Topic: Paper wallets still good options (Read 999 times)

And anyone who is stupid enough to encrypt their wallet with an 8 character password before broadcasting it across the internet is likely to end up with their password bruteforced and their coins stolen.

Agreed. Not only are you placing complete trust in these centralized cloud servers much like you have to with centralized web wallets and exchanges, but once any data is uploaded to these servers you have to assume it will never be deleted. All my back ups are created manually, offline, encrypted, and stored in physically secure locations. It's not as convenient as using DropBox or iCloud, but I know my data is never going to be involved in one of their many many leaks, hacks, or breaches.

This is the best case scenario, where you have the right password length & combination and where you store the proper thing the right way. We have some encrypted ".dat" files on the forum that you have most likely seen too around, which haven't been decrypted in a decade.

But the average Joe would think that the same password they've used on 100 other accounts, although long and complicated, is secure to use for a paper wallet encryption and post it on a forum too when you have password leaks happening every day so the long, very complex password might actually be a Google search away. I can't even recall how many times I thoroughly thought of a security process to make sure everything is as should be, but months later I found out a very little thing I forgot could've led to the compromise of the provided security all that time.

Hence, I'd rather take the encrypted key with me on a piece of paper and take just as much care of it as I would of my physical fiat wallet; I think it's the best suggestion one can give to the average person. Honestly, unless you are a very important/suspicious person as you said Snowden would be, I think the chances are almost non-existent that someone would check out what you wrote on a piece of paper. At least for now, because if Bitcoin ever becomes the norm, expect paper thieves to exist, lol.

I personally do not trust online backups of any sort, especially financial assets. Online means possibility of leaving fingerprints in a server you don't own and, if anyone is interested in running with their Bitcoins from someone/something, I guess it'd be even worse to leave traces.

EDIT: The "average Joe" part now makes even more sense after Tash's reply:

^^^ Why carry it into a country if it is alread in the country? Most country someone has a note running.
6PnYYQefG5g4otFwJgWdzYrSXdRoWgQykNqx8qtPELEj62C8mrYCALAXuN
I can sent the damn thing by morse code if i want to.

Or as poem on a postcard anyone can read it, so what?
6 years
Paul
not
You
Yourself
Quit
end
.....

Artwork on public display, Bedroom... (as we know encrypted always starts with 6 its so it's emitted)


If someone is stupit enough not to remember a 8 character password, it does not deserve a coin.

This is something I've never quite got my head around. How do people think these third parties are storing their coins? On an airgapped machine or hardware wallet? Maybe. Hopefully. I'm sure many just use plain old software hot wallets though. What's the thought process here? "I don't trust my own software wallet, so I'll store my coins in someone else's software wallet instead, and hope they continue to allow me to access them?" Makes no sense.

If you aren't confident in storing coins yourself, the correct next step is to learn how to remedy that problem, and not assume even larger risks by giving away complete control to someone else.

In this hypothetical scenario of carrying bitcoin across a border, I would also prefer to carry an encrypted wallet in some form on my person. Indeed, I have done just that several times without any issues whatsoever. If, however, I was unduly concerned about being searched and it being found because I was Edward Snowden or something, then storing it encrypted online isn't necessarily dangerous. Provided I used a secure encryption algorithm and a long and random encryption key, then I could quite safely store it online, especially if it is only going to be for a short period of time (say, the 12-24 hours needed to take a flight, get through the border, retrieve the data, and sweep the bitcoin to a new wallet).

The caveat to this is the long and random encryption key. To be as secure as a 24 word phrase, you would need 39 random characters drawn from the full ASCII set. Are you going to write that down and carry that across the border? Are you going to try to remember that? I would argue that remembering 24 random words is easier than 39 random characters. As stupid as relying on your memory as a back up is, this might be a case where remembering your seed phrase is the least risky option.

Read my last post again. I'm quite sure you don't write your accounts or credit card PIN on walls when you don't want to forget them.
[/quote]
You seem somewhat confused, bank accounts and credit card pin's have nothing to do with Bitcoin.
No would not most my 4 digit pin #.
Still waiting on particulars of the paper wallet and when and how to took all of it.

Amount doesn't matter. Having a paper wallet worth $5 stolen would annoy me just as much as one worth $100 would. Moreover, it'd even get me skeptical to a point where I wouldn't trust any of my own wallets as I'd know thefts have happened before so my storage method is clearly flawed.

If you think transferring a significant amount of BTC to an encrypted paper wallet and then posting it here is a good method just because it has a password on it, then good luck with that. I'd literally be on my toes and stressed out desperately checking my balance every minute to make sure the money is still there until I get to the other part of the world where I'm supposed to use it.


Read my last post again. I'm quite sure you don't write your accounts or credit card PIN on walls when you don't want to forget them.

First it depents on amount, second come on tell me what you do about? Go ahead tell me all about that paper wallet.

Not sure if this is a troll post or not, but I don't think there's anything worse than posting your encrypted paper wallet on a forum or sending it through e-mail...

You can literally transfer $10,000,000,000 on a paper, fold it, put it in your pocket and go wherever you'd like without having even the best scanner in the world knowing you have that much money on you.. Compared to gold or other stuff they can find at the airport or that is large & heavy enough to be suspicious.

Yes it can be a gift, but why exactly woudl you want to carry it on you when moving to a country? Its in a country already if someone operates a note.
Why not post it here or sent by email, or as text it on a phone or whatever..... What exactly will you do about it?

]

What?

yes,
yes,
yes cand do

Unless you know what you're doing, the bolded lines may have even more & worse security holes than a paper/hardware wallet.

Why isn't a paper wallet suitable way of storing all savings? I mean, as soon as it's created and stored the right way, it's just as safe as all the other methods when created & stored properly.

There are so many possibilities of losing your wallets with every method that there's no perfect way to store them properly. You could easily lose your computer/USB/phone in a fire or if the disk inside the device fails without the possibility of recovery. Even our mind has flaws: you could simply have a bad memory loss after an accident and there goes everything you had.

I stored some of my BTC on paper wallets for many years without touching them and had zero issues when transferring them back into a hot wallet.


If you cannot properly store very important data on your own, then the worst thing you can do is give it to someone else to do it for you imo, lol. While you enjoy your life on a sunny beach, there may be a few guys trying to decrypt your wallets behind the scenes. Or the government itself, if they consider it's worth it.

I barely trust my own storage & encryption methods although most of the times I repeat all steps like 5 times in a row to make sure I still get the same results and did it all properly from the start. Knowing my wallets are in someone else's hands, even encrypted, would constantly stress me the hell out.

Personal, I think gifting paper wallets is bad idea. The recipient of the paper wallet has to trust completely that the sender has created and printed the paper wallet in a secure fashion, and also has to trust completely that the sender isn't keeping a copy of the private keys for themselves. Any time I have wanted to gift bitcoin I've just made a normal transaction, and the one time I received a paper wallet as a gift I swept the funds immediately to my own wallet. If you are giving a gift of bitcoin to someone who is new to bitcoin and does not have their own wallet yet, then all the more reason not to use a paper wallet and instead teach them how to securely and safely store their own funds without relying on third parties.

Why not? If we are talking about savings, i.e. money that you are holding long term as opposed to money you are spending day-to-day, then paper wallets are one of the best ways to store your savings.

Even a phone in airplane mode can still receive radio frequency data, and can still connected to WiFi, Bluetooth, or other connectivity methods. If you want to create your own airgapped device, better to use an old laptop with the WiFi (+/- Bluetooth) hardware physically removed.

Why did you limit the options to black and white? Which means of security of bitcoin are hardware wallets and paper wallets, there are many options with high security and the most reliable.

Paper wallets are used for gifts and for storage when you want to move to a country or other item, but they are not suitable as a way to store all of your savings.
You can buy a phone at a much cheaper price than device wallets and convert it to a solid device.
You can also use an old computer and turn it into secure hardware.
You can try USB and open source OS.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box-theft.html

You'd never catch me doing such a thing.

And bank vaults are a dying breed at least where I am. The nearest one to me is about 150 miles away and they're closing at a fast rate.

I may well go back to paper wallets for funds that have no intention of moving for a long time. They worked for me in the past. I get the feeling hardware wallets will get ever more holes uncovered.

I have a hardware wallet which i used once for some time. Emty now, just laying around.
Paperwallets is king for long term. For smaller, mobile or destop

Paper wallet can stil be great for keeping and holding your crypto and bitcoin,
but only if you create it offline and in proper way.
Lot of people are not doing it in correct way or they they become victims of phishing scam.
Good to readbitcoin wiki page on paper wallets:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet

I can't agree here.
Both have their use and have their advantages and disadvantages.
For example paper wallet is free. You can print it or just write your keys on piece of paper, done.
Hardware wallet is somewhat expensive and you must trust software it contains and its wallet. you must trust delivery and manufacturing so a little bit too much trust there.
Paper wallet can't fool you and its free.

Paper wallets, airgapped PC or mobile wallets, and (good) hardware wallets are all permanently offline. Your private keys and seed phrases are therefore safe from any attack via the internet or any malware.

Wallets on a PC or mobile device with internet access are vulnerable to attackers accessing your device via the internet or to malware transmitting your keys or seed phrase to a malicious third party via the internet.

If you have done this on a non-airgapped computer (i.e. a computer with internet access, even if you disconnected from the internet while you did it), then your coins are at risk. Your seed has been saved on your computer in plain text, and could well still exist on your hard drive even if you have deleted the unzipped PDF file. It could have been or could be accessed by malware or a malicious attacker. Further, you need to ensure that the compression software you are using uses a proper encryption algorithm when password protecting files.

Even then the seed might be seized by the government if for example they will decide to outlaw crypto and will have a suspicion that this is a Bitcoin private key, and while they wouldn't take your coins if the encryption is strong, you might be locked out of your coins if it's the only copy. If you want to be even more safe and store coins in bank for decades, it would be better to first use steganography to hide the encrypted seed in some innocent files, like family photos, and then optionally encrypt the photos. So, in case something like what I described will happen, you'll have plausible deniability and might even avoid raising any suspicion.

There are many wallets that don't give you the private key or the seed phrase. There are also some wallets that give you the private key, but they are not safe. Because they have access to your private keys as well. For example, blockchain wallet give you the seed phrase and you can recover your wallet using your seed phrase at any time, but since the wallet is not open source, that's not safe. Because we don't know whether they have access to our private key and seed phrase or not.

My bad, you are right. Encrypted seed (in pen drive or similar storage)+ bank vault would be best of both worlds.