I can understand his reasoning to use other wallets than paper wallets, but I don't agree with it. For me the paper wallets are an easy and very secure way to store keys and recovery phrases.
He is not talking about HD wallets and recovery phrases. He is specifically talking about single-key wallets. Meaning you store one address and it's associated private key physically on paper/wood/steal/whatever. That's an outdated way of storing your keys and there are better ways to do it. 
Topic: Andreas Antonopoulos says to stop using paper wallets, do you agree? (Read 1038 times)
January 17, 2022, 04:37:45 AM
January 17, 2022, 04:24:19 AM
I can understand his reasoning to use other wallets than paper wallets, but I don't agree with it. For me the paper wallets are an easy and very secure way to store keys and recovery phrases. You face the risk of losing the paper but as long as you have a copy stored with your family for example you are fine. The risk seems much smaller than being hacked and get your coins stolen online. In the end it comes down to how much money is stored and what security measures I can afford. At the moment I can't really afford a completely offline system as a wallet, there are cheap hardware wallets being sold but I don't really trust it. So storing the recovery information on paper or a steel plate seems as the best approach for the average Joe with small wallets.
January 17, 2022, 04:11:46 AM
what I am wondering is that if a new invention can give same security and safety but in an easier way by getting seed words instead of characters and numbers and in a way more addresses can be generated
~
it will not be hard for me to generate such wallet (but HD) using Electrum on airgapped device
It looks like you've answered your own question: there's no need for a new "invention" if you can do this already without having to trust new software.~
it will not be hard for me to generate such wallet (but HD) using Electrum on airgapped device
It's trivially easy to create a new wallet seed in Electrum from an offline Tails OS, and export 30 (or more) addresses with their private keys:
Code:
dizzy fury already cancel spread hedgehog excuse pottery cancel obey once tragic
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You can create QR-codes too, although I'm not sure if Tails comes with pre-installed software.
Disclaimer for really dumb people: don't use the addresses above
January 17, 2022, 02:52:43 AM
Right, as I said it is just my personal opinion and I still believe paper wallets are okey for users who know what they are doing.
In term of security and safety, paper wallet is good. But what I am wondering is that if a new invention can give same security and safety but in an easier way by getting seed words instead of characters and numbers and in a way more addresses can be generated, why then not following the new invention. If known how paper wallet works and knowing the security risks, paper wallet still remain one of the safetest wallets. But just that it will not be hard for me to generate such wallet (but HD) using Electrum on airgapped device or even hardware wallet in a way to use it as a paper wallet by the seed phrase backup after I total delete the wallet. If we think a bit about it, we could say HW are paper wallets with an easier way to spend/send funds.
No. There is so much difference between hardware wallet and paper wallet. There make up is also very different, paper wallets are not hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallet. 
January 16, 2022, 07:42:55 PM
-snip-
To follow on from the previous point: You should never find yourself in the situation where damage or loss of a single object will result in complete loss of your funds. With almost all electronic wallets, we back them up on to paper, so if the computer/phone/hardware wallet in question is damaged or lost, we can recover our coins. The same should be the case with paper wallets or any other offline wallets. You should have a minimum of two copies of your paper wallet stored in separate locations, so if one does end up being damaged you can recover from the other one.This is just basic computing knowledge. Always have back ups of important data.
Right, as I said it is just my personal opinion and I still believe paper wallets are okey for users who know what they are doing.
If we think a bit about it, we could say HW are paper wallets with an easier way to spend/send funds.
As you say, the important part of cold storage is the backup of the seeds, with that taken care of, most of the cons of any method are quite covered.
January 11, 2022, 02:09:23 AM
There is at least one use case where I would consider using them: to explain to others about bitcoin key-pairs.
I have never used a paper wallet before but I read about HD wallets, keys and addresses to understand all these. If someone wants to know more about bitcoin, this can be explained in HD wallets because the child private keys and child public keys are paired with the addresses, while the child private key can be used as backup. As for me, it depends, but I would not recommend paper wallet generated on sites especially for newbies as a result of mnemonic or seed phrase which are just words and easy to backup if using HD wallet like Electrum.
If HD wallet can be used as a paper wallet by generating the seed phrase, keys and addresses offline on a secure and safe offline device while the seed phrase is properly backup in different locations safe from attackers and damages. I prefer this method which has been what I am using and very safe.
Sure, electrum might be the easiest tool that currently exists for obtaining a single key. But is it more efficient than, say, bitaddress or iancoleman? At those places, all you have to do is click on a Generate button - no wallet creation is required.
All that is required is for people to know how to safely generate a single key wallet, multiple individual single keys can be generated on Electrum with their corresponding addresses but BIP38 encryption is not possible using Electrum if that option is needed. In my opinion, I see all methods to be very easy for a technical person that knows about it very well if not making any mistake. 
January 10, 2022, 03:26:09 AM
How about 2 metal backups?
Certainly preferable to one metal back up.Here's another thing to think about, though: Let's think of some of the things that steel protects against which paper won't - catastrophic fires, corrosion, etc. If my house has suffered some kind of devastating fire or explosion, or is now underwater, or has somehow had gallons of a corrosive substance dumped on to it, which of the following is more likely? I spend potentially days manually sifting through rubble and debris looking for my back up, or I simply go and retrieve my second back up? I might not even be allowed to enter the area due to safety concerns, or indeed able to enter the area if there is severe flooding, for example. Hell, maybe I want my back up to be destroyed so it doesn't wash up on a street somewhere for someone else to find or be found by a first responder.
It's all about your individual threat model, but multiple paper back ups work just fine.
I can't really trust the Ian Coleman tool anymore, there are way too many fake copies hovering around google search.
Don't use Google is the first step here, since it allows scammers to pay to boost their sites to the the top of your search results. But also, download it from GitHub and verify it against the hashes provided which are signed with Ian Coleman's PGP key.
THAT’s another one of those basic technical things that Bitcoin users/plebs like me are REQUIRED to learn, or lose your coins, and learn the hard way. The likelihood of getting hacked might be small, but not learning the technical “inconveniences” will make attack vectors against you bigger.
January 09, 2022, 07:03:37 AM
How about 2 metal backups?
Certainly preferable to one metal back up.Here's another thing to think about, though: Let's think of some of the things that steel protects against which paper won't - catastrophic fires, corrosion, etc. If my house has suffered some kind of devastating fire or explosion, or is now underwater, or has somehow had gallons of a corrosive substance dumped on to it, which of the following is more likely? I spend potentially days manually sifting through rubble and debris looking for my back up, or I simply go and retrieve my second back up? I might not even be allowed to enter the area due to safety concerns, or indeed able to enter the area if there is severe flooding, for example. Hell, maybe I want my back up to be destroyed so it doesn't wash up on a street somewhere for someone else to find or be found by a first responder.
It's all about your individual threat model, but multiple paper back ups work just fine.
I can't really trust the Ian Coleman tool anymore, there are way too many fake copies hovering around google search.
Don't use Google is the first step here, since it allows scammers to pay to boost their sites to the the top of your search results. But also, download it from GitHub and verify it against the hashes provided which are signed with Ian Coleman's PGP key. January 09, 2022, 06:12:45 AM
Tin-foil hats on. Andreas Antonopoulos is secretly being sponsored by a hardware wallet manufacturer to go around the world, do his talks about Bitcoin, and to tell newbies that “paper wallets bad, buy hardware wallets good”.
Genuine question: Has he ever recommended a specific brand of hardware wallet? I'm not aware that he has, and if not, then it would be an incredibly ineffective campaign for any specific hardware wallet manufacturer to promote users buying any hardware wallet.It didn't sound like shilling to me, but in the video linked by ChiBitCTy in the OP when Andreas suggested hardware wallets he did mention Cold Card by name. He was commenting that the Cold Card allows one to enter his own entropy when generating a seed. Again, it didn't sound like shilling, more like commenting that a particular hardware wallet offers a fairly unique feature.
He is truly that good in the art of shilling, without shilling. It’s like Joe Rogan, he finds his opportunities in his show to talk about the products he shills without shilling them, making the shill look more authentic, natural, and believable.
January 08, 2022, 11:44:14 PM
There is at least one use case where I would consider using them: to explain to others about bitcoin key-pairs.
January 08, 2022, 11:19:09 PM
If someone wanted a single key Electrum would probably be the easiest tool to use, there's no reason not to. The Ian Coleman tool can be used as well, and allows you to enter your own entropy. There's no reason not to use an HD wallet to extract a single key.
I can't really trust the Ian Coleman tool anymore, there are way too many fake copies hovering around google search. (I once had a scare when the iancoleman.io website had a bunch of misspellings/mispronunciations in the title, making me think that it was compromised).
Sure, electrum might be the easiest tool that currently exists for obtaining a single key. But is it more efficient than, say, bitaddress or iancoleman? At those places, all you have to do is click on a Generate button - no wallet creation is required.
Quote
unlike paper wallets, are easily destroyed when they are no longer needed.
How is shredding a CD-R easier than just burning a piece of paper?Quote
Now there isn't really a use case for destroying paper wallets besides protecting your privacy by hiding the addresses you used, but you'd need to buy an expensive paper shredder to do the equivalent for paper wallets. A CD can be destroyed cheaply.
CD shredders are more expensive than paper shredders.I was thinking more in line of just smashing the CD-R like Direwolf. No words on whether the result is recoverable, as the disk sectors run circularly around the disk.
January 08, 2022, 11:37:18 AM
Tin-foil hats on. Andreas Antonopoulos is secretly being sponsored by a hardware wallet manufacturer to go around the world, do his talks about Bitcoin, and to tell newbies that “paper wallets bad, buy hardware wallets good”.
Genuine question: Has he ever recommended a specific brand of hardware wallet? I'm not aware that he has, and if not, then it would be an incredibly ineffective campaign for any specific hardware wallet manufacturer to promote users buying any hardware wallet.It didn't sound like shilling to me, but in the video linked by ChiBitCTy in the OP when Andreas suggested hardware wallets he did mention Cold Card by name. He was commenting that the Cold Card allows one to enter his own entropy when generating a seed. Again, it didn't sound like shilling, more like commenting that a particular hardware wallet offers a fairly unique feature.
I'd be taking a blowtorch to it.
"There are very few problems in this world that can't be solved with a gallon of diesel and a match."
- "Burner" (a retired Navy Seal I used to know.)
If you like metal back ups, then use them, and I accept they have some significant advantages over paper. But metal back ups are still not 100% guaranteed to be readable or even still be there when you come back to them. Two separate paper back ups is more secure than a single metal back up.
How about 2 metal backups? 
I reckon the only advantage of paper vs metal is that it's cheaper, so you can make more of them. But 2 backups should suffice for most scenarios and the biggest investment is the letter stamps which you only need to buy once. I think you can do 2 washer backups for around 5€ / $5 with a 24-pack of washers (stamp a word on each side, so 12 washers per backup for 24 word seeds), two screws and two nuts.
Steel will make good backups, but not all steel washers are the same, you still need to chose the right materials. Washers, nuts, and bolts better be stainless (which is a bit more expensive) if you want them to survive fire or flooding. Galvanized (zinc) or other coatings (tin, nickel) often found on washers will melt long before the steel does in a house fire, and could fill all your stampings making them illegible. If your backups are exposed to caustic compounds during a flood, the coatings on your washers could corrode or oxidize, again leaving you with illegible stampings. Steel isn't the panacea that some want to make it, and could lead many to a false sense of security.
January 08, 2022, 09:02:53 AM
If you like metal back ups, then use them, and I accept they have some significant advantages over paper. But metal back ups are still not 100% guaranteed to be readable or even still be there when you come back to them. Two separate paper back ups is more secure than a single metal back up.
How about 2 metal backups? I reckon the only advantage of paper vs metal is that it's cheaper, so you can make more of them. But 2 backups should suffice for most scenarios and the biggest investment is the letter stamps which you only need to buy once. I think you can do 2 washer backups for around 5€ / $5 with a 24-pack of washers (stamp a word on each side, so 12 washers per backup for 24 word seeds), two screws and two nuts.
January 08, 2022, 03:44:27 AM
Most people won't have access to, or skills to use fancy equipment to make steel backups, and the steel products to store seeds can often be prohibitively expensive for many.
I've said multiple times before that all my paper wallets and paper back ups are on paper and I generally don't use steel or metal back ups. Yes, paper is cheaper, easier to work with, etc., but the main reason is this: I have redundancy. You should never have a single back up of anything, particularly not your seed phrase or bitcoin wallets. A minimum of two back ups in two separate locations is necessary. Now, what are the chances that a paper wallet in my house is destroyed in a fire and a duplicate paper wallet stored in safe deposit box at a bank in another city is also destroyed at the same time? Vanishingly small.If you like metal back ups, then use them, and I accept they have some significant advantages over paper. But metal back ups are still not 100% guaranteed to be readable or even still be there when you come back to them. Two separate paper back ups is more secure than a single metal back up.
It would be better if there was specialized software that you can download and install that is just for generating a paper wallet.
There is this tool from user Coding Enthusiast which will turn coin flipping entropy in to a seed phrase or private key: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/handydandy-a-tool-to-work-with-entropy-5373505. It doesn't go as far as generating addresses, though.I could probably snap a CD into a few pieces with my bare hands, but I don't think my mother could. She would certainly need a $5 wrench.
I would not be happy with one or two large snaps across a CD to know for sure that data could not be recovered from that CD. If you don't have a shredder, I'd be taking a blowtorch to it. January 08, 2022, 02:22:16 AM
When properly stored paper can survive for thousands of years,
I just want to add that there is nothing stopping people from creating multiple backups. One could even go as far as using a bank's safety deposit box. You just encrypt your key/mnemonic with a strong password and put it on a piece of paper and place that paper in the safety deposit box. Even if you lose the copy at home for whatever reason, there is still a backup in a safe place that can't be accessed by others.Hal Finney said in one of his later posts that he kept his keys in a safety deposit box with instructions in how to retrieve the coins for his kids. I believe he made that post after he was diagnosed with ALS. I conclude that he used an air-gapped computer.
January 08, 2022, 01:21:27 AM
When properly stored paper can survive for thousands of years,
I just want to add that there is nothing stopping people from creating multiple backups. One could even go as far as using a bank's safety deposit box. You just encrypt your key/mnemonic with a strong password and put it on a piece of paper and place that paper in the safety deposit box. Even if you lose the copy at home for whatever reason, there is still a backup in a safe place that can't be accessed by others. January 08, 2022, 12:31:05 AM
Everything is done OFFLINE, so it would be impossible for an attacker to gain access to your private keys generated.
The issue here is that having a completely air-gapped device is not necessarily a straightforward thing to achieve. There is a degree of technical knowledge required and should really require the physical removal of hardware. Many people don't do this though, and simply turn off their WiFi or Bluetooth, which isn't really airgapped but many people think it is. You should format the device and install a brand new clean and verified open source OS, but again, many people just use Windows and some don't even format it at all. There is a risk that you accidentally re-enable some piece of connectivity in the future and completely ruin your airgap.
Technical knowledge, or having none of it is not the debate is all about. It was the feasibility, and security of the method of digital back ups of keys generated from air-gapped computer hardware.
Plus it can be debated that HODLers, newbies or not, of self-sovereign money SHOULD learn many of the technical methods to store their wealth securely.
Tin-foil hats on. Andreas Antonopoulos is secretly being sponsored by a hardware wallet manufacturer to go around the world, do his talks about Bitcoin, and to tell newbies that “paper wallets bad, buy hardware wallets good”.
Genuine question: Has he ever recommended a specific brand of hardware wallet? I'm not aware that he has, and if not, then it would be an incredibly ineffective campaign for any specific hardware wallet manufacturer to promote users buying any hardware wallet.
I respect him, but tin-foil hats on, he will.
January 07, 2022, 03:57:33 PM
Please fasten your flame retardant suit, because I'm going to have to nitpick your statements here:
If someone wanted a single key Electrum would probably be the easiest tool to use, there's no reason not to. The Ian Coleman tool can be used as well, and allows you to enter your own entropy. There's no reason not to use an HD wallet to extract a single key.
Again, I beg to differ. When properly stored paper can survive for thousands of years, and there's plenty of proof of that. The archival resilience of CDs, on the other hand is only theoretical, and CDs require equipment that is slowly going obsolete. Even if they don't go away all together, their use will diminish to the point that the equipment to read them will become somewhat expensive.
As for destroying the unneeded used keys, once it's served it's usefulness paper is easily destroyed with nothing more expensive than a match. I could probably snap a CD into a few pieces with my bare hands, but I don't think my mother could. She would certainly need a $5 wrench.
It would be better if there was specialized software that you can download and install that is just for generating a paper wallet.
It is quite surprising that nobody has attempted to make such a program yet, forcing everyone to rely on these unsafe websites. For the record, even legit websites like bitaddress.org are not safe to generate private keys on, because the HTML can be manipulated by an Inspect Element or something like that.
Electrum and Core are too complicated for just generating a paper wallet, for newbies.
It is quite surprising that nobody has attempted to make such a program yet, forcing everyone to rely on these unsafe websites. For the record, even legit websites like bitaddress.org are not safe to generate private keys on, because the HTML can be manipulated by an Inspect Element or something like that.
Electrum and Core are too complicated for just generating a paper wallet, for newbies.
If someone wanted a single key Electrum would probably be the easiest tool to use, there's no reason not to. The Ian Coleman tool can be used as well, and allows you to enter your own entropy. There's no reason not to use an HD wallet to extract a single key.
Paper is easily destroyed by the likes of water and rats though. Better would be inside a text file on a CD-R in a storage sleeve - already rat-proof, not really waterproof but that can be solved by putting the sleeve in a safe or something like that - and, unlike paper wallets, are easily destroyed when they are no longer needed. Now there isn't really a use case for destroying paper wallets besides protecting your privacy by hiding the addresses you used, but you'd need to buy an expensive paper shredder to do the equivalent for paper wallets. A CD can be destroyed cheaply.
Again, I beg to differ. When properly stored paper can survive for thousands of years, and there's plenty of proof of that. The archival resilience of CDs, on the other hand is only theoretical, and CDs require equipment that is slowly going obsolete. Even if they don't go away all together, their use will diminish to the point that the equipment to read them will become somewhat expensive.
As for destroying the unneeded used keys, once it's served it's usefulness paper is easily destroyed with nothing more expensive than a match. I could probably snap a CD into a few pieces with my bare hands, but I don't think my mother could. She would certainly need a $5 wrench.
January 07, 2022, 01:13:39 PM
It would be better if there was specialized software that you can download and install that is just for generating a paper wallet.
It is quite surprising that nobody has attempted to make such a program yet, forcing everyone to rely on these unsafe websites.
I already don't like the word "install": it should work from a Live Linux CD. But even if someone would create it, there's a lot of trust required to boot your computer with that CD and trust the software to do what it says.It is quite surprising that nobody has attempted to make such a program yet, forcing everyone to rely on these unsafe websites.
Paper is easily destroyed by the likes of water and rats though. Better would be inside a text file on a CD-R in a storage sleeve
According to this website, CD-Rs last anywhere from 5 to >100 years. I wouldn't risk my funds on them.Quote
not really waterproof but that can be solved by putting the sleeve in a safe or something like that
A laminator is much cheaper and much better against water than a safe.Quote
unlike paper wallets, are easily destroyed when they are no longer needed.
How is shredding a CD-R easier than just burning a piece of paper?Quote
Now there isn't really a use case for destroying paper wallets besides protecting your privacy by hiding the addresses you used, but you'd need to buy an expensive paper shredder to do the equivalent for paper wallets. A CD can be destroyed cheaply.
CD shredders are more expensive than paper shredders. January 07, 2022, 10:58:46 AM
He probably means those famous paper wallet generating websites. If you make your own paper wallets yourself using a trusted wallet like electrum or core, I don't think there is any harm doing so. A paper wallet is just a paper which keeps your private keys and nothing else. You can write down your private keys on a random piece of paper and it will become a paper wallet. That's how I imagine a paper wallet whenever I hear it.
It would be better if there was specialized software that you can download and install that is just for generating a paper wallet.
It is quite surprising that nobody has attempted to make such a program yet, forcing everyone to rely on these unsafe websites. For the record, even legit websites like bitaddress.org are not safe to generate private keys on, because the HTML can be manipulated by an Inspect Element or something like that.
Electrum and Core are too complicated for just generating a paper wallet, for newbies.
Paper is easily destroyed by the likes of water and rats though. Better would be inside a text file on a CD-R in a storage sleeve - already rat-proof, not really waterproof but that can be solved by putting the sleeve in a safe or something like that - and, unlike paper wallets, are easily destroyed when they are no longer needed. Now there isn't really a use case for destroying paper wallets besides protecting your privacy by hiding the addresses you used, but you'd need to buy an expensive paper shredder to do the equivalent for paper wallets. A CD can be destroyed cheaply.
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