Topic: The most secure wallet without downloading blockchain (Read 689 times)

What I've used so far are Electrum for both desktop and Mobile, as well as the Bitcoin Wallet for Android.

Take the proper precautions as others have already said, on mobile try to stick to your own data, such as your own home wifi or mobile data. Avoid using public wifi when using your mobile wallets.

Edge Wallet probably best non-custodial mobile wallet. Full control of your keys and complete privacy.

In depth talk here on how keys are secured while keeping it simple. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7djc0E1ICjY

In that case your computer IS connected to the Internet. You can't consider your setup to be an offline setup if you connect it to the Internet from time to time. Only if it has never gone online you can truly say that it is cold storage. 

Personally, I opt for using blockchain's wallet as a hot wallet, I don't keep a lot of funds there always less than a 100$  and for long term storage I have electrum wallet on an unnetworked old computer, it was working fine just got old, so I no longer use it anymore, it isn't connected to the internet, I only connect it on an as-needed basis.

You went overboard with that one.

Both of these methods are extremely secure, but never ever use a protocol or method that you don't understand fully. Otherwise the risk of losing your coins is bigger than getting robbed.
I don't recommend any of those 2 methods unless you know what you are doing OR invest time to understand these methods (they are very well documented). And I recommend to only use these methods if you store a large amount of BTC (more than 20% of your total savings).

Here is what I think would fit to most users and is still very secure:

- Buying a Ledger from the official website
- Writing down your seed (24-words) and put them in an hologram sealed envelope, so you will be aware if someone took a peak at it.
- Leave a small amount of funds on the main seed and the rest of your savings behind a 6-8 word passphrase (Ledger has tutorials how to do that). So even if your seed gets compromised, your main savings would be safe.
- Store this envelope with your seed in multiple locations that you trust. If you do not have different locations that you trust, buy a password protected USB stick and store your seed on there from an airgapped machine. And put this password protected USB stick at the unsafe location (replace them every 5-10 years as they might die).
- Never store your passphrase at the same location as your main seed.

I have. The first is basicaly a 78-page PDF guide: https://glacierprotocol.org/assets/glacier.pdf with some scripts. It's fine and it's not a new thing, but I don't recommend it to newbies, as the entire instructions are overly long and drawn out for newbies. But they themselves claim it's for those holding bigger amounts of money, so it's less of a problem.

Coldcard wallet also isn't an unknown piece of hardware, even if it's nowhere near as known as Trezor or Ledger wallets.

I have never had of both of these before. If they are extremely secure then I am wondering why they are not so popular or mostly talked about here.
Are the wallets still new in the game?

If it's the case they i would rather stick to the popular ones that have been around for a couple of years.

I think this is extremely secure:

https://glacierprotocol.org/docs/overview/

or this:

https://store.coinkite.com/store/coldcard

But might not be for everyone

No, the most secure setup is do more or less what you suggested, but transfer the unsigned and signed transactions via QR codes and webcams, ie. take no risk with an airgapped machine.

Setup means what?

Did you generate it with vanitygen?

DID YOU MOVE 10K OR moore worth of bitcoin?

Did you use multisig or segwit or legacy?

The most secure is to setup you orwn private key, sign the transaction offline, and move the coins by broadcastin the transaction from a usb

Additionally, EVERY software needs to be verified.

Just because people don't do that, and everyone is encouraging people to verify the electrum download, it doesn't mean that you don't have to verify each software you are installing.

This is nothing related to electrum. The only way to be sure that you are installing the software created by the original developers, is to verify the signature using their PGP key. Whether electrum, wasabi, core etc..

Don't scare people and make them think that the verification process is something difficult. It literally takes a few minutes to read the guide on how to verify Electrum > https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-verify-your-electrum-download/

A few minutes to download and install the needed software and another minute or two for the verification. It is worth it and once you do it the first time you get used to it and it becomes a habit. That is the whole point - verify before using.

This isn't just applicable for electrum, you should not use any wallet if you don't have proper knowledge about it. So electrum isn't different and you should know how to verify it before use. I know electrum attack was pretty much confusing. But I think it was lesson for others that we should not just update software from popups without verification from websites. Most of peoples using electrum because its pretty much easier. And of course everyone should verify that he is using original software.

Do NOT use Electrum wallet unless you properly know how to verify the program . Electrum is the wallet that is targeted the most by malware/viruses.
Lot's of people lost their coins already like this.

Create your wallet with Bitcoin Core software, then extract your private keys and import them into Electrum, when you need to send coins.

You don't need to download the block chain to create a wallet/keys with Bitcoin Core. The moment you start the software, it assigns you a wallet.

If you are not going to spend any coins but only hodl, then you can skip the electrum part. Create, Extract, Store.

Did you type in your address there? If so then you did it wrong. Open Electrum, select Wallet -> Information and copy your Master Public Key. Use the following format in the box from the provided image.


Make sure to check if addresses generated by BTCPayServer match the ones in Electrum. In Electrum, select View -> Show Addresses to access a list of 20 addresses.

Guys I just attempted to use my addres on BTCPay Server and... the address is invalid. 


I'll forward manual payment procession anyway. 

You would save a little bit more with native SegWit, but it's not worth the hassle of using two different wallets at the same time. Nested SegWit offers significant savings over legacy addresses. You should stick to it for the next few years until native SegWit becomes more popular.


This isn't much of a disadvantage in this case. I doubt that any of his customers will request a signed message.


We have already come to conclusion that in his case, nested SegWit would be the best choice.

I just opened the segwit (3) wallet and my addresses starts with 3.
Thanks for the tips!