How would you store >100 Bitcoins?

[HarmonLi]

Not that I have that many (I wish!), but how would you store >100 Bitcoins? The easy answer is just to say "create 1 offline/cold wallet and put them all in". But what about risk management? IE how do you store a very large value of coins while managing risk against hackers, forgetting passwords, the obvious need for at least 1 hot wallet, portability, easy of use, house fires, EMP bomb's (lol), or if a foreigner had to flee a country while taking no assets etc etc.

I'm looking for real responses and ideas. Please keep the trolling to a minimum

I guess I'd put them in different locations. Make an encrypted paper wallet with (m of n) keys needed in order to decrypt it. And store those keys in different locations!!! Wow, that's a lot of money, even thinking about that makes my head spin around!

[Muhammed Zakir]

Not that I have that many (I wish!), but how would you store >100 Bitcoins? The easy answer is just to say "create 1 offline/cold wallet and put them all in". But what about risk management? IE how do you store a very large value of coins while managing risk against hackers, forgetting passwords, the obvious need for at least 1 hot wallet, portability, easy of use, house fires, EMP bomb's (lol), or if a foreigner had to flee a country while taking no assets etc etc.

I'm looking for real responses and ideas. Please keep the trolling to a minimum

I guess I'd put them in different locations. Make an encrypted paper wallet with (m of n) keys needed in order to decrypt it. And store those keys in different locations!!! Wow, that's a lot of money, even thinking about that makes my head spin around!

Encrypt qr codes for more security.

Kindly,
      MZ

[Ayers]

use 1 wallet per btc and store them in a paper wallet/usb, or you can just store them in a computer that isn't made for anything else, this mean that you don't downloand anything there and connection are not shared with any other machines and you don't even browse the internet with it, a perfectly isolated pc environment, no hacker can get there

[ellen_me]

Agree on multiple wallets, sounds safer. 

[InwardContour]

Buy 50 USB pendrives and store on them 1 btc each from a computer booted from a live cd disconnected from the internet.
Do the same but with 50 paperwallets and finally store all your btc in alot of different places.

[Clegg]

If I had 100 bitcoins  I would split them up into batches of 10 and keep them in a different wallet.dat each on a usb and also write the private keys down and encrypt them or print them off.

[Kipsy89]

use 1 wallet per btc and store them in a paper wallet/usb, or you can just store them in a computer that isn't made for anything else, this mean that you don't downloand anything there and connection are not shared with any other machines and you don't even browse the internet with it, a perfectly isolated pc environment, no hacker can get there

I'd be totally paranoid that my buddies would try and steal my flash drives then. When I sit around and drink with them I tend to brag about Bitcoin and as soon as they knew I had several drives with a lot of BTC on then, I guess they'd steal them...

[QuestionAuthority]

use 1 wallet per btc and store them in a paper wallet/usb, or you can just store them in a computer that isn't made for anything else, this mean that you don't downloand anything there and connection are not shared with any other machines and you don't even browse the internet with it, a perfectly isolated pc environment, no hacker can get there

I'd be totally paranoid that my buddies would try and steal my flash drives then. When I sit around and drink with them I tend to brag about Bitcoin and as soon as they knew I had several drives with a lot of BTC on then, I guess they'd steal them...

You need new friends.

[Clegg]

use 1 wallet per btc and store them in a paper wallet/usb, or you can just store them in a computer that isn't made for anything else, this mean that you don't downloand anything there and connection are not shared with any other machines and you don't even browse the internet with it, a perfectly isolated pc environment, no hacker can get there

I'd be totally paranoid that my buddies would try and steal my flash drives then. When I sit around and drink with them I tend to brag about Bitcoin and as soon as they knew I had several drives with a lot of BTC on then, I guess they'd steal them...

You need new friends.

Lol, or he need to store or backup his coins better. I suggest hiding them somewhere safe.

[Mobius]

use 1 wallet per btc and store them in a paper wallet/usb, or you can just store them in a computer that isn't made for anything else, this mean that you don't downloand anything there and connection are not shared with any other machines and you don't even browse the internet with it, a perfectly isolated pc environment, no hacker can get there

I'd be totally paranoid that my buddies would try and steal my flash drives then. When I sit around and drink with them I tend to brag about Bitcoin and as soon as they knew I had several drives with a lot of BTC on then, I guess they'd steal them...

You need new friends.

Even if you "trust" your friends, it doesn't mean that they could never be desperate for money. It also doesn't mean that they wouldn't ever have a legit need for a USB drive and "borrow" the drive without asking (maybe they want to copy a file of somesort to show you) and overwrite the wallet file (since USB drives are so cheap, they would likely think that it would be no big deal). 

[btcxyzzz]

1) Linux
2) Electrum Bitcoin wallet
3) strong password for spending them
4) regular wallet backup on 2 remote locations.

That's really enough.

[aesma]

I keep a significant portion of my bitcoins on an encrypted ironkey usb drive stored in a security deposit box and stored in a zip lock bag (in case of vault flooding, which was an issue in Manhattan after hurricane Sandy, although the ironkeys are very well contructed and would probably work after a year or more underwater). The ironkey uses hardware-based encryption and automatically erases and disables the drive after 10 wrong password attempts, so brute force isn't an option. The file on the drive is itself is encrypted with a password in combination with a keyfile that I don't keep anywhere near the bank.  I have an encrypted copy stored within a personal ironkey, also using keyfiles that I do not keep locally or anywhere that the drive itself routinely travels to or gets used.

Just remember, you're much more likely to lose coins than have them stolen (i.e., forgotten password, hard drive failure, house fire, ruined paper wallet).  For that reason I always make sure I have 2 working copies which are physically separated.  I also have redundancies for the keyfiles, which are necessary to recover the wallets, but its easy to keep copies of those in various places since they by themselves are not valuable to anyone.  The keyfiles are not labeled as such, obviously (you can use any kind of file).

I agree with your argument about losing coins, however the method you describe is so complex it seems to illustrate pretty well how to lose coins !

[Welsh]

I keep a significant portion of my bitcoins on an encrypted ironkey usb drive stored in a security deposit box and stored in a zip lock bag (in case of vault flooding, which was an issue in Manhattan after hurricane Sandy, although the ironkeys are very well contructed and would probably work after a year or more underwater). The ironkey uses hardware-based encryption and automatically erases and disables the drive after 10 wrong password attempts, so brute force isn't an option. The file on the drive is itself is encrypted with a password in combination with a keyfile that I don't keep anywhere near the bank.  I have an encrypted copy stored within a personal ironkey, also using keyfiles that I do not keep locally or anywhere that the drive itself routinely travels to or gets used.

Just remember, you're much more likely to lose coins than have them stolen (i.e., forgotten password, hard drive failure, house fire, ruined paper wallet).  For that reason I always make sure I have 2 working copies which are physically separated.  I also have redundancies for the keyfiles, which are necessary to recover the wallets, but its easy to keep copies of those in various places since they by themselves are not valuable to anyone.  The keyfiles are not labeled as such, obviously (you can use any kind of file).

I wouldn't keep a full list of keys, you should just extract a private key from a zeroed address so that no one who finds those encrypted keys will be able to access your Bitcoin (He if the odds of this happening are very slim) Instead they will only be able to access the blank address. You can still find the password from that encrypted key as long as you know enough of it or have a good idea what it could be. So it would be accessible by you if you ever forget your password but, know what it could be. Whoever, else will just have access to the blank address and nothing else.

For anyone considering this option of using a encrypted storage device:

What you could of done before you stored it in the encrypted storage drive and set the password to the encrypted storage device is made the password the same as your Bitcoin wallet encrypted password. Extracted a private key which belongs to a zeroed address  then it would be possible to find that password without affecting the storage device. Of course, that means the wallet and storage device would need the same password which could be a security flaw, however not everyone would know how to apply the script to the private key &/or know that encrypted key would be the password to the storage device.

Of course, this requires that you know most of the password, so if anyone did find the private key they would need to know most of the password anyway to even try to bruteforce it. Don't get me wrong, there are far more secure ways to store your Bitcoin but, if you insist on using a encrypted usb then this is probably the best way to go about it.

[Sheldor333]

Cold storage, get yourself new computer or a raspberry pie and get it all on there and don't use it for anything else except that, that is the only way to be at least a little bit sure.

[Dabs]

If you think about it, you can buy a cheap but good brand new computer for 1% of your holdings, if you have 100 BTC, then 1 BTC is what you spend. (It does not necessarily scale, so that 1 BTC hardware can be all you need for up to 1000 BTC.)

[obocaman]

On a hard drive not connected to any computer 

[311]

I keep mine on a raspberry pi that I just use exclusively for bitcoins and nothing else. I have a back up of the wallet.dat file on a usb and a cd as well.

[jbreher]

I've created a sculpture from used fast food chopsticks and white glue - that only I know is meaningful - let alone how to decipher into hexadecimal representation of my private key.

[grendel25]

Since this is theoretical allow me to go just a bit outside the direct answer and suggest not keeping that much bitcoin in storage.  I would diversify the use of it into playing ups and downs of the highly volatile alt-coin markets.

But as far as simple storage goes, well... you can encrypt so as long as you have a good method, process, or service for managing your password and storage locations it would be a breeze.  there are specific services you can purchase for managing all your passwords and there are specific services you can purchase for storing data.  Of course, you can do it yourself just as well and it's not too difficult.  have more than one device that requires password access and store your wallets across various devices.  Make yourself a regular backup schedule and you can even use programs to encrypt your own passwords.  If you are the type to forget passwords then I refer you to a paid password service.  Just google "paid password service reviews".

[evanito]

I would probably keep about 10% in blockchain, my hotwallet in coinbase, and the rest cold.