What is the safest way to generate cold storage wallets?

[bigasic]

Is bitaddress safe? I know armory is really good, but i need a new computer before Ill be able to run it. (need much more memory,etc) But Im assuming that bidaddress is safe, dont know if disconnecting yourself from the internet before you generate the addresses helps or not. any help is appreciated...

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Personally I wouldn't trust it for a proper cold storage wallet. You really are best using Armory, as it is designed for this sort of thing. The offline bundle doesn't use a great deal of memory.

[NeuroticFish]

Any clean freeware code that generates paper wallets will do. You can make 100 addresses and from them you use a few only you know which.

And the best way to do this list would be on a clean OS. Maybe on a virtual machine. After saving (printing?) the list of keys in 5-10 copies, also maybe on usb stick, you can wipe the files of that VM and you are pretty safe imho.

[bigasic]

What I've done is connected to bitaddress. then disconnected from the internet. then do my randomization, using mouse and numbers, etc. then I made like  100 or so and printed them out, then i cleared my cache from the browser, then reconnected to the internet.. unless they have put some malicious code in it, I would think it would be pretty safe. since the browser is the one that creates the addresses.

I really want to get the armory, but ill have to get a whole new computer for that. But maybe the trezor will work good too. The only problem with the trezor is that you cant sign an address. If they add a few features to the trezor, then that will be the one to get, heck even now its probably the one to get...

[Buffer Overflow]

How about installing armory offline bundle onto a usb stick? All you would do is boot using this stick using your existing computer. Obviously don't connect to internet during this alternate boot.

[bigasic]

I believe the armory requires 8gb or ram. Ill probably get a dedicated/used computer for all my bitcoin stuff.

[btchris]

I believe the armory requires 8gb or ram. Ill probably get a dedicated/used computer for all my bitcoin stuff.

On my Win64 machine, Armory + bitcoind (which is required to run Armory in online mode) use a combined 800MB. I suspect they'd take up more during the initial download + db build, I'd personally recommend 4GB, but you might be able to get away with less.

In offline mode for cold storage (no bitcoind required), Armory uses just 50MB. You can use a pretty old PC to run it offline...

[SlicedUpSandwich]

Bitaddress is what I use.

[Waramp22]

The safest way to make a legit paper wallet is to use a laptop and printer combo that has never, nor will ever be connected to the internet. Save bitaddress.htm to a USB stick with your normal computer, insert into offline computer and scan it for viruses. If its clean go ahead and make your paper wallets and print them out. As long as you never connect your offline computer to the internet no hacker, maleware, or keylogger can send out private keys from your cold wallets.

You may think you are safe because you printed out the paper wallets and then cleared cookies/cache and restarted your computer, but there are programs anyone can download that not only log keystrokes, but they take a screenshot everytime there is a key stroke or mouse click. Once reconnected to the internet it uploads the info to the hackers computer. This renders BIP38 useless if your computer has been tampered with by someone who knows you have bitcoins. 

[lyth0s]

On an offline PC (one that will never go on the internet or wifi again) and generate them with electrum or armory in offline mode. That way you can have a HD wallet and then just copy the PUBLIC keys only to an online PC so you can monitor their totals and send bitcoin to them.

[Rassah]

If you have a printer than can print photos directly from USB (has a USB port on the front to connects USB drives and cameras to), the safest and easiest way to print paper wallets will be with Mycelium Entropy. You don't need to create any clean OS'es or download any websites to use offline. Just disconnect your printer, plug in the entropy device, hit print, and then reset your printer. It won't be available until October though. More info here: http://indiegogo.com/projects/mycelium-entropy

[Newar]

I believe the armory requires 8gb or ram. Ill probably get a dedicated/used computer for all my bitcoin stuff.

Not any more. They fixed the RAM issue by Armory building it's own database of the blockchain data, which means you need double the amount of disk space. I.e. the blockchain data is now about 20 GB, so Armory will need 40 GB of disk space.