Topic: Hot/Cold wallet (Read 322 times)

I truly can not understand your post.

Me too with his posts.

Hardware wallets are cold wallets and can not become hot wallets.

His writing is about using "one wallet for both hot and cold storage with separate codes for each.", honestly I can not understand what he wanted to say here.

One wallet for both hot and cold storage BUT with separated codes

I think you need more understanding about the concept of these two different wallets, which are all for saving and holding cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin.
One of these wallets is an offline wallet, which clearly explains to you that you will use such wallets to hold a coin for very long period of time. If you are able to tell the difference, you can use them as you wish.

I don't typically measure things by their own measure, but I know that hardware wallet is a cold wallet and any online wallet is a hot one. My understanding of the Bitcoin wallet is not far from what I read about it in 2015 when I took an interest in Crypto. Anyway, both of you are right.

To some extent, I believe you are technically misinterpreting the difference between a hot wallet, a cold wallet, and a hardware wallet. Based on what you are explaining, that's what I see. 
 
Hot wallets are wallets that are connected online, while cold wallets are offline wallets, which are considered one of the safest since you don't connect them to the internet. 
 
A hardware wallet has a separate device (software), which provides you with extra security compared to a normal wallet; it's not easily compromised, and its hardware wallet might be referred to as being expensive.

Not that I don’t understand you but I don’t agree with you that an hardware wallet can be used as both cold or hot wallet, a hardware wallet is always offline from the internet and that’s why it is regarded as a cold wallet, you can only turn that wallet to hot Wallet if only you import the seed phrase into an online wallet or cold wallet. But that doesn’t mean the hardware wallet where the seed phrase was created is now hot wallet rather it is you that has just exposed the seed phrase.

Even with this, I don’t see reason why you will create two seed phrase on a hardware wallet just to import the seed phrase back to a hot a wallet, why not simply do that with a reputable hot wallet like electrum other than going through this process.

I believe you are talking about "hardware wallets" as there are other types of cold wallets that you can get for free. You can generate your wallet seed offline on an air-gapped device and write the seed down on a piece of paper. This is basically how to create a paper wallet and it's also a "cold wallet" and you can create as many of them as you want for free.

However, I didn't get what you mean by "online cold wallets"! I don't think such thing exists.

I don't really understand what you mean exactly. Which hardware wallet model are you talking about precisely? Hardware wallets are considered as cold wallets because the seed they use is not exposed neither accessible from the computer actually connected to internet. Transactions are considered to be signed and sent to the hot device in a watertight manner. So if the hardware wallet can be considered as hot, there is something wrong because it means the seeds it contains are not safe.

I think you didn't see what is written in the post which I quoted if you read the above post which I quoted so you never ask this question. I wrote just in short form. I like his idea so I wrote this in just simple words you should always take a look on the quoted post too.


In my post codes are meant by seed phrases and wallet is meant by Hardware wallet which is written in the above quoted post. I hope you understood.

Even though they are expensive, cold wallets are way better and safer. It's almost impossible to hack a cold wallet, as it's a physical wallet that goes offline.

Hot wallets are a type of online cold wallet. Some people buy a cold wallet and offer to store your Bitcoins on them online creating a hot wallet.

If you want to store more than 1 million Satoshi, then it's better to go with the cold wallet. Buy one and use it.

If you want to store less than that, then go with the hot wallet. They are everywhere.


https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/reminder-do-not-keep-your-money-in-online-accounts-5421039

I hope you understood what you wrote and expressed your idea correctly through writing because this sentence is non sense.

Hot wallet and cold wallet are different like you shared your thinking in other sentences but what does it mean in this sentence?

"Using one wallet for both hot and cold storage with separate codes for each", what?

One wallet with separate code?
One wallet for both hot and cold wallet?

I agree which you have described about cold wallets and hot wallets. It is important to know difference to keep your private keys safe. Cold wallets are not online so they are safer from hackers. Hot wallets are easier to use but riskier. I like idea of using one wallet for both hot and cold storage with separate codes for each. This way we can keep our keys safe and still use our wallet. But we should be careful with hot wallets as they can still be attacked. Cold wallets are safest for long term storage.

Your post is not very clear, you should add more information to what you say. If you have a cold wallet that connects to the internet, it no longer becomes a cold wallet, so there cannot be a wallet that has such a feature that you are asking for. If you connect your airgapped wallet to the internet, it also becomes a hot wallet. What you should do is have a hot wallet and also have a separate cold wallet. What do you mean by someone tried three times to take a dollar out of your wallet?
Are you talking about a dust attack/address poisoning? Add more details to your posts mate, but there is no way to stop people from sending you coins.

Which wallet are you using because I don't understand how and why they are tring to steal you one single USD instead of stealing all your wallet at the same time. You can switch a wallet from cold to hot but you can't do the opposite because once your wallet is hot it means your seed has been potentially exposed. And someone who stole it will be able to use it whenever he wants.

I will advise that for anyone who is not conversant with the use of wallets or have a better understanding of how to maintain a security practice over the kind of wallet in consideration, they should avoid the use of hot wallet and this goes to the newbies most especially, the little mistake you may do can lead to the loss of your coins from the kind of wallet you're using when you don't have an idea on how to avoid being scammed or hacked from the wallet type in consideration.

You did. You need to check your facts again, following your idea is contradicting the concept of both wallet.

Is this in bitcoin? I will consider it as a donation everytime you received bitcoin from unknown wallet source as you couldn't anyone sending you bitcoin unless you used a mixer to send your funds to your new wallet address where no one will know your address aside fron thebmixer you used.

I hope you really understand the concept behind cold wallet and hot wallet. Cold wallet is a wallet that is not connected to the internet and as such, it helps you protect your private keys from been access from the internet, no internet means no malicious activity and hot wallet is wallet that you frequently connected to the internet. It can be your hardware or your software wallet but you can switch from a hot wallet to cold wallet.

However, you can always used a hardware as both hot wallet and cold wallet. You can create two seed phrase in one hardware wallet where you can be using one for hot wallet and one for cold wallet. The hot one might not necessary makes your private key online but you might risk been attack by malicious contacts interactions especially when you signed transaction always on your wallet but the cold one will remain inaccessible as long as you don't use it to execute smart contracts.

You have posted in a good way but there is still a way you can use a single signature hot wallet in a way that can be secure. This is the use of passphrase. If you use a long passphrase with more than 4 different characters and the passphrase is 15 characters long, it is safe. I have a passphrase that is 21 characters long and it contains uppercase, lower case, underscore and dots. Such passphrase are safe. But it is important to backup the passphrase in separate places that you did not backup the seed phrase.

Hot wallets are more vulnerable to hacks but there are some OPSEC methods to improve its security.

Rather than use single signature wallets, let's use multisig (multi signature) wallets.
Rather than use weak passwords, let's use strong passwords. This advice includes "Don't reuse passwords".

The paranoid user's security guide for using Electrum safely.
Creating a multisig wallet

With any wallet software, to use for creating your hot wallets, verify what you download like this guide for Electrum wallet.

[Guide] Verify and download Electrum wallet

There is no such thing, but the closest thing you can find is Hardware wallet which is not connected to the device even when it's connected to any device so there won't be any attack is possible even if the device is infected by a malware.

The small amount sent to your address is dust attack which is not allow anyone to access your wallet but it's attacks towards your privacy so you can freeze the address or the particular UTXO if you don't want to spend that.

8 years of crypto trading is a lot, you have to stuff yourself the relevant knowledge.

You clearly misunderstood the concept, you cannot switch between hot and cold wallet,  its either you are using a cold wallet or you're using a hot wallet. A cold wallet is expected to permanently remain offline, once you connect it online  the wallet becomes at risk and you can no longer call it a cold wallet. Hot wallets are generally too vulnerable to attacks. You might have exposed your private keys unknowingly either through a supposed harmless chat with a stranger, used a malicious website or link or a general scam attempt, that is why people are advised not to store large amounts of coins in an online wallet.

You are lucky your coins are still intact, you can as well consider transferring majority of your coins to a cold wallet to ensure the safety of your coins.

Cold must be cold forever.
Air gap must be air gap forever.

If you turn cold to hot, air gap to online exposed, these wallets are no longer cold wallets or air gap wallets.

The practice you need to do is move your bitcoin from a cold or an air gap wallet, with part of your fund in the wallet, to a new wallet as a hot wallet for spending and bring it around. With a hot wallet, you are afford to connect it to Internet and surely you afford to lose your bitcoin in a hot wallet in worst situation.

It keeps your private key offline, you sign a transaction offline, and broadcast it on another device, that is online.
https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html#get-your-transaction-signed

You did misunderstood the concept.


Secure your wallet
Security checklist

Yes you are right it is not good idea to switch between hot and cold wallets because it can be dangerous. Hot wallets are meant to be online while cold wallets are meant to be offline. Switching between them can put your money and assets at risk. Best way to keep your assets safe is to use special kind of wallet called hardware wallet. This is safest option. While Electrum has feature that can make your wallet seem offline it is not best way to keep your assets safe. Hardware wallets like Ledger or Trezor are best choice because they are made to keep your assets safe.

I don't think it's a good idea to switch a cold wallet into a hot wallet or a hot wallet to a cold wallet. Like others said hot wallets are supposed to be always connected online and cold wallets should always be disconnected online.
You can do that with Electrum by enabling the proxy settings and setting it to local IP it would turn to offline but it's not a wise way to protect your wallet since you have multiple assets and you want all assets to be in a safe wallet then you don't have other choice but to use a hardware wallet that is the best option I could suggest because you have multiple assets that you want to protect based on your statement from the OP.

With all of the explanations about cold and hot wallets, I guess that there's no more need to have some additional words to say. But with this, how did you figure out that they've failed for a specific attempt three times? What wallet do you use? I guess that you're using an exchange wallet and there's an email notification from them that has alerted you three times.

These are the known wallets in the community but many discourages others to use Ledger because of their ugly recover feature.

Nothing  like switch  :)but I get you
The best option for this is setting up a Watch only wallet for your wallet if its a non custodial wallet (I.e you have your seed phrases),opensourced is another option,you can read up about that but it's worth knowing...
With watch only wallet you can setup a cold storage for your coin, you will be having same wallet on two device , the  one that connects to Internet and the one that has never connected to Internet or Airgapped devices, the one that connects to the Internet will have a will display your coin but you won't be able to broadcast your transaction without signing it from the one that doesn't connects to the Internet ( so you have a better way to secure your coin using the cold storage format) with such setup.
Although I don't know the wallet you're using but

Here are quick guides to use watch only wallet incase you're interested
https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html ~ Electrum
https://bluewallet.io/watch-only/ ~ blue wallet [all you have to do is import through scan and you will have your watch only wallet ]
https://bluewallet.io/docs/sign-offline/ ~ [sign transaction blue wallet ]
https://support.airgap.it/guides/sparrow/ ~ sparrow

I don't know how this happened but if you have an exchange wallet and  it's "signed in"  on multiple device, if one of the  device get tampered with there could be an attempt but if they don't know the pass key they won't be able to perform the transaction (provided you linked email account is not also signed in on such device)
 No you can't stop people from sending you if they have your address

First, you have to understand the concept of hot & cold wallets, basically hot wallets are wallets that are connected to the internet, and cold wallets have the opposite characteristic, they are not connected to the internet. An example of a hot wallet is software that you use to store your crypto, such as Trustwallet, Electrum or Metamask. And examples of cold wallets are hardware wallets such as Trezor & Ledger.

Hamza2424's thread ^[1] can help you to know them more deeply & also their approach. Changing wallets from cold to hot, PrivacyG has said above.

[1] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/crypto-wallets-cold-and-hot-wallets-and-their-approach-5413117

If you're using a hot wallet, then they are best known for being an online crypto wallet and they don't have the access of granting you the private keys to the wallet in use, instead they are often referred to under the category of custodial wallets, a good example is a mobile wallet, exchange wallet etc.

But as for the other category, which is a cold storage, this allows you to have access and control the wallet provides keys because they are with you and they are often referred to as non-custodial wallet, a good example is a hardware wallet, irrespective of the kind of wallet you're using, your bitcoin or crypto isn't stored on the wallet, but on the blockchain, wallet only provides us with the unblocking keys that gives us access to our coins on the blockchain.

Have most of your coins on cold wallet. Have little amount of your coins on hot wallet which you can use for spendings which are often and for emergency purposes.  Despite this, protect your hot wallet.

How were you able to know?

I do not understand what you say happened honestly.  But speaking on Hot and Cold Wallets,

Switching in between Hot and Cold would be useless.  Cold Wallets are supposed to be 100 percent Secure against external threats.  You create an Airgapped Wallet instead of Electrum because the Airgapped Wallet has no Internet connection to work with, so there is no way an external bad actor could penetrate it over the Internet and create damages.  You use Electrum for comfort.  Hot Wallets are Wallets that are easy to lose, much easier to be penetrated and require so much more care.

Example.  You get an used Laptop and turn it into a Cold Wallet.  The Laptop has a virus that automatically sends all your Bitcoin to the Address of a stranger as soon as it passes a specific Balance.  Got 0.01 Bitcoin in your Wallet?  The Virus can target you.  Well, if there is no Internet connection, it can try a million times.  Nothing would happen because it is isolated from the rest of the World.  Your Bitcoin is therefore Safe.

If you have a Cold Wallet and plug in your Internet cable or connect it through WiFi, this is not a Cold Wallet any more.  You turned it into a Hot Wallet and now many attack vectors are possible.

Hot wallets are wallet that are always used online and it is good that you use an open source wallet like Electrum wallet or bluewallet because they are noncustodial wallets where only you have the private keys.

Cold wallets are those wallet that are never connected to the internet like hard wallets and electrum cold storage wallet where the keys are generated on an airgapped device. Large funds are best stored in cold wallets and small amount of funds for daily transactions are best stored on hot wallets.

If I may ask which wallet are you using to keep your coins and the 0.25 sent to you is a dust attack. It is better that you don't spend it along side with your bitcoin but it can be feezed if you are using a wallet like Electrum.

Is there a wallet out yet that lets you switch between hot and cold? Like turn it on and off? Or am I completely misunderstanding this concept? Someone tried to take a dollar out of my wallet, they failed. Tried three times actually. This has never happened before but now I am thinking more about security. I am an active trader so I have never really looked at cold wallets but I do have some assets I have held for years so they might as well be in a cold wallet. Also they sent me .25 before trying to take money, can you stop people from sending you things? It seems impossible but in my 8 years of crypto trading, this has never happened before.