Topic: Can someone school me on wallets? - page 3. (Read 4316 times)

So I feel like Coinbase has a good workflow for paper wallets. From what I see you just walk through their UI and it sets everything up, finally a sign of good UX practice in the BTC wallet system?! Am I missing something?

My plan is to move BTC from my primary wallet over to Coinbase and then print paper, seems easy enough with the most clarity. Seriously though, is there something that people know that I don't or was this solution simply overlooked?

I'm using multibit. All I need is the public keys backed up right? and back them up again if I add a new address.

Can I just open the files as text and print the public keys?

Do I need anything besides the public key(s) and password to recover the wallet?

Be careful with managing coins using mobile devices, they can be lost or stolen which presents a risk factor

Actually I used authenticator on my pool for the payout address, I think... Need to look into my wallet settings again. Not using an app, but browsing with an iPad/Safari...

Well this is what happens when you ask a question like this on the forums. There are a hundred ways you can do paper wallets and offline storage and each person has his own preference. So they all jump in trying to help and in the process confuse you even further.

If you still want help you will need to change your approach to getting that help. The way I see it you have two options:

- Read about Bitcoin yourself. Start with the basics of what public key cryptography is - what private keys, public keys and addresses are. You don't need to understand the math. Just the idea behind it.

OR

- Trust one person to guide you. Find someone you trust on the forum and listen to him.

A wallet file is just a text file with public and private keys, is this right or something like that?

In that case, would a super long password for an encrypted wallet be about as good as the private keys for security purposes?  It seems to be effectively the same thing

Maybe I will check Armory later.  I was not too fond of the MultiBit interface.  QT has a very clean and simple GUI.

With regards to Armoury:


Not sure what could seem complicated about it, the recent versions are pretty simple.  I switched over to Armoury from QT a while ago, haven't looked back.  Armoury is marginally easier to use than QT, and has some really helpful features like paper wallet backups.  With these you may print out or write down information that will let you restore all of the address (and the private keys, which let you use coins in these addresses) in your wallet(s).

Tablet?  If you're using a phone or tablet app I believe they do not have the Google Authenticator option enabled.  I decided not to use the android app as I felt it presented a security risk to my coins without giving much benefit.  Do set up a second password for sending of coins.

Weird, I setup my authenticator and it doesn't ask me to so anything special when I log in, but I'm using my original email link they sent to login, not sure if that is why, and I'm on a tablet, but it's definitely setup...




I'll look into some of this, thanks...

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/guide-securely-storing-large-amounts-of-bitcoin-brain-walletpaper-wallet-342691

skip step 0 (and all the other brain wallet stuff)

step 5 use this place instead https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org

yes, online wallets like blockchain only put small stuff. (like your real wallet, you might lose it or it might get stolen.)
on desktop (Qt, Armory etc), with firewall and anti-virus with password, you can put a bit more but its like getting skimmed on your bank card. Checking account don't put to much on it. (to much ugly software out there and remember anything can be hacked)
offline wallet / paper wallet. Saving account. Since these are free, it is advised to make more than one and spread things out. Better safe than sorry. In current climate I wouldn't store more than 10 btc per paper wallet.

Google Authenticator is used to log in to view the balance.  There is an option to set a second password for outgoing transaction, which I recommend.  QT somewhat includes this feature--you use the same password to open the wallet and for outgoing transfers.

Blockchain does have options for paper wallet and "offline transactions".  But again I don't fully understand these yet and don't want coins to vanish.

Regulatory freezing is a real concern.  Have at least one backup of the wallet file somewhere in case blockchain were to be shut down by feds somewhere.  Then you can import a blockchain wallet into MultiBit, or a QT wallet into QT running on another computer. 

Because blockchain allows backing up of the wallet, there is a safeguard against the site freezing.  Other sites such as exchanges (Coinbase, bitstamp, Mt. Gox), if shut down/blocked/frozen, will have your coins held captive.

We seem to be in the same position... I setup that Google Authenticator thing but haven't needed to use it yet. I assume if I want to sent money somewhere other than SatoshiDICE then I will be using the 2 factor feature?

I wish all this paper wallet crap was just built into Blockchain. I'm not worried about a hack as much as some regulatory action blocking access or something, just want to make sure nothing stands between me and my balance if my access to the wallet service disappears someday.

I haven't; it's supposed to be super secure but it seems complicated.

QT is simple and clean, I respect that.  Blockchain too.

I'm in general tech savvy but I have not yet figured out the "paper wallet" thing.  If I mess around with things too much without understanding them, I'm afraid I will lose my coins in cyberspace.

I'm a fan of 2 factor authentication using Google Authenticator (on blockchain as well as google).  Big security boost.

How about the Armory software, you ever try that?

I know you can import a Blockchain wallet into MultiBit but I am not sure about QT wallet.

Yah... The steps involved seem crazy. Maybe it's because work is busy, or grad school is burning me out, or my brain is already cashed out after getting all this hardware setup, but damn this wallet stuff seems like a major pain in the ass.

So my best idea was maybe use my online wallet for small amounts, and then either the QT client for the rest or an offline solution. Even the whole backing up thing seems incomplete. Hypothetically if I want to move BTC from my wallet at Blockchain to the QT client can I not just do that by importing a backup? I'm so darn confused, if someone can explain this in very plain terms it would help, or is there a good link I can read??

This wallet crap is way more complicated than it needs to be (IMO). If BTC is ever going to reach the consumer level of acceptance this stuff needs to be dumbed down. I appreciate the honest attempt to school me but I actually feel more confused now.

I think blockchain.info with 2 factor authentication and a second password is safe for those who do not want to go through 20 steps otherwise.

Otherwise, a bitcoin qt wallet with a good password is also safe.

Online wallets are NEVER SAFE assuming so is asking for problems.

to OP.
- Make sure to have multiple wallets. (multiple different wallet.dat files with different passwords - watch out with passwords on wallets not often used, password lost is money gone)
- Best to store these wallets on a pc not connect to the internet. (USB sticks are also possible, also easy to put in a vault, if you use USB sticks make sure to know the best practices (boot pc from livecd, and only then put in the USB stick, not on regular windows.)
- Always have at least one backup, multiple are preferable. (make sure to regularly make new ones, always make a backup before updating your wallet software)
- Paper wallets are a blessing, they are now pretty easy to create, see above. Advantage, you can print the paper wallet out, and check whether or not it works. (make sure to do this on a PC not on the internet, preferably on a livecd. When a paper wallet is created you get a private key, you can import this into a wallet client. This allows that wallet client to sign any message with its key. When you copy that into another wallet client, and give it the public key, it can verify it and say whether or not it is correct. It is still advised to first send a small amount to the wallet, and have it show up on the blockchain. It is not recommended to actually send something with the paper wallet. The one thing to keep in mind with a paper wallet, is that you should use them as being discardable. So when you want to move some money off your paper wallet on to your hot wallet, you got to keep in mind to send the remaining amount to a new paper wallet. (new paper wallet is new private key, so no chance anybody can do some peeking)
When I started my paper wallets, I made sure to put detailed instructions with them, as I know that some of them I won't touch for 10+ years, I highly recommend it.
- Then last but not least you also have multi-signature walllets, but thats another big world. (for example you would need 2 keys to move funds)

This is the short, not very paranoia version. You can make this as complex as you want. It is however important to understand the whole thing,
- computers get hacked, accept this and take precaution.
- passwords get lost, take precaution.
- hard drives fail, take precaution.
- houses catch on fire, take precaution.
- stuff gets thrown out accidentally, take precaution.
- people have accidents (unfortunately) accept this and take precaution.

I most likely could add another 100 things to the second list, but I expect the idea to be pretty clear, backups have never been so important for anything.


We usually have insurance for a lot of these things, bitcoin doesn't. (yet?) This means that any failure/mistake by the user gets punished fairly harsh, the money is gone. (or at least can be) All the possible steps you can take to prevent this, dozens if not hundreds of topics on these forums. It has been getting better, but unfortunately we are not completely there yet.

From my standpoint I find blockchain.info with 2 factor authentication and a second password for sending coins to be very secure and reliable.

This is not the same as other web wallets.

Download the BTC_Matrix.html to your computer:

https://github.com/Cyptowallets/CyptoWallets.org

Load it on another computer not connected to the internet. Generate the Paper wallet and print it out. It's pretty simple.