process of divorce) from testifying against you if she willingly wants to.

so then you do the math. is it worth it to tell your wife some secrets that you own bitcoin?  

There has to be exceptions to that law, right? A psychologist is a doctor. They can't disclose the information you have confided to them. But if the information concerns someone's life, they are allowed to notify the authorities and probably to testify against you.

so here's the thing. what would you have to gain by telling a doctor or someone that you committed a crime? probably none right? so why do it? why tell anyone anything except maybe a lawyer. even then they probably know you're guilty already so they shouldn't really need to ask...it's not their job to prove you're not guilty anyhow.

[o_e_l_e_o]

There has to be exceptions to that law, right?

It is very dependent on your country, state, or jurisdiction. Most places will require a breach of physician-patient confidentiality in the case of violent crimes, rape, child abuse, realistic threats of any of these, that kind of thing. There are also times where we would breach confidentiality but not to law enforcement, such as telling a public health authority like the CDC if you were diagnosed with a notifiable disease. Generally financial crime would not be included in any of this, but I can't speak for every jurisdiction. Further, some places can require a physician or other healthcare professional to testify against a patient in court; others cannot.

what would you have to gain by telling a doctor or someone that you committed a crime? probably none right? so why do it?

It is often important information in order to make an accurate diagnosis or provide safe treatment. Illegal drug use is the most common. But no, I don't see any reason that you would ever tell your doctor that you are holding large amounts of bitcoin.

so then you do the math. is it worth it to tell your wife some secrets that you own bitcoin?

So if you don't trust your wife to know about your bitcoin, do you trust her to know about your fiat? Do you have secret off shore bank accounts which you skim some of your income in to each month? What about your other assets together - property, cars, etc.? Better keep her name off of everything and make her pay rent to live in your house?

[Pmalek]

so here's the thing. what would you have to gain by telling a doctor or someone that you committed a crime? probably none right? so why do it?

It's not a question of why you would do it, but what would happen if you do? You could also ask why would someone commit murder or molest someone, but it still happens daily all over the world. People do stupid things and reveal secrets and nasty stuff after getting drunk in the bar.

If you talk to a psychologist because you are depressed, the doctor is going to ask you the reason for your depression. Maybe you will put off telling them the exact cause and eventually mention you hurt someone. Since psychologists insist you keep talking, maybe you will mention more details and that's how the information about a crime gets revealed.

[larry_vw_1955]

It is often important information in order to make an accurate diagnosis or provide safe treatment. Illegal drug use is the most common.

maybe but say you robbed a bank and got shot. the fact that the bullet wound happened at the bank is kind of immaterial so that could be conveniently left out.

But no, I don't see any reason that you would ever tell your doctor that you are holding large amounts of bitcoin.

maybe if they are withholding some important medical treatment and need a proof you can pay? 

So if you don't trust your wife to know about your bitcoin, do you trust her to know about your fiat?

telling a wife or trusted person some secrets always comes at a risk. by giving them that information they can become a target if someone else thinks or knows they know that information. it's not about whether you trust them but what type of situation it might possibly put them into. yes they can pretend they don't know anything but if your story doesn't match theirs then someone is lying. robbers aren't dumb. but in the end you do what you think is most reasonable.

[erep]

telling a wife or trusted person some secrets always comes at a risk. by giving them that information they can become a target if someone else thinks or knows they know that information. it's not about whether you trust them but what type of situation it might possibly put them into. yes they can pretend they don't know anything but if your story doesn't match theirs then someone is lying. robbers aren't dumb. but in the end you do what you think is most reasonable.

Trust in your wife is very specific depending on how you judge her behavior, our location has low divorce cases and our spouses will keep secrets for any interest but the main thing is don't publish any investment to others so they won't suspect having assets bitcoin on hw or exchange, so our family will never be the target of robbery or any kind of crime because they will not dig any information from our investment portfolio. Never show off bitcoin investments to anyone and any social media, let your assets be anonymous and there is no benefit if other people know about it and only cause trouble for your family.

[Welsh]

So if you don't trust your wife to know about your bitcoin, do you trust her to know about your fiat? Do you have secret off shore bank accounts which you skim some of your income in to each month? What about your other assets together - property, cars, etc.? Better keep her name off of everything and make her pay rent to live in your house?

I feel like a lot of users treat Bitcoin like it's some super secret thing, but ultimately it's just an alternative. I get it; we are our own bank, and therefore we are responsible for it. However, I'd like to think people can trust their spouses. I mean, if they have any doubt it begs the question why they got married in the first place; since they're signing a document which basically means they're entitled to half of everything.

If you aren't telling your wife about your Bitcoin, you probably aren't telling the tax man either. Since, I believe the divorce solicitor can inquire about the tax man about undeclared earnings. So, you'd be in big trouble, however it went.

Trust in your wife is very specific depending on how you judge her behavior, our location has low divorce cases

I wouldn't look at locations or the local statistics of divorce. Just look at your wife, and determine whether you trust her or not. If you don't, I imagine your marriage isn't going all that well. You have to trust certain people in your life, that's what humans do. However, you get to pick, and they aren't like banks that will use you, as long as you pick a good one.

[Pmalek]

telling a wife or trusted person some secrets always comes at a risk. by giving them that information they can become a target if someone else thinks or knows they know that information. it's not about whether you trust them but what type of situation it might possibly put them into.

I understand what you are saying but I don't think it makes much difference. If you are rich and someone knows that and uses your wife to get to your money, they aren't going to speculate whether or not she knows something. If she does, great, tell us. If not, call your husband and have him tell us, or else...

[larry_vw_1955]

I understand what you are saying but I don't think it makes much difference. If you are rich and someone knows that and uses your wife to get to your money, they aren't going to speculate whether or not she knows something. If she does, great, tell us. If not, call your husband and have him tell us, or else...

i was thinking more like robbers split up the husband and wife and interrogate them separately. better make sure their stories are consistent. if not then someone is lying.

[Welsh]

i was thinking more like robbers split up the husband and wife and interrogate them separately. better make sure their stories are consistent. if not then someone is lying.

For the vast majority of people, this isn't going to be a reality. This is; either you live in a part of the world which is notorious for this sort of crime or you're a rather high profile person. This sort of stuff doesn't really happen in a lot of people's realities. Usually, when this sort of stuff happens it's more related to drugs than how much money you hold, otherwise you'd just see these types of people going to rich neighbours, and doing this all the time.

Despite, criminals being criminals; they aren't risk inverse. They're much more likely to attack, and try to get a large holding of fiat money, since they can find that physically within the property, instead of interrogating you for your Bitcoin which is much easier to conceal, and isn't guaranteed you own much either unless you've tied it to your real world identity.

I just feel for most users here, this sort of situation is just so incredibly unlikely, that it's not worth worrying about too much. Instead, protect against not revealing you have Bitcoin to the public, and only to those that need to know. Family, tax man, potentially some friends depending on what situation your in.

[Poker Player]

so then you do the math. is it worth it to tell your wife some secrets that you own bitcoin?  

Well, man, if we're setting ourselves up for horror movie scenarios, in this and similar threads, it's not bad to have in your head the possibility that someday you could get divorced and she could use it against you. Even if she's your high school sweetheart and you've been with her for 30 years. I think keeping the possibility in your head is pretty rational.

Another thing is the decision you make, that in the end, whether you tell her or not is very respectable and there each one has to weigh arguments and decide.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I mean, if they have any doubt it begs the question why they got married in the first place; since they're signing a document which basically means they're entitled to half of everything.

If you aren't telling your spouse you are involved in bitcoin at all, then you are hiding all your exchange accounts and forum accounts from them too? Do they not question why you have bank transfers to and from centralized exchanges or random individuals if you trade peer to peer? Or do you have a separate hidden fiat bank account that you use only for bitcoin? And yeah, how do file your taxes without your spouse knowing?

Instead, protect against not revealing you have Bitcoin to the public, and only to those that need to know.

Absolutely this. I preach complete privacy when it comes to the wider public and corporations. There is no need for Facebook or Google to know that I own bitcoin, and there is also no need for Facebook or Google to know what my hobbies are or where I like to shop. But when it comes to your close family members, then it is a different story. I trust my wife to make life or death decisions about me if I were incapacitated; why wouldn't I trust her to know we own bitcoin?

[Pmalek]

I trust my wife to make life or death decisions about me if I were incapacitated; why wouldn't I trust her to know we own bitcoin?

That's exactly right. "We", not "I". "Mine" and "yours" doesn't work in a marriage or it would have to be an extremely unusual communion. "We" had a baby. She gave birth to it, but she gave birth to "our" baby.

[larry_vw_1955]

If you aren't telling your spouse ...

then you have some secrets. simple as that. could be big secrets could be small ones.  not everyone is an "open book" there are different personality types.

And yeah, how do file your taxes without your spouse knowing?

maybe this?

Married filing separately is a tax status used by married couples who choose to record their incomes, exemptions, and deductions on separate tax returns


i guess it's theoretically possible for a man and wife to not know much about the other's finances. at least here in the usa.

I preach complete privacy when it comes to the wider public and corporations. There is no need for Facebook or Google to know that I own bitcoin, and there is also no need for Facebook or Google to know what my hobbies are or where I like to shop.

but here you are on the world's most popular cryptocurrency forum. i suppose, like satoshi, you have taken care of that though.

But when it comes to your close family members, then it is a different story. I trust my wife to make life or death decisions about me if I were incapacitated; why wouldn't I trust her to know we own bitcoin?

i don't think it's about that. it's more about someone's personality type. do they like to gossip with their friends and can't keep a secret? if so then someone like that might say something you didn't want them to. some people have big mouths and you just can't trust them to keep their mouth shut about something you'd rather other people didn't know. truth.

[o_e_l_e_o]

then you have some secrets. simple as that. could be big secrets could be small ones.  not everyone is an "open book" there are different personality types.

Okay, but finances are pretty basic component of building a life together. Jobs, mortgages/rent, cars, savings, retirement, holidays, childcare, education fees, and so on. If you can't be honest with your spouse about something so fundamental, they you probably can't be honest with them about far more sensitive topics either. It seems I'm in the minority here, but if you have such a complete lack of trust in another individual, then I cannot fathom why you would choose to marry them.

Married filing separately is a tax status used by married couples who choose to record their incomes, exemptions, and deductions on separate tax returns

I didn't mean how you physically file the taxes separately; obviously you can. But how do you hide the taxes you are paying from your spouse? Again, a secret bank account they don't know anything about?

but here you are on the world's most popular cryptocurrency forum.

With zero links to my real life identity.

[Saint-loup]

You just need to tell your wife where is located your encrypted seed, then she will be able to access your encrypted seed but not being able to decrypt it while your relatives will be able to access your password (if they unseal the envelope at least) but not being able to locate your encrypted seed.

You are just trusting two people instead of one. If you don't want to trust anyone, then trustless solutions are better.

AFAIK you can't spend anymore funds included in a timelocked transaction before its expiry date once your timelocked transaction has been mined.

You can spend the coins any time you like. The timelocked transaction can only be mined after the timelock has passed. If you need to spend the funds, then you can do so and then simply replace the timelocked transaction.

In addition, it implies to know at which date you will die. That's not convenient at all.

Not at all. Create the transaction for 6 months in the future. If you are still alive, invalidate it and create a new one another 6 months in the future.

It means you won't leave your seed but a signed transaction with a timelock, it implies to create a new transaction each time you spend some funds or you receive some if you want to transmit all your funds. In addition, if you spend some funds included in your last transaction and if you die or lose your memory before creating a new one, the transaction won't be usable anymore, and all your funds will be lost. So it's a convenient solution only if you don't hold much funds in altcoins, and if you only make few transactions with your Bitcoins.

You can check the service from time to time before losing your memory or dying, if you are afraid of that.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems absolutely crazy to me that you wouldn't trust your own wife to even know that you own bitcoin, but you are quite happy to trust a bunch of complete strangers (with a track record of terrible security and privacy) to store part of your back ups.

There is a difference between knowing that you own bitcoins and having access to them, in the same way as knowing you own a smartphone and knowing its pin code for example.

[larry_vw_1955]

Okay, but finances are pretty basic component of building a life together. Jobs, mortgages/rent, cars, savings, retirement, holidays, childcare, education fees, and so on.

well it's not like every couple sits down before they get married and has a conversation about all those topics you mentioned.  probably not, right?

I didn't mean how you physically file the taxes separately; obviously you can. But how do you hide the taxes you are paying from your spouse? Again, a secret bank account they don't know anything about?

sure, why not? does every spouse know all of the other spouce's bank accounts? probably not.

With zero links to my real life identity.

well you have a boat because you lost your crypto in a boating accident so that's a big privacy leak right there  

[o_e_l_e_o]

It means you won't leave your seed but a signed transaction with a timelock, it implies to create a new transaction each time you spend some funds or you receive some if you want to transmit all your funds.

A timelocked transaction set up should be used with your cold storage wallets which are not making frequent transactions. Further, it is trivial to create a new timelocked transactions when you are using that wallet, and the whole process of creating the transaction, signing it, and printing it off or sending it to someone else can be done under a minute.

So it's a convenient solution only if you don't hold much funds in altcoins

Fair point. I don't hold any shitcoins so I don't ever really consider that angle.

There is a difference between knowing that you own bitcoins and having access to them, in the same way as knowing you own a smartphone and knowing its pin code for example.

But if you are concerned about your spouse being a gossip and making you a target, as posters above have suggested, then both are just as risky.

does every spouse know all of the other spouce's bank accounts? probably not.

Then why get married if you have so many secrets you want to keep from the other person?

well you have a boat

Prove it.

[larry_vw_1955]

Then why get married if you have so many secrets you want to keep from the other person?

maybe we should take a step back and ask if you agree that a married couple should have their own personal bank accounts and maybe a joint savings account and another joint account where they pay the bills out of. i doubt spouses are going to be checking the other's bank account statements each month anyway so as far as that goes, it effectively is a bank account they know nothing about....

[o_e_l_e_o]

maybe we should take a step back and ask if you agree that a married couple should have their own personal bank accounts and maybe a joint savings account and another joint account where they pay the bills out of.

I don't see any issue with that, but I do see an issue with both individuals having their own account, them sharing a joint account, and then one of those individuals having an extra secret account which they are skimming off some of their income or savings or whatever to hide from the other person. In such a case you obviously do not trust your spouse, which goes back to the initial question of why did you marry them in the first place?

I have argued long and hard in defense of all things privacy, and so if you want to keep parts of your life secret from your spouse than that is absolutely your right. I guess I just don't understand why you would be in such a relationship. If I trusted someone so little, I would be keeping a much more casual relationship with them.

[Welsh]

maybe we should take a step back and ask if you agree that a married couple should have their own personal bank accounts and maybe a joint savings account and another joint account where they pay the bills out of. i doubt spouses are going to be checking the other's bank account statements each month anyway so as far as that goes, it effectively is a bank account they know nothing about....

Many couples have separate bank accounts, but they at least tell or are open to their partner about it. Having a secret bank account is another story, I haven't heard that too often. If you don't want to share everything with your partner you probably shouldn't get married in the first place, since you're legally accepting that you will share everything.

I'm not even sure what the motives would be to hide a bank account from your partner. What does that achieve?

[BlackHatCoiner]

In such a case you obviously do not trust your spouse, which goes back to the initial question of why did you marry them in the first place?

Marrying isn't harmonious everywhere. In some places, marrying someone is not made with both spouses' consent. In Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, forced marriages and child marriages are common phenomena. Also, in almost every part of the world, married couples have benefits such as social security, health care and other tax benefits. I don't want to argue someone should marry another for those reasons, but I'm sure some do.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I don't want to argue someone should marry another for those reasons, but I'm sure some do.

Sure, I appreciate that, but the original argument several pages ago was about letting someone you trust know about your bitcoin and your back ups in order to inherit them or to recover them if you were incapacitated or suffered memory loss. Obviously if it is a forced or arranged marriage that one party is looking to get out of as soon as is safely possible, then that is a different thing entirely and you wouldn't want the other person to inherit anything should you die anyway. But in the case of marriages where you are actively building a life together, taking out a mortgage together, having kids and grand-kids together, then such a marriage is completely based on trust. You don't trust someone to know about your finances, but you trust them enough to take out a mortgage with you or help raise your kids? That makes no sense to me.

[larry_vw_1955]

Many couples have separate bank accounts, but they at least tell or are open to their partner about it.

just because you know each other has their own personal bank account doesn't mean you know what's going on in that bank account. 

Having a secret bank account is another story, I haven't heard that too often.

is there really a difference though? if you don't know what they are doing in their bank account does it really matter whether you know that account exists or not? so i guess you have a protocol in place for how spouses declare all the transactions they are doing periodically, maybe emailing each other their respective bank statements?

If you don't want to share everything with your partner you probably shouldn't get married in the first place, since you're legally accepting that you will share everything.

well i'm not sure that statement is true. just because people get married doesn't mean they shouldn't try and protect themself from adverse events that might occur in the future. that's what a pre-nuptual agreement is for.

I'm not even sure what the motives would be to hide a bank account from your partner. What does that achieve?

well it could achieve alot of things. for example lets say you are doing some type of illegal transactions and in order to limit your spouse's liability, you don't want them to know about it. how's that ? need another example, just ask.

I don't see any issue with that, but I do see an issue with both individuals having their own account, them sharing a joint account, and then one of those individuals having an extra secret account which they are skimming off some of their income or savings or whatever to hide from the other person.

what's the difference though? unless there is some protocol to share bank account statements from the personal accounts on a periodic basis.

In such a case you obviously do not trust your spouse, which goes back to the initial question of why did you marry them in the first place?

i dont know.

I have argued long and hard in defense of all things privacy, and so if you want to keep parts of your life secret from your spouse than that is absolutely your right. I guess I just don't understand why you would be in such a relationship. If I trusted someone so little, I would be keeping a much more casual relationship with them.

well i don't think anyone starts out with the goal to keep secrets it's just something that happens along the way maybe? i don't know. but little secrets can turn into big secrets but by then, you already justified the entire thing somehow. 

[Outhue]

What do you think? I don't think it would make sense, for example to have copies of the seeds of both HW's at both sites because in a $5 wrench attack I could lose everything.

One drawback I see is that if the house burns down I would lose everything I manage with one HW, but well, that risk I also had now, having 100% of the management of my holdings in one site.

It depends on you. I personally have my main cold-storage seeds in encrypted USBs, hidden in different secret locations. One secret location is in my house, another one in my car, another at work, and the last one in my old room in my parents' house. They all look cheap, ordinary USBs, with directories named "My Files" with old useless/random files from work scattered with the encrypted folder nested in another folder with more random files that contains the seeds. The USBs can only be opened in Linux

This is very smart, can you tell me how you setup the USB that it can only be opened in Linux OS? I think this will be very useful for me because many people don't like using Linux OS, for example, in my country you will never see anyone running Linux on their PC, it is always Windows OS.

I don't know if will come across this reply, if you do pls drop a message or PM about how you make this work.

[Welsh]

This is very smart, can you tell me how you setup the USB that it can only be opened in Linux OS? I think this will be very useful for me because many people don't like using Linux OS, for example, in my country you will never see anyone running Linux on their PC, it is always Windows OS.

I don't know if will come across this reply, if you do pls drop a message or PM about how you make this work.

Linux can open any USB. Although, if you want an encrypted one, you can get hardware encrypted USBs which I'd much prefer than doing it via software, but you've ultimately got to trust the manufacturer of the device, since they've implemented the security, and more often than not they're closed source. You basically setup a pin number on the hardware, and then you put that pin in, plug it in, and it's unlocked. You can make them read only too, which is quite good for operating systems, and when you want to install them or plug in a live usb to a potentially infected computer, and take a look around.

I've got a few hardware encrypted one's, but I probably wouldn't trust them enough to put my seed onto them. I much prefer physical backups.

[larry_vw_1955]

It depends on you. I personally have my main cold-storage seeds in encrypted USBs, hidden in different secret locations. One secret location is in my house, another one in my car, another at work, and the last one in my old room in my parents' house. They all look cheap, ordinary USBs, with directories named "My Files" with old useless/random files from work scattered with the encrypted folder nested in another folder with more random files that contains the seeds. The USBs can only be opened in Linux

where do you store your passwords to unencrypt them?

This is very smart, can you tell me how you setup the USB that it can only be opened in Linux OS? I think this will be very useful for me because many people don't like using Linux OS, for example, in my country you will never see anyone running Linux on their PC, it is always Windows OS.

I think LUKS is something you might use for Linux. But I never tried it. But it looks like it would be a breeze...
https://geekyshacklebolt.wordpress.com/2019/03/06/how-to-encrypt-usb-drives-with-luks/

[Welsh]

I've never been a fan of storing seeds on digital devices, even if they're encrypted, and never touched the internet. There's just too much risk of that device failing, but also potentially being compromised prior to you receiving it. Each to their own, however USB's are much more fragile, and don't tend to live as long as pieces of paper stored correctly.

I think LUKS is something you might use for Linux. But I never tried it. But it looks like it would be a breeze...
https://geekyshacklebolt.wordpress.com/2019/03/06/how-to-encrypt-usb-drives-with-luks/

Yeah, LUKS can be used. Although, you still have to trust the hardware that you're setting LUKS up on. I personally wouldn't recommend untrusted one's. However, these days it's hard to even trust well known brands.

[larry_vw_1955]

Each to their own, however USB's are much more fragile, and don't tend to live as long as pieces of paper stored correctly.

well if someone is just storing their seed phrase on a single digital device then they have no idea what they're doing. 

Yeah, LUKS can be used. Although, you still have to trust the hardware that you're setting LUKS up on. I personally wouldn't recommend untrusted one's. However, these days it's hard to even trust well known brands.

to be honest, i'd be more worried about having some type of encrypted file system corruption. on the list of failure points that one is probably high up on the list in terms of probabilities of occurrence. compared to other things...

[o_e_l_e_o]

where do you store your passwords to unencrypt them?

Generally speaking, I use a self-hosted password manager for most of my online passwords. For passwords to encrypted drives I use paper back ups, much as I do with seed phrases. Since I use full disk encryption on everything, for my daily access drives I also have the passwords in memory since I enter them several times a day more-or-less every day, but I still have paper back ups.

I think LUKS is something you might use for Linux. But I never tried it. But it looks like it would be a breeze...

It is indeed. LUKS is already integrated in to every major Linux distro, and is what I use for whole disk encryption.

I do agree with Welsh, though. My bitcoin wallet back ups are largely non-digital.

[Saint-loup]

It means you won't leave your seed but a signed transaction with a timelock, it implies to create a new transaction each time you spend some funds or you receive some if you want to transmit all your funds.

A timelocked transaction set up should be used with your cold storage wallets which are not making frequent transactions. Further, it is trivial to create a new timelocked transactions when you are using that wallet, and the whole process of creating the transaction, signing it, and printing it off or sending it to someone else can be done under a minute.

I doubt it would take less than one minute to do all that stuff for the average user to be honest but I guess it could be ok if you only do it for your cold wallet though. But what will you do with the funds of your hot wallet? They will be lost ? 0.1 or 0.2 BTC is not an insignificant amount for many people on earth you know.

So it's a convenient solution only if you don't hold much funds in altcoins

Fair point. I don't hold any shitcoins so I don't ever really consider that angle.

That's why this solution is not convenient for many people unfortunately. I'm surprised you don't hold any "shitcoin" though, while you have a ledger. You advise against using any third party service, such as Google, but you hold Bitcoins in a closed source wallet not air gapped while you don't need it?  

There is a difference between knowing that you own bitcoins and having access to them, in the same way as knowing you own a smartphone and knowing its pin code for example.

But if you are concerned about your spouse being a gossip and making you a target, as posters above have suggested, then both are just as risky.

You're right, that's why it's better to make her believe that you only hold very small amounts.

does every spouse know all of the other spouce's bank accounts? probably not.

Then why get married if you have so many secrets you want to keep from the other person?

Why not? I don't think most of women really care about that to be honest. They don't marry men because they hold or not bitcoins, fortunately.

well you have a boat

Prove it.

Sorry, but this quote doesn't belong to me.

[larry_vw_1955]

Sorry, but this quote doesn't belong to me.

yeah it belongs to me. and i stand by it. i know he has one.   periodically he loses his bitcoin on that boat because his wallet falls overboard. in rough waters, of course.

[o_e_l_e_o]

But what will you do with the funds of your hot wallet? They will be lost ? 0.1 or 0.2 BTC is not an insignificant amount for many people on earth you know.

If you keep that much in a hot wallet, then its up to you to figure out how you want to leave it to your heirs. Simply telling your spouse about the location of your seed phrase back up would be my preference, but I also don't keep that much money in a hot wallet. I treat a hot wallet as I treat physical cash in my physical wallet, and I certainly don't wander around with thousands of dollars of cash in my pocket.

You advise against using any third party service, such as Google, but you hold Bitcoins in a closed source wallet not air gapped while you don't need it?

I have a variety of hardware wallets used for a variety of different reasons. Some single-sig, some multi-sig, some decoys, some are empty, etc.

Why not? I don't think most of women really care about that to be honest. They don't marry men because they hold or not bitcoins, fortunately.

I'm not arguing that you should be showing off your bitcoin to entice someone to marry you, but rather you probably shouldn't be basing your entire marriage on lies and secrecy from your spouse.

[Saint-loup]

But what will you do with the funds of your hot wallet? They will be lost ? 0.1 or 0.2 BTC is not an insignificant amount for many people on earth you know.

If you keep that much in a hot wallet, then its up to you to figure out how you want to leave it to your heirs. Simply telling your spouse about the location of your seed phrase back up would be my preference, but I also don't keep that much money in a hot wallet. I treat a hot wallet as I treat physical cash in my physical wallet, and I certainly don't wander around with thousands of dollars of cash in my pocket.

Unlike Bitcoin, we don't need to pay dozens cents of mining fees each time we make a transaction with cash, so we don't use Bitcoin in the same way as we use cash normally. And LN needs to dedicate rather large amounts of funds to the channels, if we want to use it smoothly, so it's not easy to keep a hot wallet with less than several hundreds of USD when we use Bitcoin frequently.

Why not? I don't think most of women really care about that to be honest. They don't marry men because they hold or not bitcoins, fortunately.

I'm not arguing that you should be showing off your bitcoin to entice someone to marry you, but rather you probably shouldn't be basing your entire marriage on lies and secrecy from your spouse.

I'm sure there is a universe where all wives and husbands are fully transparent and can say anything to their partner, but it doesn't seem to be this one unfortunately
And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.

[larry_vw_1955]

Unlike Bitcoin, we don't need to pay dozens cents of mining fees each time we make a transaction with cash, so we don't use Bitcoin in the same way as we use cash normally.

not because we don't want to but because there's not a feasible solution for transferring bitcoin without paying fees. with fiat, you can just hand your cash to someone and no one pays any fees. you can't do that with bitcoin. never will be able to. because any solution is going to cost you more than the fees would have...

I'm sure there is a universe where all wives and husbands are fully transparent and can say anything to their partner, but it doesn't seem to be this one unfortunately

there might not even be a universe like that but i'm sure there are some relationships that are on that level. just not all of them. 

[o_e_l_e_o]

it's not easy to keep a hot wallet with less than several hundreds of USD when we use Bitcoin frequently.

I don't agree with that, because that is exactly what I do. I have a hot wallet on my phone with usually less than $100 worth of bitcoin on it. I use this to make purchases in person with my local merchants who I know accept bitcoin. I'm buying things like groceries or electronic accessories such as spare cables, so usually well under $100. When it gets low, I top it up from a cold wallet at home.

If I plan to make a larger purchase than that in person, then I'll either load up my hot wallet in advance or take a hardware wallet and take it with me, depending on the value we are talking about.

I'm sure there is a universe where all wives and husbands are fully transparent and can say anything to their partner, but it doesn't seem to be this one unfortunately

Fair enough, but that goes back my original point. If you are entering in to a marriage and already planning to hide all your bitcoin from your spouse, then you should have signed a prenup.

[Saint-loup]

I don't agree with that, because that is exactly what I do. I have a hot wallet on my phone with usually less than $100 worth of bitcoin on it. I use this to make purchases in person with my local merchants who I know accept bitcoin. I'm buying things like groceries or electronic accessories such as spare cables, so usually well under $100. When it gets low, I top it up from a cold wallet at home.

If I plan to make a larger purchase than that in person, then I'll either load up my hot wallet in advance or take a hardware wallet and take it with me, depending on the value we are talking about.

You are very lucky to have some local merchants accepting Bitcoin. They accept payments with 0 confirmations or they are using LN? With a so low limit you are certainly rich and patient enough to top up your hot wallet several times a week but I don't think it's a very convenient limit for most people. If you need to receive or send funds to an exchange or a gambling site $100 won't be enough for example. Personally I don't think it's very safe to use his cold wallet for doing all his transactions, but I understand people could do the opposite, especially if they don't use LN.    

[larry_vw_1955]

I don't agree with that, because that is exactly what I do. I have a hot wallet on my phone with usually less than $100 worth of bitcoin on it. I use this to make purchases in person with my local merchants who I know accept bitcoin. I'm buying things like groceries or electronic accessories such as spare cables, so usually well under $100. When it gets low, I top it up from a cold wallet at home.

If I plan to make a larger purchase than that in person, then I'll either load up my hot wallet in advance or take a hardware wallet and take it with me, depending on the value we are talking about.

must be nice not having to depend on banks. no one to try and mess with your money. but i guess you can't really survive with out a bank account can you? is that really feasible? you heard what happened with usdc right? and how that bank went under but got bailed out...you always said you didn't trust usdc so that was pretty smart. 

[m2017]

it's not easy to keep a hot wallet with less than several hundreds of USD when we use Bitcoin frequently.

I don't agree with that, because that is exactly what I do. I have a hot wallet on my phone with usually less than $100 worth of bitcoin on it. I use this to make purchases in person with my local merchants who I know accept bitcoin. I'm buying things like groceries or electronic accessories such as spare cables, so usually well under $100. When it gets low, I top it up from a cold wallet at home.

If I plan to make a larger purchase than that in person, then I'll either load up my hot wallet in advance or take a hardware wallet and take it with me, depending on the value we are talking about.

You have a pretty sensible tactic with the separation between a pocket wallet and a wallet for long-term storage. Nothing safer and more convenient to think of. What is the name of the app on your phone? I would also not trust a completely mobile application, in view of the fact that phones are far from ideal in terms of software. Also, the phone can be easily lost, which would be simply critical if there was a wallet with a large amount of btc on it. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket and only separate storage is permissible.

I'm sure there is a universe where all wives and husbands are fully transparent and can say anything to their partner, but it doesn't seem to be this one unfortunately

Fair enough, but that goes back my original point. If you are entering in to a marriage and already planning to hide all your bitcoin from your spouse, then you should have signed a prenup.

Or look for another spouse you can trust.

[o_e_l_e_o]

You are very lucky to have some local merchants accepting Bitcoin. They accept payments with 0 confirmations or they are using LN?

Bit of both. And although full RBF is now making zero confirmations transactions less safe to accept, I've already spoken to the ones I shop at regularly and they've all said they will have no problem continuing to accept zero confirmation transactions from me since I've shopped with them for years and they know me. Such is the benefit of using small family owned merchants over national or multinational retailers.

If you need to receive or send funds to an exchange or a gambling site $100 won't be enough for example. Personally I don't think it's very safe to use his cold wallet for doing all his transactions, but I understand people could do the opposite, especially if they don't use LN.

I very much use this mobile wallet as an "in person spending" wallet. If I was topping up an account on a website or similar, then that would probably come from hardware wallet.

must be nice not having to depend on banks. no one to try and mess with your money. but i guess you can't really survive with out a bank account can you? is that really feasible? you heard what happened with usdc right? and how that bank went under but got bailed out...you always said you didn't trust usdc so that was pretty smart.  

I have a regular job which pays me in USD so yeah, I do still have a bank account and I couldn't (yet!) live without one. I also have plenty of bills which must be paid in USD. Small steps, though. And yeah, I don't trust any centralized (un)stablecoin. They are all fractional reserve scams, just like fiat itself.

What is the name of the app on your phone?

I use Electrum.

[rat03gopoh]

however USB's are much more fragile, and don't tend to live as long as pieces of paper stored correctly.

Hell yeah, i don't trust any usb stick to store anything important especially privkeys. Some of my neighbors got new corrupted USBs (those were bought at electronics retail stores and online stores). The reason(I searched the internet), it was forced to increase the storage capacity. Even though it doesn't show any damage at first, a few times of use it will show thaat all saved files are corrupted (unrecoverable).

[larry_vw_1955]

I have a regular job which pays me in USD so yeah, I do still have a bank account and I couldn't (yet!) live without one.

how cool would it be to be paid in bitcoin. i remember some NFL news that some team was paying players in BTC.  i bet the team pays the transaction fee to put it in their wallet too. 

I also have plenty of bills which must be paid in USD. Small steps, though.

they don't have any services that let you pay your usd bills using bitcoin? i guess even if those existed, they are centralized services and thus no more trustworthy than the bill pay at your local bank.

And yeah, I don't trust any centralized (un)stablecoin. They are all fractional reserve scams, just like fiat itself.

yeah the funny thing is that at least in this particular instance, the us government stepped in and bailed out people that had usdc and might have lost it.  reference: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5445452.msg61938392#msg61938392 

[o_e_l_e_o]

i remember some NFL news that some team was paying players in BTC.  i bet the team pays the transaction fee to put it in their wallet too.

A quick search shows that NFL players are on anywhere between $1 and $50 million a year. I'm pretty sure the teams would throw in the 50 cent transaction fee as well.

they don't have any services that let you pay your usd bills using bitcoin? i guess even if those existed, they are centralized services and thus no more trustworthy than the bill pay at your local bank.

There are such a services, but I've never used them. They unanimously require a level of KYC I am not willing to provide. If I desperately need to pay some bill using bitcoin, then I'll simply trade my bitcoin privately peer to peer as I usually do and then use the fiat to pay the bill.

yeah the funny thing is that at least in this particular instance, the us government stepped in and bailed out people that had usdc and might have lost it.

Ridiculous. I take major issue with tax dollars being used and new money being printed to bail out banks which collapse because of their own greed and risky gambling, which I've just started a topic about an hour ago. Doing the same thing for centralized scamcoins, even indirectly such as in this case, is utterly ridiculous.

[larry_vw_1955]

A quick search shows that NFL players are on anywhere between $1 and $50 million a year. I'm pretty sure the teams would throw in the 50 cent transaction fee as well.

i can guarantee you that someone is making some serious money off of that racket of paying those nfl players in bitcoin and trust me, those players are paying way more than 50 cents. i don't know how hard it is to transfer $10,000,000 from a bank account and buy bitcoin somewhere but it can't be simple. so i guess them paying an 0.25% fee or something like that would be warranted (I guess!). but that does equal $25,000. but i guess it's not per month but per year so i guess it's reasonable after all. but if the fee was 1% then maybe that's a bit on the high side.

Ridiculous. I take major issue with tax dollars being used and new money being printed to bail out banks which collapse because of their own greed and risky gambling, which I've just started a topic about an hour ago. Doing the same thing for centralized scamcoins, even indirectly such as in this case, is utterly ridiculous.

very well said. i think i need to merit you.  

[o_e_l_e_o]

-snip-

Oh right, haha. You were talking about the transaction fee in order for the NFL team to buy the bitcoin in the first place. I thought you were talking about the network transaction fee, which will obviously just be a few cents regardless of how much bitcoin is being transferred.

Any entity buying such large amounts of bitcoin will be doing it via some OTC desk and will be able to both shop around and also negotiate an acceptable fee. As an indication, Phemex OTC has fees of 0.08% for orders over $500,000: https://phemex.com/otc/legend-trading

[aesthete2022]

TLDR, but I'd be surprised if noone has suggested multisig. Use either of the two keys in a 2-of-3 setup.

[larry_vw_1955]

Oh right, haha. You were talking about the transaction fee in order for the NFL team to buy the bitcoin in the first place. I thought you were talking about the network transaction fee, which will obviously just be a few cents regardless of how much bitcoin is being transferred.

Any entity buying such large amounts of bitcoin will be doing it via some OTC desk and will be able to both shop around and also negotiate an acceptable fee. As an indication, Phemex OTC has fees of 0.08% for orders over $500,000: https://phemex.com/otc/legend-trading

hopefully those nfl players have good tax filing skills because they're going to need them when they report all their trades to the IRS. they might not think of themselves as traders but the irs does...

i heard shaq had a 20 million dollar contract but he only got paid 10 million because they took out all his taxes first. then he goes and blows all that money on buying things. if he did that in bitcoin he might end up owing money to the irs STILL. 

[Pmalek]

hopefully those nfl players have good tax filing skills because they're going to need them when they report all their trades to the IRS.

I seriously doubt they do. But they have tax advisors who take care of those things for them. All the athletes so is sign the papers. In many cases without even reading the content.

I remember when Messi was in court in Spain a few years ago for tax evasion for money he eared through his image rights. His lawyers (intentionally or not) didn't declare all the money. It was reported that he said I don't know what they are doing, it's none of my business. I just sign the papers they give me. They have no clue what is going on because other people handle such tasks for them.

[larry_vw_1955]

I remember when Messi was in court in Spain a few years ago for tax evasion for money he eared through his image rights. His lawyers (intentionally or not) didn't declare all the money. It was reported that he said I don't know what they are doing, it's none of my business. I just sign the papers they give me.

i don't know what the gun is doing, i held it and pulled the trigger but it's none of my business what the gun was doing...

They have no clue what is going on because other people handle such tasks for them.

someone that has no clue what is going on is ripe to be scammed, among other things. if it was me i think i'd be taking a more active role in managing my money...

[Pmalek]

someone that has no clue what is going on is ripe to be scammed, among other things. if it was me i think i'd be taking a more active role in managing my money...

I don't disagree, nor do I think that it's praiseworthy. With the possibility of sounding like a d**k, some of these lads that come from South America (when football is concerned) are almost illiterate. They grew up in poor families with no money for the essential things in life. They don't have money for education is start kicking a ball from early age. They look at football as a way of improving the lives of themselves and their families. And they are good at it. I don't want to derail this topic any further with this.

[hZti]

If you are not well educated and are successful in sports then you need to give away part of your money to get advisors. I think that is what most of those football players do and they are simply arrogant and stupid if they dont do it. Just because you earn a lot of money, you are not smart with that money.

[larry_vw_1955]

If you are not well educated and are successful in sports then you need to give away part of your money to get advisors.

that argument never made any sense to me. if you don't need an advisor to manage $1000, why would you need one to manage $1,000,000 ?

I think that is what most of those football players do and they are simply arrogant and stupid if they dont do it. Just because you earn a lot of money, you are not smart with that money.

yeah but i wouldnt lump them all into the "dumb" category. some of them are really astute business people.

[bpkdasbaum]

I wasn't quite sure how to summarize it in the title just as I'm not quite sure if this is the exact place where the thread should go. Let me explain and you tell me.

So far I have been managing my Bitcoin holdings using a HW in a location and in the same location I have had the seeds well hidden and written down on a piece of paper.

As I accumulate, I have been thinking of buying another HW and storing it in a vacation home, just like the seeds, in the same way, written down and hidden. It would be about handling half of my holdings at each site.

What do you think? I don't think it would make sense, for example to have copies of the seeds of both HW's at both sites because in a $5 wrench attack I could lose everything.

One drawback I see is that if the house burns down I would lose everything I manage with one HW, but well, that risk I also had now, having 100% of the management of my holdings in one site.

Paper storage is horrible. And you should have at least 3 backups.

Let me introduce you to our lord and savior: Crypto Seed backup in steel washers.

Low cost, affordable, easily scalable, indestructible, fireproof 1400°C (a house fire is around 1100°C), waterproof, corrosion proof, shock proof, earthquake proof, offline cold wallet, seed or passphrase backup.

https://i.etsystatic.com/41503409/r/il/689efd/4813988559/il_1588xN.4813988559_fcds.jpg
Picture taken from here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1434977816

More information on that topic here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5389446.0
https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/
https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/diy-cryptosteel-capsule.html
http://bulletproofbitcoin.com/
https://blog.lopp.net/a-treatise-on-bitcoin-seed-backup-device-design/
https://www.econoalchemist.com/post/backup
https://blockmit.com/english/guides/diy/make-cold-wallet-washers/

[bettercrypto]

I wasn't quite sure how to summarize it in the title just as I'm not quite sure if this is the exact place where the thread should go. Let me explain and you tell me.

So far I have been managing my Bitcoin holdings using a HW in a location and in the same location I have had the seeds well hidden and written down on a piece of paper.

As I accumulate, I have been thinking of buying another HW and storing it in a vacation home, just like the seeds, in the same way, written down and hidden. It would be about handling half of my holdings at each site.

What do you think? I don't think it would make sense, for example to have copies of the seeds of both HW's at both sites because in a $5 wrench attack I could lose everything.

One drawback I see is that if the house burns down I would lose everything I manage with one HW, but well, that risk I also had now, having 100% of the management of my holdings in one site.

It seems from what I see in your plans that you want to apply "Don't put your eggs in one basket" You are doing the right thing and I don't see anything wrong.

      Splitting your assets in different wallets is good because as you mentioned, even if one house burns down, there are other houses where your assets can be hidden. For me, your plan is fine.