Topic: Move to different wallet coinbase -> copay? (Read 4784 times)

i like copay more. some of my btc are saved in copay

I have a Ledger HW1 and is cheaper and secure, not a lot of options though. Ledger Nano S is definitely better and if you are serious and intend to go much further with bitcoins Ledger Nano S is my recommandation since it's newer compared to HW1 and have better functionality (i.e a few extra options compared to HW1). Both are very safe. You can also have a look for Trezor or Keepkey hardware wallets and after comparing each one decide for yourself which one fits better for you. In the end they all do their job, keep your coins safe without too much trouble.

If you're thinking of moving still, which I don't think you are but it's still worth a shot on my part. I'd go with BitGo as you are in control of your private keys and if BitGo was to ever shut down you'd be able to get all your funds back without an issue.

I know they were in the crypto news a good amount when it came to the bitfinex hack but BitGo really had nothing to do with that as it was the internal controls when it came to BitFinex themselves.

Here's a link to BitGo if you're interested, https://www.bitgo.com/

So, I will stay at coinbase for now or maybe move it to a electrum as mentioned by onnz423.
But once I reach about 1.5 - 2BTC I will def. get a Ledger

The HW1 or the Nano, is the question I need to think about now.


Thanks for all the insight, I am learning by the day.

Online wallets are mostly a big no no, i would recommend something like electrum or multibit HD (assuming you don't want to pay a price for hardware wallet).
Personally, i would buy something like ledger wallet nano S, or ledger wallet nano for such a big amount of BTC. They are way more safer than online or offline wallets without hardware authentication.
This is a very good guide for setting up a ledger hardware wallet: How to securely initialize my Ledger Nano?
I've heard good thing about trezor, but it is more expensive than most of the ledger products.

Cheers, Onni

You're welcome  

I just wanted to add that copay is also available as a desktop wallet, I have never used it, but AFAIK, it should be safe if you run it on a clean PC... Since i never used it, i didn't include it in my post, but i'm pretty sure you could run it safely.

About the paper wallet: you can just start learning right away by making a testnet paper wallet, use google to find a testnet faucet and claim some testnet coins to your testnet paper wallet . This way you can experiment with the technology without risking any real money.

About the hardware wallet: don't forget, a couple companies like Ledger have secure hardware wallets costing less than 20 bucks ... I personally think this is a small price for the added security.

@Zadicar
copay is one of the recommended wallets listed here on bitcointalk...
0.5BTC might not be much, thats why my info was about moving it before I decide to invest more.

@mocacinno
thanks for the very detailed post!
For now I might read up on paper wallets, as it seems the best alternative now with my "low" amount of BTC.
I might have to take a look at hardware wallets when I plan to invest more and it seems like a very good idea to invest in one of them.

If you're serious about investing in BTC, please consider moving your funds away from online wallets...
It's simple really: if you're not the only one in controll of your private keys, you don't controll your funds. In your case, you're depending on the sustainability, goodwill, TOS, support staff, hardware,... at coinbase. If they ever decide to lock your funds, if they become hacked, if they turn scam or if they go bancrupt, you'll be in troubles.
Same goes for any online wallet provider (including blockchain.info). Even if the online wallet provider gives you access to the private keys, you must realise it's possible they also have access to these keys, so in this case, they can still get hacked or use your unspent inputs to create tx's themselfs.

The safest alternatives for long term storage are:
Paper wallets, hardware wallets or offline (cold) storage.

In case this is to expensive or to complex, a decent desktop wallet on a clean PC, with decent backups will do the trick to... You can pick any decent wallet, like bitcoin core or armory (they need to sync the full blockchain tough, so it'll take a while before you can start using them + they'll take up ~+100Gb of diskspace unless you prune your db).
If this sounds unacceptable to you, you could also go for an SPV HD wallet like electrum or multibit HD (these wallets only download the block headers, and they use a seed phrase to generate all private keys/public keys/addresses, so you only need to backup this one phrase to backup everthing).

The main point is that by using desktop wallets, paper wallet, hardware wallets or offline wallets, you're the only one controlling your private key, so you're the only one in controll of your funds.

If, for some reason, the wallet dev's stop working on the wallet, you can just move your funds to a different (supported) wallet. Using the seed, exported private keys, xprv, you should be able to restore your private keys and import them in a different wallet even if you can no longer access the wallet itself (for example: if you would chose to use the electrum wallet, but the development stops and all the electrum servers go offline, you can still use the seed to create the xprv, and generate all private keys for all addresses that were in your wallet... This isn't an easy process, but it can be done)

I didnt heard about copay wallet and it is really new in my ears but for me i would like to stick to coinbase in my own opinion since im using it for a while now and if you are hesitant on your bitcoin then try out to use blockchain.info wallet which is somehow safer among others but you can always opt out on putting up it on a hardware 0.5 btc isnt big at all.

So, I have had my wallet at coinbase for a short period of time and have about 0.5BTC as of today. Is it worth moving my wallet to say copay for example and eat up the fee?

I plan on investing further, so should I do the move before sending more to coinbase wallet?

Thanks for any information/help.