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Topic: [GUIDE] Bitcoin Wallets - What's the best for you? (Read 930 times)

newbie
Activity: 126
Merit: 0
Thanks for the guide, there are some wallet that I don't recognized before. I think we gonna need several of them to split some of our coins and for security for sure.
hero member
Activity: 1106
Merit: 637
The only thing missing is the fact that web wallets often operate in specific companies, so anyone search for a wallet to use will be limited by those that are conducting business in their country.

I'll offer an additional resource to help anyone sift through, here's a site that compares a lot of the different wallets and exchanges, side by side, for you to make a decision. They even tell you which coins beyond Bitcoin are supported.

Check it out >>> https://www.cryptocompare.com/wallets/#/overview



Thanks for the guide there are a lot of new joiners that ask questions about wallets.

They'll find this guide useful, appreciated.

Nice Guide! This will certainly help a lot of new users to help decide about their wallet choices.

Nice guide. Lots of great information.

Very nice guide. Thanks for the effort, I'm sure a lot of people will appreciate it and find this very overview very useful.

Thank you very much for the insight

Coin@coin, Aventhe, OgNasty, redhorse, and acheampong64 if you think this thread is useful you should throw some merit Decoded's way.
legendary
Activity: 1232
Merit: 1030
give me your cryptos
boop.
legendary
Activity: 2674
Merit: 2965
Terminated.
by flexible i meant the steps can be changed. like using an external Hard Disk. or using another linux distro,...
Alright, that does make sense.

Quote
Making such assumptions is horrendous considering most people do not have or create backups (or at least not proper backups).
yeah, you are right. i usually forget this Tongue
Let's also not forget the group that does make backups (e.g.) but with bad practices (e.g. unencrypted backups).

the usual lifespan of USB disks is called to be around 10 years (of course it solely depends on the usage).
i currently have my wallet installed on a 10 years old USB 2 disk and i have been using it at least twice a month for the past 3+ years. it is still alive and working fine. if someday it dies (which i am waiting for it before i switch to a 16 GB USB 3.1) i just buy another one and install everything again and recover from the paper which i wrote my seed on 3+ years ago.
Well, if we were comparing a single USB key vs. a single HDD setup, the obvious winner would be the latter (the former can't be really relied upon like that, but the latter not 100% either).

for $10 i find my setup pretty good.
It's decent enough, but also somewhat reliant on trust.

i agree, that is a valid option. Smiley
Indeed.
legendary
Activity: 3472
Merit: 10611
this is going to be a very flexible wallet and it is an additional DIY option.
I don't see how it is any more flexible than an external HDD. The ones that don't have separate AC power are very slim and portable.
by flexible i meant the steps can be changed. like using an external Hard Disk. or using another linux distro,...
it is a Do It Yourself after all.

such as backups which are obvious part of any kind of wallet.
Making such assumptions is horrendous considering most people do not have or create backups (or at least not proper backups).
yeah, you are right. i usually forget this Tongue

...and with today's modern USB 3 disks, specially some brands the lifetime is extremely long and they are resistant.
No.
[...]
Doesn't matter if its not used or not, it may die from age.
yes, the newer models are handling the power much more efficiently this not only decreases the chance of data failures but also increases their lifespan.

the usual lifespan of USB disks is called to be around 10 years (of course it solely depends on the usage).
i currently have my wallet installed on a 10 years old USB 2 disk and i have been using it at least twice a month for the past 3+ years. it is still alive and working fine. if someday it dies (which i am waiting for it before i switch to a 16 GB USB 3.1) i just buy another one and install everything again and recover from the paper which i wrote my seed on 3+ years ago.

for $10 i find my setup pretty good.

the external HDD is a good suggestion and obviously improves things a lot. but it also costs more and you either have to ignore the extra space or end up partitioning your wallet and use the rest of the space which means it won't be a dedicated device for your wallet only.
$50-$100 is a trivial cost if you need cold storage. You'd have to be an idiot to use a strong cold storage setup for trivial amounts of Bitcoin IMO.
i agree, that is a valid option. Smiley
legendary
Activity: 2674
Merit: 2965
Terminated.
this is going to be a very flexible wallet and it is an additional DIY option.
I don't see how it is any more flexible than an external HDD. The ones that don't have separate AC power are very slim and portable.

such as backups which are obvious part of any kind of wallet.
Making such assumptions is horrendous considering most people do not have or create backups (or at least not proper backups).

...and with today's modern USB 3 disks, specially some brands the lifetime is extremely long and they are resistant.
No.

additionally since this is more of a cold storage wallet, it will be rarely used.
Doesn't matter if its not used or not, it may die from age.

the external HDD is a good suggestion and obviously improves things a lot. but it also costs more and you either have to ignore the extra space or end up partitioning your wallet and use the rest of the space which means it won't be a dedicated device for your wallet only.
$50-$100 is a trivial cost if you need cold storage. You'd have to be an idiot to use a strong cold storage setup for trivial amounts of Bitcoin IMO.
legendary
Activity: 3472
Merit: 10611
- a USB disk (from 2 GB to 16 GB depending on how you want to approach this). This is the only cost ($10?)
This suggestion is inherently bad, and without backups will lead to a catastrophe. USBs were not meant for: 1) Main storage devices. 2) A lot of operations of any kind. Change that for an external HDD.

this is going to be a very flexible wallet and it is an additional DIY option. there are a lot of details that i just summarized here. such as backups which are obvious part of any kind of wallet.
it also needs some familiarity with linux,... for example changing the way swap works so that it only uses it for extreme situations increases the lifetime of the disk a lot. and with today's modern USB 3 disks, specially some brands the lifetime is extremely long and they are resistant. additionally since this is more of a cold storage wallet, it will be rarely used.

the external HDD is a good suggestion and obviously improves things a lot. but it also costs more and you either have to ignore the extra space or end up partitioning your wallet and use the rest of the space which means it won't be a dedicated device for your wallet only.
legendary
Activity: 2674
Merit: 2965
Terminated.
Seems like more or less a duplication of the already stickied thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/general-bitcoin-wallets-which-what-why-1631151. However, you have some graphics which we do not.

- a USB disk (from 2 GB to 16 GB depending on how you want to approach this). This is the only cost ($10?)
This suggestion is inherently bad, and without backups will lead to a catastrophe. USBs were not meant for: 1) Main storage devices. 2) A lot of operations of any kind. Change that for an external HDD.
legendary
Activity: 3472
Merit: 10611
Quote
Dedicated Cold Storage

just wanted to say that my definition of this is a bit different. which obviously makes the usage, and pros and cons of it different too. so i'm just going to leave my thoughts here and this is the cold storage that i have been using for years.

what you need:
- a USB disk (from 2 GB to 16 GB depending on how you want to approach this). This is the only cost ($10?)
- your favorite wallet. it can be anything that allows you to import/export transactions and sign/broadcast them. from core and armory to Electrum although some are more user friendly.
- your favorite linux distro. you can use the most famous one like Ubuntu if you are not familiar with linux

what you do:
- if it is a small USB then you use a smaller linux distro or use it live (Live Ubuntu can be installed on 2 GB easily). but a bigger USB disk and a faster one (eg USB 3.1) is much better because of speed and the fact that you can do a full install and have an easier time of encrypting an doing other things than you can do on the live one.
- after this you enhance the installation by encrypting your home folder, installing the wallet, encrypting the wallet, set login password, disconnect network permanently, disable guest users, .... (most of these are optional BTW).
- make sure to make a backup, such as printing your seed/private keys on a paper

the rest is just transferring the raw tx between cold and hot wallets for signing and broadcasting respectively.

pros:
costs nothing!
every code you use (such as the wallet or the linux itself) are open source
you have full control
the setup is very flexible, you can add any option like QR reader so that you don't even have to transfer anything physically
high security

cons:
it is a little complicated and you need to spend some time learning how to do some of these steps if you are not familiar with them.
member
Activity: 140
Merit: 16
You've really made an effort to explain in a way that can be understood. I am very grateful that there are people who want to share knowledge with those who are beginners like me.
full member
Activity: 254
Merit: 100
Very nice guide. Thanks for the effort, I'm sure a lot of people will appreciate it and find this very overview very useful.

I think it would be worth to mention another disadvantage of a Paper Wallet compared to the hardware wallet: If you want to spend or transfer your coins from the Paper wallet, you would have to import your private key into a Desktop Wallet. This is a security concern because you would expose the private key to the PC running the wallet and this PC might be compromised with virus/trojan/malware . With the hardware wallet the private key never leaves the device.
newbie
Activity: 41
Merit: 0
For the section cold wallet:

a combination of notebook, lifesystem (linux,windows) and a usbstick with secure firmware is also a good combination for a cold wallet.
For a windows live-system electrum standalone works quite well.
You can put the seed in an truecrypt encrypted keepass file on the usbstick.

Recommended USB-Sticks:

Kanguru Flash Trust
iStorage datAshur Pro
hero member
Activity: 644
Merit: 509
thats a great guide. for me paper wallet is a good idea, im using it to store my bitcoin in offline mode, but we have other problem, where we can save our paperwallet in safe place, sometimes i am scarry about wildfire, storm or other disaster.
member
Activity: 116
Merit: 10
Thank you so much. I'm currently experimenting with bitcoin so probably won't get a trezor or ledger. Is electrum a good option for beginners?

It's the best option as long as your computer is clean from any malware and you're not holding large amounts of bitcoins, whether you are a beginner or not.

I'd recommend to have a hardware wallet at all cases.. you can use electrum as a hot wallet (only small amounts which you transact) and keep the biggest portion of your crypto's in a hard wallet.. that's the standard pretty much nowadays and the most secure option
legendary
Activity: 1232
Merit: 1030
give me your cryptos
Thank you so much. I'm currently experimenting with bitcoin so probably won't get a trezor or ledger. Is electrum a good option for beginners?

It's the best option as long as your computer is clean from any malware and you're not holding large amounts of bitcoins, whether you are a beginner or not.

Yep. Electrum's wallet is basically Bitcoin Core, without the syncing. It has almost all of the original wallet's features, and more. The problem is that the security is fairly simple. All your private keys and transaction history is dumped into a single file, making it easy to access. You can password protect it, but that's easy prey for a keylogger, or some RAM skimming malware when your wallet is open.

If you're going to be using advanced features like multi-send or just want more control and want to learn about how these wallets work, use Electrum. But some multisig wallets have advanced security features (usually less functionality, though) and even insurance.
staff
Activity: 3500
Merit: 6152
Thank you so much. I'm currently experimenting with bitcoin so probably won't get a trezor or ledger. Is electrum a good option for beginners?

It's the best option as long as your computer is clean from any malware and you're not holding large amounts of bitcoins, whether you are a beginner or not.
newbie
Activity: 4
Merit: 0
Hi!

With the impending hard fork with Bitcoin Gold in October and 2x in November, what type of wallet should I put my bitcoin in to ensure I will get both currencies (the original and the new)?

I currently leave my BTC on coinbase (which apparently is a horrible idea) and from what I have read, people who had BTC during the Bitcoin cash hardfork did not get their bitcoin cash. I want to ensure I get what I technically own.

Thank you!

Don't put your Bitcoin on Coinbase, that's for sure. They threatened to not credit users with their BCC (but eventually did). Most good wallet developers will support their community by supporting all forks. Use a wallet like Electrum for the time being, or even better, if you have a Ledger or Trezor wallet.



Thank you so much. I'm currently experimenting with bitcoin so probably won't get a trezor or ledger. Is electrum a good option for beginners?
full member
Activity: 238
Merit: 104
Alaattin
I think blockchain is the best <3
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
Hi!

With the impending hard fork with Bitcoin Gold in October and 2x in November, what type of wallet should I put my bitcoin in to ensure I will get both currencies (the original and the new)?

I currently leave my BTC on coinbase (which apparently is a horrible idea) and from what I have read, people who had BTC during the Bitcoin cash hardfork did not get their bitcoin cash. I want to ensure I get what I technically own.

Thank you!

Don't put your Bitcoin on Coinbase, that's for sure. They threatened to not credit users with their BCC (but eventually did). Most good wallet developers will support their community by supporting all forks. Use a wallet like Electrum for the time being, or even better, if you have a Ledger or Trezor wallet.
Has Trezor and Ledged confirmed they will support the new forked coins?
legendary
Activity: 1232
Merit: 1030
give me your cryptos
Hi!

With the impending hard fork with Bitcoin Gold in October and 2x in November, what type of wallet should I put my bitcoin in to ensure I will get both currencies (the original and the new)?

I currently leave my BTC on coinbase (which apparently is a horrible idea) and from what I have read, people who had BTC during the Bitcoin cash hardfork did not get their bitcoin cash. I want to ensure I get what I technically own.

Thank you!

Don't put your Bitcoin on Coinbase, that's for sure. They threatened to not credit users with their BCC (but eventually did). Most good wallet developers will support their community by supporting all forks. Use a wallet like Electrum for the time being, or even better, if you have a Ledger or Trezor wallet.

Thanks for re-post. Recently on bitcointalk too much questions in this regard can be seen.

For what this guide is missing - wallets for mobile devices. This type of wallets, in despite that they can be considered as less secured, is quite valuable option thou.

On my to do list. Stay tuned.

I'm pretty new. Going to get one of this

Yay!

Nice guide. Lots of great information.

I did notice you say paper wallets are, “Not as portable as a hardware wallet” which I don’t necessarily agree with. I think it should be replaced with the con, “More easily destroyed than a hardware wallet” which I think is more accurate.

ftfy! Smiley
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