Thinking of separating my holdings into two physical locations.

[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.    

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[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.