Topic: Bitcoin wallet on phones - page 2. (Read 485 times)

Thank you for this, is there any guide for help I can use to install it? I have not heard before that other OS can be installed on Android but hopefully I can be able to convert back to Android if anything happen and I want to convert back?

This is a discussion forum, do not take anything I say inappropriate or personal, I am trying to make a good discussion. What I am saying is that it will be easy to brute force short characters that people use for password to access their mobile phones, in reality people use short password for phone access. This is the question I am asking. To have just little amount of bitcoin on the mobile wallet for transactions and the remaining bitcoin will be on paper wallet. That is it possible to brute force the phone password using a tool, that is it possible. Try and get me correctly.

I think OP should get their facts right before making spurious assertions and then refusing to accept corrections. I don't see how what I pointed out here should be frowned at or what others did too as I see you also addressed other users as having missed your point. Get your facts right, and where you didn't; accept correction and move on.

My issue with using forks of Firefox such as LibreWolf or WaterFox is that they can often lag behind when it comes to security updates, sometimes by weeks or even months. The last time I properly looked at LibreWolf, you can achieve almost everything it does by customizing Firefox manually, although that process is obviously time consuming and beyond the scope of the average user. Although if Mozilla continue down their current path of just doing whatever Twitter tells them to, then I may well make the switch at some point.

The core Android OS indeed open source, but almost every phone you can buy comes with a bunch of non-open source unremovable junk such as Google Chrome and other Google spyware installed on top, which kind of defeats the purpose. There are alternative open source OSs such as GrapheneOS you can install on Android devices to remove such bloatware.

I have mentioned all these before on the topic, check the bolded parts that I quoted above. Assuming, you do not have a hardware wallet, you can still use a paper wallet and computer together, your main coins will be on the paper wallet, but the computer is just for little amount of coins for daily transactions for convenience. If you do not have a computer, the you can use wallet on phone for this but which is more discouraged than using a computer. I have mentioned all these before that if the person do not hardware wallet an hardware wallet, the cheapest choice that can provide the security is a paper wallet. Try and read the topic very well. All I am just asking is if it is possible to brute force the password on phone.


The two common phones operating system are Android which is the google you are referring to, Android still claim their OS to be open source, I do not know but it is what I have found all over the internet, is that true? Is Android OS open source?  I am surprised you only mentioned google, but iOS is close source. iOS is one of the operating system that should not also be used. They are both the big brands in the market. I do not mean Android is recommended, they prefer ads than security and I am not tech to know how good it is but I hate Android and Google ads.


This can be off-topic but I think I have to reply to it. I did not mean everyone has phone, I do not know much about English, I would have given you the right figure of speech this belong to. The sentence does not mean everyone is using phone, I used it to mean that people use phone that other devices now, if someone just know about bitcoin, he may not have enough money for hardware wallet and computer, therefore not having option than to use paper wallet and mobile phone.


This is what I have found out among people, they are using 4 to 5  numbers or letters. You can increase it? Can you compare numbers, letters and other characters on bitcoin private key to the password that you use to access your phone? This second statement makes me to be perfectly right.

I prefer Librewolf browser now, it's the middle ground between regular Firefox (that is getting more and more like Chrome) and Tor browser.
It already has uBlock origin there and you can enjoy much better browser that follows all Firefox updates, without any telemetry and junk that comes with normal Firefox.
I know about Brave, but you can disable their adblocker and I think it's still better option than regular Chrome browser, but I still don't recommend it.
One group tried to fork Brave removing all that crap, and they sent bunch of lawyers to them scaring them to death, but it's their business model I guess

Wrong assertion. Not everyone has a phone in reality. Perhaps, you meant just this forum? Even at that, it's still debatable.

Not really. The only way to access the phone would be to "flash" it. Once that is done, all data on the phone are erased. So, in order words, the list or stolen wallet won't still have the wallet on it. You're safe.

That's not true. You can increase the strength of your password on your phone. The only reason people like to choose short passwords is for ease of assessment when they want to unlock their phones.

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In all, my advice to anyone using a wallet or any other vital documents on their phone is to have not just secured and strong passwords on their phones. They should also ensure that they put passwords on their SIM cards (sim lock). That way, one is sure that the thief or whoever picked their lost phone won't be able to assess their SIM cards even if they get to remove it from the phone and insert into another.

Just because an app is downloaded from Google or Apple's official stores means nothing when it comes to how safe it. They both host plenty of malware and malicious apps.

Oh absolutely, but I can count on one hand the browser extensions which you should be running, such as uBlock Origin or HTTPS Everywhere, and they are all open source and have github repositories.

I've not seen that site before, but it seems like it tests every browser "out of the box", meaning Brave with in built tracking protection comes out on top. What it doesn't mention is that Brave accepts money from third parties to allow them to bypass the tracking protection, whereas installing uBlock Origin on Firefox achieves the same thing but without giving companies such as Binance a back door in to your browser and in to your data.

Even very own mobile operating system is a junk collecting personal information, behavior, movement and just about anything you can think of, so I would consider using degoogled phone or at least remove anything related with google.
Reset you phone and instead of Google Store use something like F-Droid or Aurora Store, uninstall apps that are not open source, install some good adblocker and Tor browser.
If you can't cope with this than use separate phone and use it only for Bitcoin crypto wallet like Electrum or Blue wallet, not connecting it to anything else.

That doesn't mean that you should not use some very good extensions like uBlock origin, but it's better to keep it on minimum.
You can do the same thing like with mobile phones, use separate browsers for crypto or bitcointalk forum and don't use it for anything else.
Here is one nice and useful comparison testing of web browser privacy, Tor, Brave and Librewolf stands out from all the rest:
https://privacytests.org/

That's very true which is why the only 2 options which are worth a try for a person desperate to use bitcoin wallet on phones are as I mentioned in my post above.



But even these are just options with lower risk compared to the wallets which we use on our regular phones with junk apps installed.
This is why they say that hardware wallets are the best of all options to hold cryptocurrencies since they don't have these kind of malware/spyware issues.

The problem here is just how much junk people download on to their phones.

As a small experiment, I would suggest everyone takes out their phone right now and go to the "permissions" section of their settings. It's usually under Settings -> Apps or Settings -> Privacy. Just look at how many apps have access to your keyboard, your storage, your screen, your camera, your location, etc. Maybe you've downloaded and verified a reputable open source wallet like Electrum. Good start. Are all your other apps open source and verified as well? Didn't think so.

Maybe you don't have any malware on your phone, but do you completely trust every other app you have on your phone. Even huge apps like TikTok have been found to be spying on users, snooping on their clipboard, etc. If an app which has been download 2.6 billion times can hide spyware in it without people realizing (or caring), then so can any app, from a game to custom themes to an alarm clock.

It's the same as when people start installing a bunch of extensions to their browser. Every additional app/extension/piece of software is a new risk.

Many refer to Bitcoin as digital gold. If that is the case, start treating it as such. If you had a gold bar, or 100 gold coins, would you carry them with you everywhere you go? Why do you do that with your Bitcoin? If you have $5.000 somewhere in your home, do you stuff it all in your pockets every time you leave your house? Then why would you do that with crypto?

It's dangerous to store your private keys/seeds on devices you use for everyday tasks. It doesn't matter if we are talking about computers or mobile phones. Those two worlds should be as separate as possible. If you don't want to use airgapped computers or paper wallets, at least get a good hardware wallet. With everything else, you are just using something with an increased possibility of things going wrong.

If you can afford those brand-new sneakers, going out drinking and partying with your friends, and buying a new iPhone every time a new model comes out, you can afford a hardware wallet as well. No excuses. If you can't, I am sorry. I hope one day things will be better for you.

I have been using bitcoin wallet on my phone for a long time so I think I can answer this question better. The thing is that it all depends on how good you are at phones.
You can very well use a good non-custodial wallet on your phone like Mycelium or Electrum. They have app password protection in addition to the security lock on the phone.
So a random user won't be able to access your wallet just like that unless he has access to your phone and knows how to penetrate through it (in most cases he should be a hacker).
Also, your phone should not be infected with a malware or a virus or a keylogger because those things can easily steal your funds from your wallet.
To avoid this you can keep a separate phone which has only the bitcoin wallet on the phone or you shouldn't download anything else on the phone from external sources which potential contains a virus.
The last thing is that if someone steals your phone then you need to remotely reset your phone and you must have that option enabled to be on the safer side.
Backup of the bitcoin wallet on your phone is mandatory and try to store the seed phrase on a piece of paper or somewhere very secure.
This way you can lower your risks and keep using the bitcoin wallet. So far these have been working for me well.

Even if you find the correct app on the Google play store, you are still inserting an unnecessary middle man in to your download process. Who is to say that someone at Google hasn't tampered with the file they received or even replaced it with their own before uploading it to the play store for download? The correct method to download Electrum for Android is to download the .apk file directly from electrum.org on to your computer, verify its signatures, and then transfer it to your phone for installation.

This is certainly far better than how most users use Electrum, but there is still a risk to your privacy. Every time you open your Electrum wallet, you are querying the server you connect to for the balance of every address in your wallet. If you use Tor then the server might not be able to see your true IP address, but they can certainly link all the addresses in your wallet together since you are querying all their balances simultaneously.

There are reasons why using a wallet that can be installed on phone is not recommended but it doesn't mean that you can't use it. It's up to you if you want to use mobile wallets or not as long as you keep it safe. I myself is using Trustwallet on my mobile phone and also electrum and I didn't have any problems with my wallet. I have been using these wallets starting from 2018 until now but I also have another wallet in laptop. The wallet I used is for receiving btc and i'll send the funds to my main wallet later on.

They are centralized, I am using Android, may be this what I want to say is possible on iOS too. They are centralized but there are fake apps on playstore, I have seen fake electrum and some other fake android wallets before on playstore. But there are ways you can easily know original apps on playstore but someone that is new may make mistake.

I use electrum with tor enabled, I change it also from one country to another for each connection. If I want to connect and make another transaction or accessing the wallet for whatever reason, I change the country again. Even if I want to change to another wallet, I change the country again. What is most important is the way you handle the wallet, I am good with electrum.

I use electrum and I do not download it from playstore, I download it from electrum.org which is the official site. There are ways to know original apps on google but what is I do not like is that most apps nowadays are close source.

I can not have my 2fa app on the phone I use for wallet or exchange and for other secure connections, that is foolishness, it has to be on different device. But this is a common mistake from people that are using wallets and exchanges now.

Electrum is available for Android platform as well so if you're going to store only the bitcoin then just use electrum which also allows you to have a password/pin to enter into the Electrum application so which is extra safety even though if someone stole your mobile and brute forced the pin/password/pattern lock.

If your device is stolen you can immediately import your Electrum wallet on any ither device and just send all the funds remaining there to a newly created wallet.

We wallets are okay if you are going to store less than $500 but using Electrum is a lot better than we wallet because it gives you private key so there will be no hassle like email Authorization needed when you try to login from a new device which is a big problem with coinbase or blockchain like wallet.

One of bad practice people usually do is they do multiple things on a same phone.

- Install bitcoin or crypto wallet
- Install exchange applications
- Install 2FA application
- Log in email which they use to create account on exchange

So what will happen if they lose that phone by any reason? They will lose their coins because bad people who get that phone, will have full access to their account, email, 2FA, etc.

Only hope that they won't get access to Bitcoin or crypto wallet.

So they have money to purchase smartphones and change them every few years or less, but they don't have money to purchase hardware wallet.
I find that hard to believe, but nobody is forcing you to buy it, you can also use old airgapped computer if you know what you are doing, or some old phone without sim card and internet connection.
Using your regular every day phone for storing keys for Bitcoin is just a nightmare scenario waiting to happen.

All smartphones have backdoors (demanded by governments) and they can be hacked easily by someone who knows what they are doing (read government agencies).
You can protect your phone from tiny criminals with strong passwords and encryption, but all that falls if they blackmail you or do $5 wrench attack on you.
Using your phone you are sending your location and behavior non-stop and I don't want to have that combined with my bitcoin addresses ever.

If your entire crypto holdings are worth $20, then sure, a mobile wallet might be enough, but if you are storing more than a few hundred dollars worth of crypto on a mobile wallet then you can afford a hardware wallet and it's a smart investment.

In terms of keeping your coins safe; simple, free, secure. Pick two.
Mobile wallets are simple and free.
Hardware wallets are simple and secure.

They don't even need access to you. Fingerprints can be lifted from anything you touch, including your phone itself, the very thing you are trying to use your fingerprints to control access to. Unless you wear gloves 24/7, fingerprints are a risk. And many facial recognition or iris scanners have been fooled with a simple photograph. Biometrics are not secure.

If someone can afford a smartphone of, say, $50, then they can also afford a hardware wallet that costs about the same. It seems that some still live in the past and think that HW costs a minimum of $150 + shipping. Security should have no excuse, especially if it is quite cheap today.



The security of smartphones is actually trivial, whether it is a simple PIN or a fingerprint - someone who knows what he is doing, easily bypasses such protection. Since mobile phones are most often lost, this is another reason why they are a bad choice for a crypto wallet. In addition, locking smartphones with a fingerprint is very risky, because anyone can use it while you sleep or are in another unconscious state.