Im getting to the point where i have so many coins im starting to worry about them. Im wondering what you guys do to protect yours. I have mine spread around. Some in deepbit, some in MTgox, a few different wallets, on several hard drives, and USB sticks. But despite all that im still concerned with their safety. Is there anything else i can do to play it safe?
This is
exactly why I made
Armory Offline Wallets.
(1) Get a super-cheap laptop. Disable all ethernet/wifi adapters
(2) Generate a wallet
(3) Make a watching-only copy of the wallet, transfer to online computer with USB key
(4) Generate addresses and monitor transactions the same way as a full wallet
If someone steals your online wallet,
they get nothing! When you want to spend the coins, get out your USB key
(1) Create the transaction as normal, but "Send" button will be grey'd out.
(2) Click "create unsigned transaction"
(3) Copy it to a USB key, take it to the offline computer
(4) Click "Offline Transactions-->Sign Transaction"
(5) Save the signed transaction (automatically overwrites the unsigned one)
(6) Take to online computer and "Broadcast"
The process of spending coins from an offline wallet is less than 60 seconds once you get the process down, and the whole interface walks you through the process.
The
Armory Offline Wallets page describes not only how to use the feature, but also has a section titled
"I'm Scared!" which describes a process you can follow to convince yourself it works. You should always make a backup (paper is best), put a few BTC in it, and then once or twice a day execute a small offline tx, to yourself if necessary. You'll find that it
always works, 100% of the time. After 3-100 days, you'll eventually realize that there's nothing to be scared about and that it actually works --
flawlessly. Not to mention you have a backup just in case!
There is no better way to secure large amounts of Bitcoins.
I made the interface
because so many people have complained about not feeling safe. This way, you don't have to rely on any external service. You can keep your money stored on a computer without any internet access... and anyone who gets your online (watching-only) wallet gets nothing, except knowing what addresses you own --
but they can't spend your Bitcoins!