Topic: STOP storing your Bitcoins on ANONYMOUS WEB! (Read 2741 times)

Something doesn't have to be regulated in order for you to take someone to court over them depriving you of it.

That said, in many cases, good luck tracking the person down to drag them into court.

I'm not derailing the thread, I'm challenging your premises, one of which seems to be that its imperative to NEVER use an ewallet that's not run by Google or Microsoft *shudder* because big companies can be trusted in all cases much more than individuals.

Obviously if one doesn't need to spend coins on the go, ewallets are almost useless. But to suggest no utility can ever come from storing even a single bitcoin on ewallet sites (you seem determined to lump them all into the same risk level) is unrealisticly extreme. People want to use bitcoins NOW, despite the immature infrastructure.

Those who don't take precautions when using ANY ewallet site, no matter who runs it, will learn the lesson the hard way. The FDIC can't just print new bitcoins if an ewallet misses a backup and loses your private key due to a crash. When they're gone, they're gone.

It would be a great help to the bitcoin community if something like that was found. Personally though, I'm still trying to keep an ear out for when the Android wallet app is proclaimed relatively bug-free by users.

OP is absolutely correct.  Considering the bitcoin industry has zero regulation, there is nothing stopping anyone from walking away with all of your bitcoins.  It wouldn't even be illegal.  The scammers know this and that is why they are getting away with it.

Yes, but I expect to know about it if it happens.

I suppose they could re-key the lock to match my copy of the safe-deposit key.

If my Bitcoins get spent in the course of a police investigation, I'll be sure to bring it up.

just a warning, a safe-deposit box is subject to the bank being nosy, and drilling your box and taking the contents, even if they say they wont.

Same here, I now have over $0.05 USD... and I keep it in my bank pending its conversion to bitcoin.

I'm Linux/BSD nerd. I just use SSH for remotely logging into my machine. You can even do X forwarding with the 'XC' flags (X forwarding+compression). Unfortunately, I don't currently have my computers set up 'just so', so no bitcoin.

By "off-site" I mean: will survive building destruction by being somewhere else. At the risk of being accused of money laundering, I plan on using a safe-deposit box.

putting your wallet on an offsite backup is not ideal. its best to use paper or some other offline medium like you said.

I know that was in response to a question, but that deserves the Triple-facepalm picture you were asking for.

The real problem is that bitcoin infrastructure is immature and, due to the underlying immaturity of the computer industry, may remain so for decades. In particular, the "default" bitcoin client is largely a proof-of-concept. In order to use it securely, you need to understand at a fundamental level how your computer works. You need to not only guard against hardware failure with verified, off-site backups. You also need to make sure that any attacker compromising your day-to-day wallet is not also able to compromise your offline wallet (that may have been transiently written to the disk during creation).

The most secure way of generating a savings wallet is to generate bitcoin keypairs offline, then printing the result, then wiping the disk (or RAM if disk was not written to), then sending the coins to the public address from an Internet-connected computer. Secure storage of paper is a known problem that people understand well. However the are a few caviats to keep in mind: (1) You need a good quality, trusted random number generator, (2) any copy of the private key is equally valid, (3) AFAIK the 'default' client can not import such keypairs for spending.

If you are the average user who has not taken extreme measures to secure their computer, using an online service as your day-to-day wallet may be a reasonable way to limit the damage if your day-to-day wallet gets comprised. One difficulty is that the value of bitcoin has increased dramaticly over the past two years. What was once "spending money" may suddenly represent a substantial sum of money. Until the "default" client, or a third-party client that becomes trusted supports multiple wallets in a secure way; doing this separation on your home computer will be difficult and error-prone.

I think infrastructure is going to be a diffcult issue. If Bitcoin adpotion increases exponentially, I would expect transaction volume to also increase exponentially. The Asian-Pacific region is expected to run out of IP addresses by the end of the year, but few (north american) ISPs have made the transition to IPv6. Asside from the addressing issue is the fact that the Terms of Service attached to most consumer Internet connections prohibit hosting servers; or using more bandwidth than some arbitrary limit. If we don't carefully plan ahead, the bitcoin network will become even more centralized. I also feel that bitcoin nodes should be using hardware and software from diverse suppliers. I think the bitcoin community may run more diverse hardware and software than most.

no cert support, so i would not recommend it for anything where security is absolutely needed, like for anything over like $100 or so. although it runs the remote client in java so, it should be good on android from what i know. also, there is a really short password length max.

at this point unless someone says something else to try, id have to recommend something proprietary if you are going to deal with a lot of money.

tightvnc is good

its better than having it in a bank i guess, unless you do have it in a bank or something.

and a continuation of my last post, tigervnc ended up sucking ass, and ultravnc is not FOSS. so im trying tightvnc, it looks more promising, im using windows btw, im sure you linux people are laughing at me right now.   

So were do I store the USD I use to buy during downturns? In my wallet file? 
Actually, bitcoin has caused me to hold more usd than I have ever before. Isn't that ironic?

i do believe there are independent alts to logmein, free and open sauce. as long as you make your own certs/signatures and exchange them before you leave you should be secure for the most part.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_remote_desktop_software
http://www.tigervnc.com/
http://www.uvnc.com/

if there is interest in this type of thing, i can do some more research and find the best solution, and perhaps do some videos on it.

because logmein is a legit company that is used by millions including fortune 500 companies, it is order of magnitude better alternative than storing your btc on some noname website. And most people dont need it, it's only for the 0.0001 that need to have "btc on the go" for whatever reason.

you are purposely trying to derail this thread, my whole point is you should not store btc on those unsecure websites ran by shady characters.  

but this basic concept is clearly lost with most of you, so i give up. Just dont come here and get all pissed off when mybitcoin2.com take all your btc.

Mezze Grille. Personal "cash" exchange on the way from a meeting/party/hackerspace/whatever. You're waiting at the doctor's office and found a cool band you want to donate to that accepts btc. Replenishing your witcoin account (or anything similar that crops up.) Playing a quick round of bitcoin poker on the train. Etc.

The number of options here is only going to grow. I take it your answer to my question is "I don't know?"

And if I'm only going to trust any ewallet enough to hold a few coins, why on earth would I use some website/program/anything-not-open-source to remote access my computer?

Now that is a smarter idea. Don't store your bitcoins on a 3rd party web site/wallet, instead give a 3rd party remote control/access of your computer where your wallet should be stored. 

THEN BUY TWO USB DRIVE, OR THREE.  They cost $5 each.  I swear some of you would bought the brooklyn bridge if it was on sale, unreal.


How many people actually need bitcoin on the go? seriously why?

And you can use logmein.com  5min setup and free. 

I think most people here recognize (at least now) that keeping a lot of bitcoins online is fairly unwise. And that keeping one's entire stash in someone else's hands—whether a few coins or 25k—is just nuts.

That said, I'll ask you, what do you say to those wanting to spend their bitcoins on the go, wherever they may be? Keeping in mind that not everyone can setup an ssh to their home computer running bitcoin.

Ahahahaha