2-of-3 vault: Can I spare myself passphrases, words seeds and PIN?

[apogio]

Sorry, I seem to have missed this reply.

No worries.

I do agree. There is no doubt that setting up and using a multi-sig wallet is harder than setting up a standard wallet, with or without an additional passphrase.

I like passphrases. I think more people should use them. They provide additional security should your seed phrase back up be discovered, and they also provide plausible deniability in the event of a $5 wrench attack. However, in most cases, people will still use them on a hot wallet. At some point you need to progress to a safer set up. This could take three basic forms - multi-sig, airgapped, or hardware. Even better if you use some combination of the three, and still use passphrases on top of that too.

So yes, multi-sigs are more complicated to set up and use, but at some point it becomes worth it to just sit down and learn how to use something more complicated than a standard hot wallet for your own safety.

I suppose you are right.

In April I have managed to convince 3 of my friends to get their money off of exchanges into self custody hot wallets. That's a small, yet undeniable, win. Step-by-step I will eventually teach them what passphrases do and I will ask them to create a new wallet. Then I will help them go to cold storage. Then to airgapped devices. Them multisig.

What I have realised is that all 3 of them need assistance and time. So as I said, step-by-step... 

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[o_e_l_e_o]

In April I have managed to convince 3 of my friends to get their money off of exchanges into self custody hot wallets. That's a small, yet undeniable, win. Step-by-step I will eventually teach them what passphrases do and I will ask them to create a new wallet. Then I will help them go to cold storage. Then to airgapped devices. Them multisig.

I think that is unnecessary and risks both confusing them as well as them making a mistake. There is no need for them to migrate wallet four times.

All they need is something safer than a hot wallet if they are going to be storing an amount of bitcoin which is significant to them. Personally, I'm a big proponent of a separate device, fully airgapped, connectivity hardware removed, running a clean install of Linux, with full disk encryption. But I am also under no illusion that such a set up is fairly complicated to set up and use safely, and indeed, suggesting it to everyone will definitely lead to some people messing up and losing all their coins. For most people, the best approach will be with a good hardware wallet such as a Passport.

[Z-tight]

Then I will help them go to cold storage. Then to airgapped devices.

If you are using an air-gapped device, then your funds are in cold storage, the two aren't different in that way, though air-gapped wallets isn't the only type of cold storage, when you use hardware wallets your funds are in cold storage too; funds are in cold storage when the seed phrase and keys are generated and stored offline and would never be connected to the internet.

Step-by-step I will eventually teach them what passphrases do and I will ask them to create a new wallet.
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Them multisig.

Multisig and passphrases are very good extra layers of security, but for people just coming out of exchanges, i think what they need to learn importantly right now is self custody, hot and cold wallets, get them a good self custody wallet like Electrum, next, if their money is small and for fast spending, they can run Electrum on their online device, if they have a large sum and are holding it for the long term, then they should run Electrum on an air-gapped device, or for ease, they should buy a hardware wallet. Multisig and passphrases mean more backups, and it may be complicated for newbies to keep the backups safe, so with more experience they can add more layers of security later on.