Multiple wallets mathematically more prone to loss?

[davidgdg]

Brain wallets are easily guessable, you should move your funds into something else immediately.

Off-topic I know, but this seems to me to be a complete myth.

Chosen at random from my old Longman's Dictionary (pages opened at random)...deform lockage sedate daunt captive

The dictionary has 70,000 words:

70,000^5 = ~ 2*10^24

Try brute-forcing that 

Well you have solved only half the problem. For most people, a set of words that can be reliably memorized is going to be easy to brute force.

If I can remember two or three of the five words I could alway brute force the rest if necessary

[Light]

Off-topic I know, but this seems to me to be a complete myth.

Chosen at random from my old Longman's Dictionary (pages opened at random)...deform lockage sedate daunt captive

The dictionary has 70,000 words:

70,000^5 = ~ 2*10^24

Try brute-forcing that 

As long as you have enough entropy, I do agree brain wallets are perfectly fine. The reason why many people including myself advise against it is that in general people are too lazy to properly choose random words instead substituting them for words they believe to be random or ones from famous films/songs/poems et al.

[jonald_fyookball]

Off-topic I know, but this seems to me to be a complete myth.

Chosen at random from my old Longman's Dictionary (pages opened at random)...deform lockage sedate daunt captive

The dictionary has 70,000 words:

70,000^5 = ~ 2*10^24

Try brute-forcing that  

As long as you have enough entropy, I do agree brain wallets are perfectly fine. The reason why many people including myself advise against it is that in general people are too lazy to properly choose random words instead substituting them for words they believe to be random or ones from famous films/songs/poems et al.

...which is why electrum doesn't allow that.

[cp1]

As long as you have enough entropy, I do agree brain wallets are perfectly fine. The reason why many people including myself advise against it is that in general people are too lazy to properly choose random words instead substituting them for words they believe to be random or ones from famous films/songs/poems et al.

It's not just that.  Everyone can work on cracking a brainwallet from anywhere.  To crack a wallet.dat file they have to have a copy of it.

[jonald_fyookball]

As long as you have enough entropy, I do agree brain wallets are perfectly fine. The reason why many people including myself advise against it is that in general people are too lazy to properly choose random words instead substituting them for words they believe to be random or ones from famous films/songs/poems et al.

It's not just that.  Everyone can work on cracking a brainwallet from anywhere.  To crack a wallet.dat file they have to have a copy of it.

Anyone can also work on cracking a private key from anywhere too without the wallet file.
Bitcoin private keys have 160 bits of security, maximum.

So, you just have to make sure your brain wallet has enough
bits of security (128-bit or more).

[beoswind]

Brain wallet is VERY dangerous

Move your BTC ASAP to address generated with https://bitcoin.org/en/download and just print on paper (with big fonts) your private key (at least 3 copy)

Also is good idea to generate 4 or more wallets instead of one (I have 55 BTC in 4 offline wallets)

[cp1]

Anyone can also work on cracking a private key from anywhere too without the wallet file.
Bitcoin private keys have 160 bits of security, maximum.

So, you just have to make sure your brain wallet has enough
bits of security (128-bit or more).

Sure, but if you have a 160 bit brainwallet then what is that, 14 - 15 words?  You'll have to write it down.  So that's a paper wallet, where you're encoding the private key with words instead of base58.  It's not a brainwallet.

[Balls]

The key is to not have too many wallets so that you cant keep track of them all. Having a ridiculous amount is just going to be tedious and stressful.

[jonald_fyookball]

Anyone can also work on cracking a private key from anywhere too without the wallet file.
Bitcoin private keys have 160 bits of security, maximum.

So, you just have to make sure your brain wallet has enough
bits of security (128-bit or more).

Sure, but if you have a 160 bit brainwallet then what is that, 14 - 15 words?  You'll have to write it down.  So that's a paper wallet, where you're encoding the private key with words instead of base58.  It's not a brainwallet.

A backup of the brainwallet, perhaps stored steganographically, or broken into sections and given to various trusted parties, is a good thing.

Whether you still consider it a brainwallet or not is semantics.

[agoraadnim]

Yes, but if you have your coins in 7 wallets like mine one loss won't be to bad. All mine are online though and that's obviously more prone to loss than offline.

[Siegfried]

Brain wallets are easily guessable, you should move your funds into something else immediately.

Off-topic I know, but this seems to me to be a complete myth.

Chosen at random from my old Longman's Dictionary (pages opened at random)...deform lockage sedate daunt captive

The dictionary has 70,000 words:

70,000^5 = ~ 2*10^24

Try brute-forcing that 

Well you have solved only half the problem. For most people, a set of words that can be reliably memorized is going to be easy to brute force.

Choose words from different languages.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

As long as you have enough entropy, I do agree brain wallets are perfectly fine. The reason why many people including myself advise against it is that in general people are too lazy to properly choose random words instead substituting them for words they believe to be random or ones from famous films/songs/poems et al.

It's not just that.  Everyone can work on cracking a brainwallet from anywhere.  To crack a wallet.dat file they have to have a copy of it.

Anyone can also work on cracking a private key from anywhere too without the wallet file.
Bitcoin private keys have 160 bits of security, maximum.

So, you just have to make sure your brain wallet has enough
bits of security (128-bit or more).

Brain wallets should really only be used if you have serious concerns about your computer being compromised in the future (and this is a legitimate concern).

An effective brain wallet must be memorized, otherwise it is no better then a paper wallet or a password protected wallet on your computer.

People use "mining farms" to calculate the public key of many brain wallets and monitor the blockchain for when btc is transferred to the address. When it is they use a script to push a TX to transfer the coins to an address they control.