Withdrawing from paper - best practice

Cricktor

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Quote from: NotATether on October 03, 2024, 06:52:06 AM

Like this one site that starts with 'bitcoinpaperwallet'...

Yes, I had exactly this malicious website in mind. I still have a loaded paperwallet from the good'ol times when the domain address and website was owned and operated by Canton Becker. His paperwallet generator code was fine and is still available on Github (it's mostly based on code from bitaddress.org).

But this once reputed website domain was sold by Canton Becker (IIRC somewhere in 2018) and ended up in a scumbag scammer's hands. I checked the malicious website code and was able to prove that it uses obfuscated predetermined entropy which is know to the scammer. You will lose your funds even when you use the code offline because the scammer has given you rigged and predetermined entropy for the paperwallets you create. You don't get (pseudo)random keys, you get scammer-knows-all keys.

Only trust a paperwallet generator with open-source code that you've checked and verified to be clean. No exception!

Quote from: NotATether on October 03, 2024, 06:52:06 AM

I hope no one still uses it.

I hope so, too. Otherwise they will learn it the hard way.

What puzzles me the most: why is this scammer still operating his scam meanwhile for years. There are numerous victims whose paperwallets have been drained. Still, the site is online and operating their dirty deeds 'til today. This is shocking.

tbct_mt2

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Quote from: Z-tight on October 03, 2024, 06:04:35 AM

I don't think i understand your recommendation here, how do you cut and burn the private key of your paper wallet, how to you then recover your paper wallet or spend from it, when you do not have the associated private key to the wallet.

The below quote explains it.

Quote from: tbct_mt2 on October 02, 2024, 10:20:37 PM

But you will need a full paper with a public address, QR code and private key too. If your approach is against private key information, for public use I agree, you can have two papers for two different purposes, one for back up, and one for bringing it around for using in public places.

If you want to use only the public address, the QR code in public places and want to hide the private key at home, you can print two paper pieces, one is full details with private key, public address, QR code that will be stored at home; another paper is only with public address and QR code.

Quote from: Z-tight on October 03, 2024, 06:04:35 AM

It is not even recommended to carry your paper wallet along with you to public places, especially when the wallet address is holding a large amount of your coins, it is too risky in my opinion.

Is it what I advised, too?

Quote from: tbct_mt2 on October 02, 2024, 10:20:37 PM

I want to say one thing, the wallet you want to bring around, even just with a public address, needs to be a small wallet. You don't want to leak your main wallet's public address too much.

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Quote from: Cricktor on October 01, 2024, 12:54:23 PM

Not to mention actively scamming websites that offer rigged paperwallet generators that will make you loose your funds even when you use the generator offline!

Like this one site that starts with 'bitcoinpaperwallet'...

I hope no one still uses it.

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Electrum is great to use. About its safety is that electrum is indeed safe to use but the level of security your wallet will have depends on you. The best thing you should do is to buy hardware wallet which is much more safer than other wallet especially paper wallet. As you can read in other post you can also do it to make your wallet like electrum and it is also the most recommended wallet by many people especially from this forum which many people are using including me.

Z-tight

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Quote from: tbct_mt2 on October 02, 2024, 10:20:37 PM

You can customize things, but see how paper wallets are defined: a combination of private key and public address. If you want to customize it, you can simply cut the paper, and burn the piece of private key, if you want.

I don't think i understand your recommendation here, how do you cut and burn the private key of your paper wallet, how to you then recover your paper wallet or spend from it, when you do not have the associated private key to the wallet.

Quote from: tbct_mt2 on October 02, 2024, 10:20:37 PM

you can have two papers for two different purposes, one for back up, and one for bringing it around for using in public places.

It is not even recommended to carry your paper wallet along with you to public places, especially when the wallet address is holding a large amount of your coins, it is too risky in my opinion.

tbct_mt2

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Quote from: Cricktor on October 02, 2024, 04:10:32 PM

Well, we may need to clarify what we mean by a paperwallet. For me and probably commonly accepted it is a piece of paper which has a public address for loading and verification and a private key for spending on it (usually also with QR codes for ease of input of one or the other), something like this (do not use publicly disclosed private keys as here or you will loose your coins):

(created as example with https://www.bitaddress.org; never create paperwallets on an online website!)

I don't see mnemonic recovery words on a piece of paper as a paperwallet. That's a recovery words backup for a deterministic wallet which defines a plethora of public addresses and private keys for a given derivation path.

What is a Bitcoin paper wallet?
Paper wallets
You can customize things, but see how paper wallets are defined: a combination of private key and public address. If you want to customize it, you can simply cut the paper, and burn the piece of private key, if you want.

But you will need a full paper with a public address, QR code and private key too. If your approach is against private key information, for public use I agree, you can have two papers for two different purposes, one for back up, and one for bringing it around for using in public places.

I want to say one thing, the wallet you want to bring around, even just with a public address, needs to be a small wallet. You don't want to leak your main wallet's public address too much.

Known physical Bitcoin attacks.

Quote

In my opinion paperwallets are outdated and shouldn't be used anymore. There's not much wrong with them if you understand their limitations and pitfalls. I just don't see a need for them in current times. YMMV.

Paper wallets are not recommended.

Bitcoin Q&A: Using paper wallets
For the last time: Stop using paper wallets

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Quote from: Synchronice on October 02, 2024, 03:15:23 PM

I often recommend memorizing but only if you are 100% sure that you'll remember and do follow steps of very frequent repetition.

I don't know why you recommend memorizing seed phrases, but that should never be an option in my honest opinion, you can never be 100% sure that you will remember it, nor in the correct order, you also do not control if you'll fall ill or have a head injury or anything of that sort. Seed phrase should be backed up on paper or on steel plates, like you also said, but memorizing it should not be part of your recommendation.

Cricktor

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Well, we may need to clarify what we mean by a paperwallet. For me and probably commonly accepted it is a piece of paper which has a public address for loading and verification and a private key for spending on it (usually also with QR codes for ease of input of one or the other), something like this (do not use publicly disclosed private keys as here or you will loose your coins):

(created as example with https://www.bitaddress.org; never create paperwallets on an online website!)

I don't see mnemonic recovery words on a piece of paper as a paperwallet. That's a recovery words backup for a deterministic wallet which defines a plethora of public addresses and private keys for a given derivation path.

In my opinion paperwallets are outdated and shouldn't be used anymore. There's not much wrong with them if you understand their limitations and pitfalls. I just don't see a need for them in current times. YMMV.

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Quote from: Cricktor on October 01, 2024, 12:54:23 PM

Quote from: Floxynice on October 01, 2024, 12:44:22 PM

Even though many consider the paper wallet as one of the most secured way of storing bitcoins, there are quite lots of precautionary measures to be taken to secure our bitcoins in paper wallets. I don't think this paper wallet is ideal for frequent transactions.

Really safe creation of paperwallets isn't that easy, now that almost all modern printers like to call home and are network connected. Most paperwallet generators are Javascript based and the security of Javascript-based secure entropy is somewhat disputed. Not to mention actively scamming websites that offer rigged paperwallet generators that will make you loose your funds even when you use the generator offline!

Paperwallets also have limitations and usually reveal the private key easily to an intruder if found by those who shouldn't have gotten access to them.

Just get a decent good hardware wallet and be good with it. (I'm not speaking of Ledger hardware crap.)

Isn't paper wallet basically a short term of the process that involves creating a Bitcoin wallet and writing them down somewhere? On a paper, or a note or etc.
It's recommended approach to generate a Bitcoin wallet on a computer that doesn't have an internet access (air-gapped device in the best case), use Tails, Electrum and write down seed phrases on paper or metal plates or whatever is the best option for the user. I often recommend memorizing but only if you are 100% sure that you'll remember and do follow steps of very frequent repetition.
Or just get an air-gapped hardware wallet like you said. I would recommend ColdCard and The Passport Foundation.

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Quote from: PomskyFluff on September 29, 2024, 04:59:54 PM

Hi everybody, hope you're all well.

Apologies for starting a new topic, but I'd appreciate your thoughts/advice on the best and safest way to withdraw from paper wallet. Is Electrum wallet the way to go?

Thanks in advance.

I do not have much idea about wallets though but what I do use is electrum wallet and I have read here many comments about it which indicates that the electrum wallet is kind of safe to use and perfectly the best option one could think of using to save their assets. Maybe you should give it a try and see how it works for you. Do well to download from the right source which is google play store so that you do not put yourself in a problem of exposing your assets to hackers.

Cricktor

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Quote from: Floxynice on October 01, 2024, 12:44:22 PM

Even though many consider the paper wallet as one of the most secured way of storing bitcoins, there are quite lots of precautionary measures to be taken to secure our bitcoins in paper wallets. I don't think this paper wallet is ideal for frequent transactions.

Really safe creation of paperwallets isn't that easy, now that almost all modern printers like to call home and are network connected. Most paperwallet generators are Javascript based and the security of Javascript-based secure entropy is somewhat disputed. Not to mention actively scamming websites that offer rigged paperwallet generators that will make you loose your funds even when you use the generator offline!

Paperwallets also have limitations and usually reveal the private key easily to an intruder if found by those who shouldn't have gotten access to them.

Just get a decent good hardware wallet and be good with it. (I'm not speaking of Ledger hardware crap.)

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Quote from: ABCbits on October 01, 2024, 03:50:44 AM

Quote from: PomskyFluff on September 29, 2024, 04:59:54 PM

Apologies for starting a new topic, but I'd appreciate your thoughts/advice on the best and safest way to withdraw from paper wallet. Is Electrum wallet the way to go?

Electrum is decent choice and it's been around for more than a decade. If you use the desktop version, you may need to enter the private key using keyboard unless your device also have camera/webcam to scan the QR code on the paper wallet. And aside from what other member said, make sure the device you use to install Electrum is clean (not hacked/infected with malware).

Even though many consider the paper wallet as one of the most secured way of storing bitcoins, there are quite lots of precautionary measures to be taken to secure our bitcoins in paper wallets. I don't think this paper wallet is ideal for frequent transactions.

Cricktor

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Quote from: PomskyFluff on September 29, 2024, 04:59:54 PM

~~~

Why posted in Bitcoin Discussion, I feel it fits much better in Bitcoin Technical Support?

Electrum is a well suited light wallet that has a good reputation. It can also be used in safer operating modes, like with a hot (online) watch-only wallet part and a secure offline cold wallet part, where the cold part is only used for signing.

You should understand what it means and how to operate those two hot and cold wallet parts. If you don't I highly recommend to brush up your knowledge!

When you ask for a safe withdrawal of a paperwallet, I would avoid to touch the private key of the paperwallet with an online device. Sure, I would make a distinction if the paperwallet only holds a rather low amount of coins/value.

To play it safe:

install Electrum only from https://electrum.org; verify your download, never omit this step
create a new watch-only wallet with the public address of the paperwallet on an online device; I recommend not to use your daily computer, better a second (used) one with Linux as OS, you can also simply boot a live Linux, but data persistence is a bit more tricky with those
create a spending transaction withdrawing all UTXOs from the paperwallet (if there are more than one UTXO) to a public address that you control (carefully verify the correctness of the copy/pasted destination address); pay attention to a reasonable amount for the transaction fee (have a look at mempool.space for currently needed transaction fees; with Electrum your transaction have RBF enabled anyway) --- remember to understand how Bitcoin transactions work, a transaction input is spent as a whole; if you want to spend only part of it, the excess has to go to another output (can be the same as the input address) or it will become transaction fee!
as you can't sign the transaction in a watch-only wallet, export it as PSBT file to a thumbdrive
for the cold wallet you need an offline device that can't ever connect to the internet, best not even accidently; best is a dedicated offline device for this, but it can be accomplished e.g. with booting TAILS without a network connection; I don't go into details here further, there are topics with all the details for this
create a new cold wallet by importing the private key of the paperwallet on your "cold" offline device
import the PSBT for the spending transaction, verify it carefully and if all is good, sign it and export the signed transaction
I would recommend not to destroy the private key of the paperwallet even when you have withdrawn it fully; you never know...
now back on the hot online wallet import the signed transaction, check it a last time and broadcast it

If you're not familiar with certain steps, you can ask or do your own research. I'm not going to spoon-feed you.

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Quote from: PomskyFluff on September 29, 2024, 04:59:54 PM

Hi everybody, hope you're all well.

Apologies for starting a new topic, but I'd appreciate your thoughts/advice on the best and safest way to withdraw from paper wallet. Is Electrum wallet the way to go?

Thanks in advance.

If you understand very well, paper wallets are recommendations of cold storage wallets with highly securities strickly to keep your wallet Privacies offline from online scammers.
Electrum is such a good one for you.

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Electrum is widely used here, and as you can see, it’s highly recommended. It’s great because it’s simple to use and fast. Just make sure that when you download the application, you double-check the URL to ensure you’re on the official website - better to avoid getting phished, you know.

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Quote from: PomskyFluff on September 29, 2024, 04:59:54 PM

Apologies for starting a new topic, but I'd appreciate your thoughts/advice on the best and safest way to withdraw from paper wallet. Is Electrum wallet the way to go?

Electrum is decent choice and it's been around for more than a decade. If you use the desktop version, you may need to enter the private key using keyboard unless your device also have camera/webcam to scan the QR code on the paper wallet. And aside from what other member said, make sure the device you use to install Electrum is clean (not hacked/infected with malware).

_act_

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Quote from: PrivacyG on October 01, 2024, 03:10:48 AM

Electrum is infinitely Safer and better than it, although it is a little bit less convenient to use. Choose Safety over convenience all the time!

Electrum is very convenient to use. It has been one of my bitcoin wallet ever this I know about this forum and I see it not different but better than many other bitcoin wallets. There are other wallet that can be used like Bluewallet and Unstoppable but for private key Import, I have preferred to use Electrum for it and it works excellently.

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Quote from: ChiBitCTy on September 30, 2024, 03:27:19 PM

I’ve always used either Coinomi or ballet wallets for removing coins from paper wallets.

Coinomi was a great Wallet until they turned Closed Source. Now I would never recommend it to anybody again. You never know what is behind that code. Electrum is infinitely Safer and better than it, although it is a little bit less convenient to use. Choose Safety over convenience all the time!

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Electrum wallet is a good wallet, and also one of the oldest wallets, so I would recommend that you make use of it. But one other thing other comments haven't mentioned is that you should be careful when downloading the wallet and make sure that you have downloaded the right wallet from the right source.

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Quote from: bitmover on September 30, 2024, 04:17:32 PM

Just remember that once you send your coins to electrum , you shouldn't use that paper wallet anymore and their private keys were exposed.

You will need to create another paper wallet and send uour remnaining bitcoins to it.

When a Bitcoin holder moves bitcoins from one wallet to another wallet (two different wallet brands), it is vital to move fund from an old wallet to a new wallet. Avoid importing private key from one wallet brand to another because if the wallet brand used to create that wallet is bad, has backdoors, compromised, the second wallet brand can not save your fund.

I agree with your advice to abandon the initial wallet (paper wallet in this example), and move it to a new wallet (in this example, Electrum wallet).

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I strongly advice that you buy a paper wallet.

It is hardware wallet, not paper wallet?

For the Last Time, Stop Using Paper Wallets!

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Quote from: PomskyFluff on September 29, 2024, 04:59:54 PM

Hi everybody, hope you're all well.

Apologies for starting a new topic, but I'd appreciate your thoughts/advice on the best and safest way to withdraw from paper wallet. Is Electrum wallet the way to go?

Thanks in advance.

Just remember that once you send your coins to electrum , you shouldn't use that paper wallet anymore and their private keys were exposed.

You will need to create another paper wallet and send uour remnaining bitcoins to it.

I strongly advice that you buy a paper wallet.

ChiBitCTy

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I’ve always used either Coinomi or ballet wallets for removing coins from paper wallets. It’s pretty easy overall man’s doesn’t take a lot of practice to learn how. I would i recommend watching maybe some how to videos before doing so just to be safe and to make sure you know what you’re doing. Just be careful and you should be finez

avikz

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Quote from: PomskyFluff on September 29, 2024, 04:59:54 PM

Hi everybody, hope you're all well.

Apologies for starting a new topic, but I'd appreciate your thoughts/advice on the best and safest way to withdraw from paper wallet. Is Electrum wallet the way to go?

Thanks in advance.

Electrum is widely used by community members. I am sure a lot of people will recommend this wallet. But no one can tell you which one is the safest. It if you run out of luck, all wallets can be hacked by the hideous scammers.

Blackboss has shared some nice resources which are useful. Also ensure to download Electrum from the official website only. You also will need to keep it up to date as and when a new version releases.

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Quote from: PomskyFluff on September 29, 2024, 04:59:54 PM

Apologies for starting a new topic, but I'd appreciate your thoughts/advice on the best and safest way to withdraw from paper wallet. Is Electrum wallet the way to go?

The guide shared by BitMaxz can help OP to make a transaction from that paper wallet with Electrum. After that, OP have to consider to stop using that paper wallet because it's unsafe.

Switching to Electrum wallet is good way to go, as it is a SPV wallet and does not require big storage space like Bitcoin Core. OP can create a new wallet with Electrum (don't import the private key from paper wallet to Electrum, because if there were backdoors in the paper wallet creating tool, OP can lose coins later).

Make sure to back up Electrum wallet, test it before funding it with bitcoin from the paper wallet.

How to back up a seed phrase?
[GUIDE] How to Safely Download and Verify Electrum
The paranoid user's security guide for using Electrum safely.

BitMaxz

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It is much safer to spend your BTC from your paper wallet on Electrum in an offline transaction if you know the public address of your wallet. You need two devices here to make sure you can make the safer way of spending your funds from your paper wallet.

Take note it is safer than sweeping it to an online device.

If you want a guide, you can check this one "How to spend from an offline paper wallet using Electrum"

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I don't know about safest but I know Electrum is quite save.
If you transferring from a paper wallet, you can choose to do so by installing the Electrum in a device that is not connected to the internet to improve security.
After, sweep rather than importing since sweeping transfers the balance to another address in the electrum wallet to prevent a situation where the Paper wallet get compromised.
https://bitcoinelectrum.com/sweeping-your-private-keys-into-electrum/#:~:text=To
Steps to sweep in Electrum.

Charles-Tim

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You can still make the paper wallet a cold wallet and spend from it. Read this guide: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html

If it is a small amount of money, you can just import the private key on an online Electrum wallet. If it is huge amount, use the guide above.

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Quote from: PomskyFluff on September 29, 2024, 04:59:54 PM

Hi everybody, hope you're all well.

Apologies for starting a new topic, but I'd appreciate your thoughts/advice on the best and safest way to withdraw from paper wallet. Is Electrum wallet the way to go?

Thanks in advance.

Electrum is great. Many of us here on Bitcointalk use it. Where do you want to withdraw it? Into a different wallet?

Make sure to download it from the official website and not some third party sources.

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Hi everybody, hope you're all well.

Apologies for starting a new topic, but I'd appreciate your thoughts/advice on the best and safest way to withdraw from paper wallet. Is Electrum wallet the way to go?

Thanks in advance.

Topic: Withdrawing from paper - best practice (Read 355 times)