I was getting worried about my wallet’s security and I decide to search around what the best practises are. I came across paper wallets!
I created one and sent money to it. I checked on live.reddcoin.com that the coins were sent over and then I hid my paper wallet. That’s amazing! Crypto-currency amazes me more and more every day!
I was curious though… are there any drawbacks with paper wallets that I am not seeing? (I was offline when I was making the wallet.) Just wanted to verify that before I make a big coins transfer there.
stefioan The only real drawback is if you loose it or someone steals it. since it is a tangible item someone could physically steal it from you. Another is if it gets destroyed by some means. Paper wallets are a long term storage and not easy or quick to spend from. Plus with your coins in a paper wallet it wont stake the coins since its an offline wallet.
A good practice with paper wallets is to have it stored somewhere safe like a bank deposit box or a safe of some kind. But then again you could do the same with a digital backup of your wallet on a thumb drive just as easily.
The coins were not really sent to the paper it self, but to the address that is associated with the paper wallet.
Paper wallets (or better: offline wallets) are in my opinion the most secure way to store your coins, but your question is important since they are not necessarily bullet proof.
First off, it´s important to know how you created the paper wallet. There are paper wallet generators on the web and there is not necessarily a guarantee that they don´t track the private key.
Secondly, the computer with which you created the private key may be compromised.
And 3, your house may burn down
These are not the “normal” cases but it is important to know and educate yourself about them. If you are paranoid then do the following:
Set up a fresh system (e.g. Ubuntu or a ReddPi) and connect it to the internet
Compile the Reddcoin client
Create an address and export the private key.
I encrypted my keys for cold storage and saved it to two high quality USB devices. I think that´s pretty paranoid given that the amount is kinda small, but that´s the way how you can do it if you want to be save We are our own bank.
iisurge sure, the general problem is that if you are not tech-savvy you won´t really be able to tell whether the programm is compromised. I think the best way is to do it via the wallet. It would be cool if there was a one-click paper wallet generator in the GUI. Would save a lot of hassle to dummies like me.
artiscience I used vanitygen for creating the address and I turned of my internet connection at the time of creation. Thanks for mentioning ReddPi. I would love to create one but I have no knowledge about it.
artiscience I don’t trust paper wallet makers either. I took the source of what I think is the “most trusted” bitcoin one and forked it for redd (as simple as changing a few numbers). I think in-wallet paper wallet generation is a great idea.
We are our own bank.