Topic: Being your own bank and theft (Read 1260 times)

It depends on how much bitcoins you have.  Like others have said, don't go bragging about it and make yourself a target.  Second, if your stash is big enough then invest in some security.  You can get the cheapo version of the ledger walled for ~15$ I think.  It is the exact same thing as the more expensive one, but it has cheaper packaging and case.  Buy any number of these and divide your stash among them.  Then you can store them at safe deposit boxes at banks, have a trusted relative store them at home, place them under your floorboards, etc.  Actually you could hide them at home quite easily.  They are really tiny.  And someone who found them might not even know what they were.

Store the keys somewhere separate, like a different deposit box, a fire resistant safe at home, etc.  You can also use the brain wallet.  Using a technique called the memory palace, you can very easily remember any amount of information.  The keys for wallets, which are a string of random words, are especially easy to remember.  The basic technique is to start with a place you are intimately familiar with, such as your childhood home.  Place your code around the house.  Lets just say that your code starts with "pizza foot table car".
At the front door visualize a pizza getting stepped on by a giant disembodied foot.  Use all of your senses.  Make the pizza smell good but the foot smell nasty.  Maybe the foot also has a fungus infection.  It sounds nasty to imagine but the more striking the image, the stickier it will be.  OK now imagine the sound as the foot squishes the pizza.  Maybe sauce goes flying and spatters the front door.  You get the idea.  Now open the door and see a tiny car driving on small table just inside the door.  Maybe there is a demolition derby with lots of cars on top of the table.  Imagine the cars crashing into each other, exploding, burning, tiny drivers being ejected from their vehicles and run over, etc.  Hear the action, smell the smoke, etc.  It does take some time to remember things this way, and to be safe you should visit these images every day for a week or so to make sure they are sticking.  Then you will pretty much remember them forever.  Dont throw away the paper with the key, just put it somewhere hard to get at.

Don't you know ATMs are dangerous? Thefts happen all the time in front of ATMs. Thieves are waiting behind your back, and as soon as you collect your cash, they will mug you, and force you to withdraw more.

The solution with BTC is to have several wallets. If you're victim of an assault, you only talk about your smallest wallet.

This. But you have to consider the following: If you have a Paper wallet and the theft founds it, and scans it, he will know it's a Bitcoin address (assuming you didn't explicitly mark so on the paper wallet, then he doesn't even need to scan it).
If you got a Trezzor, the theft knows there's Bitcoin it (in a couple of years when BTC is mainstream and everyone recognizes such devices).
So basically, the only wait to do it properly seems either have your wallet.dat file encrypted and hidden as something else in non recognizable places like USB or HDD, or have a brain wallet and hope you don't forget your 12 words and no one guesses them randomly.

If you are that worried about forced theft, then you can split them 1/2/3 times, and have a decoy walet with some small amount which you can afford to lose.

Bitcoin exchanges found a way to that. Cold and hot wallet. When the cold wallet is hacked or stolen then you still have the hot wallet.

For personal use i think the common way is to use paper wallets or something where you store the unneeded coins. There are numerous ways that you even can give in to extortion without losing all.

People way too often underestimate the risks of being your own bank. People sometimes even dont have backups, which means the harddisc crashs and they have no coins anymore. Bitcoins are for grown ups if you want to say so.

I still remember one case were a popular user who made his identity public got his asic miners stolen from his house. So as others said, If you own a big chunk of bitcoins you should keep quiet about your holdings unless you have proper security in place.

Another recent case:
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-stolen-new-york-gunpoint-robbery/

You would be suprised to know how many private people who have a safe these days.
Bitcoin is simular, you can encrypt them and the safty is in the key.
Same as gold or cash in a safe and the safty is in the key.
From that perspective: any safe can be opened just a mater of time. Same with bitcoin any key can be broken just a matter of time. But if encrypted strong would it take millions of years to brake the bitcoin.

it is a pretty good idea but not necessarily a must. there is no difference between keeping something like jewelries or gold safe with yourself and keeping your bitcoin private keys in a safe place.

you can print a paper wallet with your precious bitcoins in it and keep it with your other valuablesin a safe place

What good is a multi sig because you would obviously just give up the person or details to get the other half. If you're worried about violence then info could always be coerced out of you but this happening would be a rarity.

If your computer gets infected with a virus it could reveal your identity, address, and how many Bitcoins you own. I remember vod had his computer infected and said the hacker behind it stole a few Bitcoins he had stored on it.

Imagine if he had thousands stored offline and the hacker found out about it. He might have sent heavies down to vod's house to steal them off him.

The idea of multisig is to have multiple keys to initiate a bitcoin transaction on the network. If you have a mutli sig address, you could give one private key that would be useless to the thief.  A 2-3 multisig adress would solve that problem.  The risk of multisig is that you have to trust that the other private keys will not be found by anyone. A thief would need at least two of the private keys.

Alternative:  Memorize your private key

Best plan it not to start bragging about your btc in the first place, nor tie your identity to them especially if you're holding a substantial amount.

Keep a smallish amount in a seperate wallet if needs be, then worst case scenario you can say that's all you've got.

It is a possibility but you can remember the seed of your cold storage electrum wallet or write down words in some sort of code, that only you can break, it's harder to protect your gold, cash from robbery, bitcoin is easy.

What do you guys think about Coinbase Vault, is it safe? I mean there is a 48 hours windows before the Transaction is approved and even if a robber is able to acquire your keys you can cancel the transaction before it gets through?

But if you leave a "Dead Man's Switch" and the robber finds out about that, he can still get away with your coins. Better to get a family member involved in bitcoin and tell him that you have some keys in a safety deposit box. Write up a will that said member gets said keys from safety deposit box in case you die.

so we don't need bank for bitcoin in the end, because you can already do it, in thi way, cool idea


when someone will discover that they are actually money, you will become a target in no time, especially if they know your amount, because you revealed it in some subforum or to a friend that it isn't really a good friend

I think there are no people that are stupid enough to announce how much bitcoin they have because it will be like suicide



Nowadays the bad guys is smarter than good guys so that is possible that they can know you got some bitcoin and will try to get it from you. Dont

underestimated bad guys  

No. Absolutely not. It is not needed. If someone uses method of stealing or extortion using violence and/or blackmail then I can used to steal anything from you.
It does not matter if you have great safe with gold  bars at your basement, if someone will point a gun at you I bet you will gladly give them your money no matter what.

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I just edited my mistake.  NOT rob of you of them.  Sorry!



Of course if no one knows you have them, they will likely NOT steal them!


You were a little too fast there, knightdk...

How? If people don't know that you have Bitcoin, how can they rob your Bitcoin?

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Keeping quiet about ownership of Bitcoins will almost guarantee that your neighbors or others will not rob you of them, as they would never know.  And, of course, you could always have a small amount of BTC in a "disposable" decoy Ledger or Trezor, you give that up with your 1.15BTC, but the larger amount you have hidden elsewhere.

I do not use multi-signature, it does not look necessary.

You might want write up a "Dead Man's Switch" (a letter explaining to your heirs how to claim any hidden BTC and gold), in case you get run over by a truck...

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The title of your thread, cafucafucafu, practically begs changing the below old expression to a new one:

"Be your own Central Bank, buy gold!"

to:

"Be your own Central Bank, buy gold and Bitcoin!"