Topic: What is the safest way to store Bitcoins? - page 3. (Read 6534 times)

Right mate.. at $99 plus shipping fee it's still pricey.

Not everyone has the opportunity to buy a trezor,
Because it cost a lot for new bitcoin people.
But i think that if you hold more than >10BTC a trezor is needed.

I just checked on their website.. it's more secured than online wallet yet easy to use and supports not only bitcoin but,Litecoin, Namecoin, Dogecoin, Dash and Testnet. I might get one when i have the money.

I do not own any Trezor hardware wallet but as i have seen many review here in forum,
It seems that this hardware wallet is one of the most trusted and secured wallet.
It's much more safe than using online wallets, and trezor can be integrated in Electrum AFAIK.

Has anyone tried using Trezor? been tempted to buy one but i don't know if it's any good than using online wallet.

I'm using online wallet all the time ( until now ) As I heard that online wallet is worrying me.
I'm wonder what the easiest offline wallet that I can learn with fast so I can move some of my storage from online into offline wallet

If you have one with a large holding it is smart to have a copy in a bank security box.  Say tornado or natural disaster the bank vault is still there where a home (unless safe room) might not be.

Home concealed where no one finds or safe is good if you get fire safe as you have one that is resistant to fire.  Everyone thinks different on this.

Paper Wallets stored in a locked vault? and with another copy in a different place in a vault too?

Like in real life, your wallet must be secured. Bitcoin makes it possible to transfer value anywhere in a very easy way and it allows you to be in control of your money. Such great features also come with great security concerns. At the same time, Bitcoin can provide very high levels of security if used correctly. Always remember that it is your responsibility to adopt good practices in order to protect your money .
You should be wary of any service designed to store your money online. Many exchanges and online wallets suffered from security breaches in the past and such services generally still do not provide enough insurance and security to be used to store money like a bank. Accordingly, you might want to use other types of Bitcoin wallets. Otherwise, you should choose such services very carefully. Additionally, using two-factor authentication is recommended.
A Bitcoin wallet is like a wallet with cash. If you wouldn't keep a thousand dollars in your pocket, you might want to have the same consideration for your Bitcoin wallet. In general, it is a good practice to keep only small amounts of bitcoins on your computer, mobile, or server for everyday uses and to keep the remaining part of your funds in a safer environment.
Stored in a safe place, a backup of your wallet can protect you against computer failures and many human mistakes. It can also allow you to recover your wallet after your mobile or computer was stolen if you keep your wallet encrypted.
Some wallets use many hidden private keys internally. If you only have a backup of the private keys for your visible Bitcoin addresses, you might not be able to recover a great part of your funds with your backup.
Any backup that is stored online is highly vulnerable to theft. Even a computer that is connected to the Internet is vulnerable to malicious software. As such, encrypting any backup that is exposed to the network is a good security practice.
Single points of failure are bad for security. If your backup is not dependent of a single location, it is less likely that any bad event will prevent you to recover your wallet. You might also want to consider using different medias like USB keys, papers and CDs

The higher the safety from failure the higher the risk of detection. 1 kind of safety will summon other kinds of risks.

If you have 1 usb and its hidden, but it fails, then its game over.

If you have 2 usb, but 1 gets stolen and the other dont, then its also game over.

Wallet.dat files require that the future program be compatible reading the file and the file not be corrupted.  For short term this might be viable but anything spanning years I would recommend going back to rudimentary printing the keys on paper and dispersing them.  I prefer X of Y paper copies of my keys like the kind made by Armoury.

Coinbase is great for people who already realize that it's futile to avoid being tracked in large cities where cameras are watching you 24/7 and phones are constantly dialing home. Do they really care I used a restroom in a Applebees on Friday?  

even if the usb will fail, there are, if i'm not mistaken, tool to recover the data inside it

some advance software can do it, or you need to ask for a technician, just don't tell him what you want to recover 

On USB or Paper wallet, or any back up have more then 1.  If you just have one and it has something wrong... single point of failure so very bad.

Multiple backup's and you can also do saving on USB and paper wallet.  So you can combine multiple.  And just make sure to store in safe place,  preferably 2 safe places. As you don't want 1 point of failure.

Use multiple ones, 1 usb costs about 3-4$ here. You can easily buy 10 of them and then put them in a faraday box to shield against EMP charges.

I dont know about renaming, certain formats have different encoding and it might fuck up the data. Like if you rename a .mp3 to .txt, and then back to .mp3 it wont work anymore.

Hardware wallets are usually designed to resist virus attacks and it wouldn't have high risk of it being compromised. Secure internet connection isn't mandatory as your private key is never broadcast to the internet. The only thing that is downloaded to your hardware wallet is the UXTO info and a signed transaction would be sent. There is close to 0 risk of it getting compromised due to a insecure internet connection (at least in trezor). Even for updates, there is a signature that it must match for the device to accept the upgrade. (CMIIW)
USB sticks are prone to failure. Btw, it is alright to rename it to any format.

Encrypt the wallet.dat, and then put it on a usb stick.

It helps if you also rename it. Possibly if the .dat doesnt destroy the filesystem, then even put a .txt extension, but not recommended.

An even safer way is to encode the content of the wallet.dat, into a BMP or JPEG file, and keep it in image format, nobody will look after that.

Honestly you are just way to worried about it if your not doing something illegal.  If doing something illegal... yes worry for sure.

But with legal use I don't see some huge operation tracking my info and seeing me spend BTC.  And again if there is one ... they are wasting their time on me since no illegal stuff so I'm not worried.

paper wallet is the best option if you ask me. but it is safe as long as you create it on a safe PC with a safe code (app).
but if you want to be able to spend those cold stored bitcoins without having to sweep the paper wallet, you should use a wallet like electrum on an offline PC.

I know your I am not doing anything wrong argument but tracking still worries the s**t out of me. What will happen in the future if even the people that did nothing wrong get these tracking informations misused?

Our society is slowly turning into a tracking mania and all of this thanks to the technology, smartphones, Internet, GPS, etc.. And I just hate this!

Look into getting a hardware wallet and don't connect it to just any computer. Use only on a computer that you completely trust that has just had a virus scan performed on. Secure internet connection is also a must.