Topic: Where do you store most of your coins for long term storage? - page 3. (Read 6064 times)

Keylogger doesn't care, but it will get your password to your bitfunder account. So therefore, use 2FA. And try not to get any keyloggers by doing something stupid like clicking on .exe's sent by friends.

I have all mine in instawallet and Bitcoin savings & trust. Around 2700 BTC.

I used bitcointalk.org itself to backup my wallet import format key to the Internet forever and ever. Just string together the first letter used in each of my 51 first posts. Argh! You tricked me into giving up my key. Ah well, back to paper wallets.

PS: https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com is what I developed to safekeep my coins offline. I invested a lot of brainstorming & real-world testing with regards to tamper-resistance & long-term storage, waterproofing, etc.

haha yea i thought it would be neat


Just to put everyones fears to ease. my main use in this poll is a few reasons

• figuring out where I should store my personal coins
• am looking into opening a service that will store users coins for them
• figuring out stats for the amout of users who would use my service

This is a really cool idea for a backup!

Really? Great idea if the sun becomes a supernova the tungston doesnt melt

Engraved on a tungsten block, dipped in hot wax, using a plastic container that is encased in cement.

Armory at the moment - off-line.  I have no plans to open that wallet until such time as one of the hardware wallets is successfully implemented.

Once there's a selection of hardware wallets from which to choose, the plan is to have three:  home, car and safety deposit box.

The main thing I'm waiting on for the hardware wallets is the ability to hold the same wallet on multiple devices that can be updated easily.  I'm unsure that the technology is quite there, yet.

I have some at Bitcoin Fog. I have no gains in letting my BTC being traced so the BTC I wanna store for an extended period I just add to Bitcoin Fog.

The rest of my BTC I have in blockchain.info and Bitcoin-Qt wallets for spending and gambling

Currently, I'm using InstaWallet to store my Bitcoin wealth. If by chance my coins are returned, I converting them to gold via Coinabul. Once I get my gold, I'm trading it to Dank for weed. Then I'm going to sell the weed to... I haven't thought that part out yet, but I'm sure it'll be profitable.

what service do you use?

also would that service if online have access to passwords then?

I think that's a really good idea and in a way exactly what I used to do before I started using a paper wallet. I had a 4gb Hitachi Microdrive CF that I used in my HP hx4700 pda. The Microdrive was perfect for the pda but will not fit in a standard CF reader because its too wide. I used cheap IDE-CF adapter plugged into the motherboard to load the wallet and stored the Microdrive offsite. My thinking was even if they stole the Microdrive they would have to figure out something to read it with and the only thing it fits in are out of date pda's and cameras which won't read the wallet. That would give me time to discover it missing and transfer funds.

This is even more generations back. The question is how to get the data onto the cassette tape.  Find a computer that can read both 5.25in floppies and cassete tape?.  Serial port connection? An old dailup modem? A 286 can read 3.5in floppy disks and so can the most modern computers via a USB floppy drive.  As for 5.25in floppies many computers under 10 years old support the drives.

Bitrot is a concern with any technology both old and new. Actually CDs are among the worst for this. The answer is an active approach of renewing and testing the backups on a regular basis and do not just rely on one kind of technology. Multiple technologies from different times is best.

Another sketchy but interesting method would be to use the number of grains of sand in an hourglass as your private key. Include some instructions - say number of grains = n, hash (n + 5), n - 7 times with SHA-256.

This is ridiculous and probably a bad idea (think bit-rot) but I've thought that storing BTC on a cassette tape like the old TRS-80 computers could use would be really slick.

http://oldcomputers.net/pics/trs80-i.jpg

Living to age 200 would be kind of cool however that means having to store Bitcoin keys in a replica of the steam powered analytical engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine. Of course with an ample supply of super heated steam one can scald an attacker who tries to steal the Bitcoins.

This is for the most part very true but there is one senario where it is not namely estate planning.  The idea is to make your Bitcoins available to the executor of your estate after one death but not make them avalible to anyone while one is still alive. I have given this some thought to this and came with the following concept. Store the decyption keys on one or more 5.25in floppy disk(s) and place the floppy disks in one or more bank safety deposit boxes. Advise one's executor and family members where the floppies are stored.

Now after ones death the bank safety deposit box(s) are opened and the executor of the estate gets access to the floppy disks.  A yes it will take some effort and time for the executor put together the hardware and software in order to read the old 5.25in floppy disks quite likely a few weeks; however in this senario this is not a real problem since it can take months to probate an estate in any case.

One the other hand if the bank safety deposit box is compromised while one is still alive, then the obsolete 5.25in floppy disks will slow down an attacker long enough to allow the owner of the Bitcoins to empty the wallet before the attacker can read the old floppy disks even though the attacker has the floppy in their possession.  

Now I know your age because of the 5.25in floppy disks and the old 286. You're somewhere between 50 and 200 years old. 

I think it's probably a good idea to encrypt everything.

Here are some places I use as part of a highly redundant Bitcoin backup strategy.

1) 3.5in floppy disks
2) 5.25in floppy disks
3) The hard drives of multiple computers from the most recent to some very old computers including a 30 year old 286, and an old Pentium 1 computer running Windows 3.1. The latter is the only computer running a version of Microsoft Windows that I use for anything related to Bitcoin.
4) Removable USB 3 hard drives
5) 1) + 4) stored in a bank safety deposit box
6) Encrypt the file and store it on multiple email and cloud services in different jurisdictions worldwide.

The idea is to be able to recover the Bticoins under many different scenarious from the mundane hard drive failure to a disaster affecting one's local community or country where not only is one's home wiped out but also one's bank safety deposit box etc.

2) is one of my favorites and is particularly suitable for storing unencrypted private keys. The idea is that if the floppy is stolen one has time to empty the wallet while an attacker is still figuring out how to read the 5.25in floppy disk. To further slow down an attacker  one can hide the floppy containing the Bitcoin keys among many old 5.25in floppy disks forcing an attacker to have to read multiple old floppy disks in order to find the golden needle in the obsolete digital haystack.