Topic: [GUIDE] Bitcoin Wallets - What's the best for you? (Read 948 times)

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.

Making such assumptions is horrendous considering most people do not have or create backups (or at least not proper backups).

No.

Doesn't matter if its not used or not, it may die from age.

$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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

I think blockchain is the best <3

Has Trezor and Ledged confirmed they will support the new forked coins?

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.


On my to do list. Stay tuned.


Yay!


ftfy!