Keeping your butts safe

[kingscrown]

cold storage is a must imo.

also - never download cracked softwares

[Spendulus]

What if you lose your flash drive that has your private keys, or what if it gets too close to a magnet?

Is that really an issue? I have dozens of flash drives, two of them have been near some pretty powerful magnets and they don't show any signs of damage. I can still read from them, write to them, reformat them and even boot an Ubuntu installer from them with no problems. I'm honestly curious about this, I know magnets will cause trouble for any kind of magnetic media, but I've never personally had any problems with flash drives.

What if the house burns down?

Then you've also eliminated one of the more popular choices (paper wallets) as a viable means of cold storage, unless you keep your paper wallets in a bank vault (even a "fire safe" will not always protect paper locked inside).

Metal foil, like 0.03mm stainless steel, is cheap.  You can buy it on Ebay and write on it with anything, like a ball point pen.  That makes indentations that stay.  Then put the sheet of foil between two pieces of cardboard and put it in the safe.



A fire safe will not protect CDs, SD cards, hard drives, anything like electronics.

It MAY protect paper and things on paper.

The problem is the laser and inkjet characters on paper under temperatures of 200-400 F. 

What if characters stuck to the back of the next sheet?  Then you pull the papers out of the safe, try to separate them and the letters cannot be read.

Characters should be BIG for safe long term storage.  The bigger the better.  Say an inch high.  Hand writing with a permanent marker could be better than using a laser printer.

Exactly the same issue exists if no fire, but with long term storage - 10-20 years.  Do not trust little bitty characters.  Do not put sheets of paper next to each other.  Do not use both front and back of a sheet.

Look at the Archival storage industry.  Don't reinvent the wheel, these people already know how to do this.

http://www.archivalmethods.com/product.cfm?permalink=archival-paper

http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/agency/preserve/physical-preservation/artworks.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_science

[tss]

question,  hope to get an answer, thanks.

say a keylogger is logging my actions, would a right click copy and paste or ctrl c & ctrl v, expose the key to the hacker?

ooh paranoia.. lol

[twister]

I have two offline wallets that split my BTC between the two. If something happens to one, I don't lose them all.

I have my public addresses as 'watch only' so I can monitor the balances.

I have my private keys stamped into metal that won't melt if the house burned down.

AND I have paper copies in another location, split up so you need both parts to complete the key.

I'm HODLing long term, so I wanted to be safe.

Wow, I must say this is very secure. Did you stamped it into silver yourself or had someone else do it?

[ytr8]

If you have a fair amount of bitcoins is it stupid to keep them all on Bitcoin Core on a computer that's just about always online?

Even with a good password?

Do you think cold storage is essential?

I will bring them into two parts, one part of them adopt  storage  offline ,the other will be online for my often using .

[Skoupi]

Have you tried TREZOR?

I wonder if and how badUSB affects devices like trezor... The only thing i could find on their "security threats" page that is somehow related to badUSB attack vectors is this :

"Reflashing the TREZOR with evil firmware

Official TREZOR firmware is signed by the SatoshiLabs master key. Installing unofficial firmware on the TREZOR is possible, but doing so will wipe the device storage and TREZOR will show a warning every time it starts. Reprogramming the bootloader is impossible, because all TREZORs ship with their secure programming fuse blown."

[Dabs]

question,  hope to get an answer, thanks.

say a keylogger is logging my actions, would a right click copy and paste or ctrl c & ctrl v, expose the key to the hacker?

ooh paranoia.. lol

Some keyloggers monitor the clipboard and other keyloggers also log mouse clicks.

[jabo38]

buy an old laptop.
format it.
install linux on it.
download, install and run electrum.
write on paper the 12 word seed electrum gives you.
memorize it and repeat it every day for a week.
destroy the paper.
keep the laptop powered down, never use it for anything except sending money with electrum.

It seems like to me that this really is the only way to be 99.99% safe.

That being said, I think that this is a huuuuuuge flaw with bitcoin. 

Who really is going to go through all those steps? 

In fact, not only would people not want too, I am pretty sure most people don't know how to format a computer and definitely don't know how to install Linux. 

For Bitcoin to advance, we need a rock solid way to protect bitcoins that is soooooo safe and sooooo easy

[Robert Paulson]

buy an old laptop.
format it.
install linux on it.
download, install and run electrum.
write on paper the 12 word seed electrum gives you.
memorize it and repeat it every day for a week.
destroy the paper.
keep the laptop powered down, never use it for anything except sending money with electrum.

It seems like to me that this really is the only way to be 99.99% safe.

That being said, I think that this is a huuuuuuge flaw with bitcoin. 

Who really is going to go through all those steps? 

In fact, not only would people not want too, I am pretty sure most people don't know how to format a computer and definitely don't know how to install Linux. 

For Bitcoin to advance, we need a rock solid way to protect bitcoins that is soooooo safe and sooooo easy

non of those steps are particularly hard to do.
im sure people can learn how to press the format button.
my grandma could install Ubuntu Linux, there is nothing to it except clicking next a bunch of times and entering a username and password.

using facebook is harder than any of these things.
and for the effort you get to store your money in your own international bitcoin bank, that can't be robbed or frozen.

[e4xit]

AND I have paper copies in another location, split up so you need both parts to complete the key.

There's an idea I haven't heard before.   I might just try that.   Even though I assume your private keys are BIP encrypted .... splitting them in half and putting them in two different locations is a pretty sick idea.

-B-

BittBurger, you mean you have never heard of Armory's fragmented backup solution?
Fragmented backup halfway down

[btcxyzzz]

Do you think cold storage is essential?

It's not essential, Linux, encrypted wallet and daily backup on 2 remote locations is enough... There are details about, but it's enough.

[bornil267645]

i am using armory to keep it safe offline. in a way it's the best possible security in my opinion. but I don't keep all of them. I spend daily.

[1Referee]

If you have a fair amount of bitcoins is it stupid to keep them all on Bitcoin Core on a computer that's just about always online?

Even with a good password?

Do you think cold storage is essential?

Bitcoin Core itself is safe to use and nothing will happen if you use it when you have a good chunk of coins.

What I do is spreading my coins in at least four or five different wallets, and each wallet file has five backups stored on usb sticks and hdd's.

Bitcoins that I will spend are stored in my "fun" wallet, which is constantly online.

[bitcoinmon]

I keep 90% in BIP38 encrypted paper wallets and the hot BTC are split across Armory and Bitcoin-Qt (Linux only).

If you're running Windows, the need for cold storage is more important than ever.

[RustyNomad]

buy an old laptop.
format it.
install linux on it.
download, install and run electrum.
write on paper the 12 word seed electrum gives you.
memorize it and repeat it every day for a week.
destroy the paper.
keep the laptop powered down, never use it for anything except sending money with electrum.

It seems like to me that this really is the only way to be 99.99% safe.

That being said, I think that this is a huuuuuuge flaw with bitcoin. 

Who really is going to go through all those steps? 

In fact, not only would people not want too, I am pretty sure most people don't know how to format a computer and definitely don't know how to install Linux. 

For Bitcoin to advance, we need a rock solid way to protect bitcoins that is soooooo safe and sooooo easy

Go look at BitKey http://bitkey.io/

Very simple process:

* Download the BitKey linux iso image,
* Burn it to a CD,
* Disconnect network and boot PC with the CD,
* Create your Electrum wallet, all software is already pre-installed and configured in that iso,
* Save Master Key to USB drive,
* Reboot PC (without CD),
* Startup Electrum and create watch only wallet with mater key.

If you need to send funds then create an unsigned transaction, boot up again with the CD, sign the transaction, boot again (without CD) and broadcast the transaction.

Does not really get simpler and more secure than that.

[Lethn]

I personally don't leave btc on an offline computer or a flash drive. My reasoning is that they're technology, and it tends to fail. What if that computer doesn't boot up one day, or what if it's somehow broken? What if you lose your flash drive that has your private keys, or what if it gets too close to a magnet?

What if the house burns down?

That's life, but if you're seriously that worried then split the Bitcoin up onto several USB drives or something to make sure it's safe, you'd have to have some seriously bad luck for all of them to break down or go missing.

[Q7]

I use an old laptop which i format clean and install only armory to keep the coins. I leave it offline and update once a while to check the balance. All the backups are stored separately. Another part of the stash , i transfer it to my phone for online purchases

[RustyNomad]

I use an old laptop which i format clean and install only armory to keep the coins. I leave it offline and update once a while to check the balance. All the backups are stored separately. Another part of the stash , i transfer it to my phone for online purchases

I would suggest that you rather install armory on your normal PC and place the same wallet on there but in 'watch only' mode. You can then check your balance as and when you want without putting your other installation at risk by going online. That 1 minute online can be enough to infect the PC and when next you go on to broadcast anything the malware managed to obtain.

[BittBurger]

AND I have paper copies in another location, split up so you need both parts to complete the key.

There's an idea I haven't heard before.   I might just try that.   Even though I assume your private keys are BIP encrypted .... splitting them in half and putting them in two different locations is a pretty sick idea.

-B-

BittBurger, you mean you have never heard of Armory's fragmented backup solution?
Fragmented backup halfway down

Nope!  But i'll check it out, thanks.  I've intentionally stayed away from Armory because it is not friendly to the less technically-inclined like myself.  I am sure its a robust and exhaustively secure system, but being robust and exhausting (for someone like me) is why I didn't bother.  I couldn't see any reason why a simple bitaddress.org Bip38 paper wallet printed offline and stored in a bank safety deposit box, is any less secure than Armory.  

In fact, leaving anything reliant upon *any* software seems like a bad idea to me in general.  

I was backing up my wallet.dat files for awhile there, and then one day bitcoin core wouldn't let me import my largest wallet file, which I had put on a USB drive.  I almost lost everything I had.  Fortunately I'd deleted a wallet.dat copy in the past, and it was still sitting in my recycle bin.  That one worked.  Any wallet.dat file that I had pulled off my hard drive and put back onto it wouldn't work anymore.  Scariest day of my Bitcoin life.  That's when I said "f*ck anything electronic, this is going on paper". 

There is no way im going to trust my life savings to a windows application.

-B-

[Turnkey]

If you have 100 bitcoins then you must need an offline storage.