Topic: Looking for cold wallet tutorials (Read 824 times)

Wouldn't it better to just buy some android smart phone and to connect it to the Internet when you need to send coins? As laptops cost more and I don't know if he has a spare one, tho he might even have a spare android or even IOS etc. or can buy it cheap, there are like Chinese phones for like 40-50bucks that can run mycelium , coinomi , maybe even jaxx and some other wallets that keep your keys with your device.

Tutorial? What kind of tutorial to you need?

It s very simple.

1. Get a low power laptop.
2. Install antivirus, spyware remover and anti key logger.
3. Install your favorite BTC wallet.
4. Transfer BTC.
5. Backup wallet.
6. Keep laptop and wallet offline at all times and power up only when doing transactions.
7. Never access anything else with that laptop besides your wallet.

Voila! Hope this helps.

Bitcoin is about freedom, i can only tell you what i'd personally do, but that doesn't mean that there are no alternatives... If you want to store 1000 BTC on an online exchange, there's nobody stopping you, the only thing other forum members would be able to tell you is that they think it's not that bright of an idear.
That being said, i'd personally recommand following setup:

• Online wallet/online exchange => only use them to deposit, exchange and withdraw... In and out, make sure there's no funds on them for longer than a couple of hours
• Mobile wallets (android/iOS/windows phone) => some pocket change, enough to buy a coffee or pay for a pizza if the opportunity to pay with bitcoin should ever arise
• Desktop wallets (core, electrum, multibit, armory,...)=> great for your day to day finances... If your pc is clean, and you chose a strong password, it should be perfectly safe to keep several hundreds of $ in BTC on there
• Paper wallets => If you chose a strong bip38 password, follow the correct creation procedure, and store 2 copys in safe places, paper wallets are suitable to hold millions of dollars in BTC. They're cheap and easy, but  they can only be used to deposit BTC. Once you sweep them, they are compromised and they have to be thrown away
• Cold wallets => using a physical airgapped PC to store BTC is quite a hassle and rather expensive. However, if done right, you can store as much as you want on there, and if you do it right, you have the full feature set (like signing messages, multisig, rbf,...)
• Hardware wallets => also very secure, much cheaper and easyer to use than a cold wallet, but might not have the full feature set out-of-the-box (for example, my ledger nano S has to be used together with electrum if i want to sign a message with one of my addresses, the default wallet does not support this)

As for which hardware wallet, https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet (hardware wallet section) should be a good starting point... I don't think there are "bad" hardware wallets on that list.
This being said, i can personally vouch for the trezor, the ledger HW.1 (currently sold out) and the ledger nano S.
The trezor is the original hardware wallet. It's sturdy, has a couple extra features (like a password manager, some extra altcoin support,...). It's a bit more expensive than the nano S, but certainly not overpriced.
The nano S is the younger, hip brother of the trezor. It has fido u2f support, as well as several altcoins. It's also pretty sturdy and a bit cheaper than the trezor.

If you ever decide on buying a trezor or a ledger, you'd do me a great favor by using my reflinks (no pressure tough, i only applied as an affiliate because i own both ledger and trezor products and i'm really happy with them). The reflinks can be found here : http://www.mocacinno.com/page/links . Offcourse, if you just want to buy them without using my reflink, that's fine to

Thank you for spending some time writing down your answer! You are very kind mocacinno, now I understand a little more.
Long story short, do you recommend to buy a hardware wallet? If yes, which one? Or it's better to create only a paper wallet instead?

no, that's not really correct.
The hardware wallet is an offline device that indeed, generates a seed and shows this seed to you.
It then generates a master private key based on the seed it showed you and saves this master private key on it's own chip.

Most hardware wallets have a desktop client. This client is basically a "watch-only" wallet that probably has a master public key. It sync's, detects outputs that can be spent by addresses derived from it's master public key and lets you create unsigned transactions using these unspent outputs it has collected by syncing.

Once you want to sign a transaction, the desktop client sends the unsigned transaction to your hardware wallet. Your hardware wallet derives a new private key using a certain derivation path and uses this key to sign the transaction, then sends the signed transaction back to your desktop wallet to be broadcasted.

Since the master private key can never be found on an online device, it's a safe mechanism.

The seed words are basically the words used to generate this master private key. So if you lose your device, the replacement device can calculate the same master private key based on the seed words you wrote down...

In reality, it's even more complex than what i've written here, but i think the way i explained it would allow most users to follow the logic, even if some steps are not 100% correct

Thank you for this interesting video!


Sorry for my questions but, what's the use of hardware wallet then? If I got it right it only generates a seed, nothing more? Then once the seed is created and copied on a piece of paper my coins are safe even if it's destroyed right? Is it correct to say that a hardware wallet is only a safe system to generate a seed, and not actually a coin storage?

No, it wouldn't be a problem, not really
When you initiate a hardware wallet, you're usually presented with a 24 word seed. As long as you write down this seed and store it in a safe place, you can always restore your hardware wallet.
This recovery seed paper is the only real security thread there is... If somebody finds your seed, he can steal your BTC.

A paper wallet should be bip38 encrypted. As long as you've picked a non-dictionary, longer password, it's allmost impossible to crack. You should copy your paper wallet a couple of times tough, paper can desintegrate over time!

Here is a great youtube tutorial : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TmN4STr_ug

Not only that you learn about paper wallets, how to practise etc. You will also gain some bigger understanding on what are private keys, what are addresses. How secured is bitcoin? How can randomness be secure? And all of other questions. This video is about 25mins so if you can find the time to watch it it will be really great. I encourage you to watch it.

But what happens in case of failure? A paper wallet is safer I guess. Or not? I mean if it falls out of my hands and breaks up...that would be huge problem right?

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bankpower

I do not know your financial situation, but buying one of the hardware wallets (there are several to choose from) might be a great way to learn as well as secure your BTC at the same time.

Look for threads here at bitcointalk discussing Ledger and Trezor.  I have used both with great success, but I currently like my digitalbitbox the  best of all, it seems more secure, easy & safe to use and solidly built.

Thank you for your kind answers!

You can also take a look at the guide from this website : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_to_set_up_a_secure_offline_savings_wallet

It lists every single aspect one should know before trying to set up a cold wallet from scratch.

I found this guide in the other forum : Guide : Setting up your own cold storage Bitcoin wallet
Hope that helps. 

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MOD EDIT: Removed part that quoted a removed post.

@OP : this tutorial should help you out setting up electrum as cold storage: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/coldstorage.html

It could be a bit outdated, buttons might have moved around a bit, but the basic idear is still completely correct.

btw: if you want an easy sollution, look into either a paper wallet, or a hardware wallet. A paper wallet will costs you basically the cost of a sheet of paper, but it can only be swept once (once you sweep it, it is compromised and it can never be used again). A hardware wallet will set you back 70€-100€ for a basic model, but it'll last years and is usually pretty straightforeward to use.

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MOD EDIT: Removed part that quoted a removed post.

Hi all, I'm looking for an updated and well written tutorial to save my bitcoins inside a cold wallet. Could you link me the best tutorial out there? I looked around but they seem to be outdated (can't say if they're still valid tho). Thanks!