1: After I've done enough mining to make some BTC, I payout to a wallet ('mining') that I have moved into the 'datadir' from a safe, secure place.
2: I then send 'mining' balance to a separate wallet ('savings') generated by the Bitcoin client beforehand, and kept far away in a concrete box under The Greenbrier.
3: I shut down the client and replace 'mining' with 'savings' in the 'datadir'.
4: I restart the client and let it update blocks and transactions.
5: I shut down the client and move 'savings' back to its microbe-free vita-chamber deep within Cheyenne Mountain.
6: I restart the client and create a shiny new 'mining' wallet, and then move it back to a safe, secure place.
7: I shred any old 'mining' wallets and update my mining site to deposit to the new 'mining' wallet.
8: Repeat steps 1-7 every payout, and maybe refresh the 'savings' wallet every so often.
Both wallets are protected by four HIV-positive, three-legged homeless pitbulls. (Actually, they reside on a TrueCrypted USB drive.)
Neither wallet ever stays on my hard drive longer than the time it takes to TCB.
Any thoughts?
You don't need to have a wallet online ( in fact, the wallet.dat doesn't even need to physically exist ) for payments to a public key hash to succeed and be included in the block chain. I suppose what I'm saying is that once you have enough bitcoins in your 'cash' wallet to cope for buying stuff e.g. Meze Grill lunches, then you can safely pay yout bitcoins from your mining pool into a 'savings' wallet that doesn't ever have to be mounted. If you ever need more cash in your 'cash' wallet then just pay from your pool to there. If you totally run out, then dig up/create your savings wallet and transfer some bitcoins to your 'cash' wallet.
Will