Hello anons. Which of these options is safer and more secure for BTC cold storage?
>Option 1: Store half of BTC using Ledger. Store other half of BTC using Trezor.
>Option 2: Store BTC using Electrum 2-of-2 multisig with Ledger and Trezor.
Which option is more secure anons? Is BTC multisig riskier than the BTC protocol itself?
hardware wallets aren’t secure
> Using a hardware wallet
Congrats you made it, the rest is academic.
Is BTC multisig riskier than the BTC protocol itself? Ethereum Parity multisg wallet had a vulnerability and lost everything. Is Electrum BTC multisig safe or it is risky like Parity multisig was?
too much of a brainlet for this shit
It’s dumb. Don’t bother. Your funds are fundamentally safe on an exchange. If they weren’t and something happened on a large scale then all the prices would PLUMMET to zero and crypto would be dead anyway. Yeah there are sob stories of people getting hacked but there are sob stories for wallets to so anyway just chill and be glad that you are going to make it someday. And you’ll be able to cash out faster.
wat
> He doesn't know about Mt. Gox
> He doesn't know about exchange fractional reserves
> He thinks it's regulated like a bank.
Not gonna make it desu
Not your keys not your coins
TELL ME. WHYYY does it matter that my stack is on Binance. If binance actually gets hacked to the point where everyone loses even me, why would anyone value crypto anymore after that? It would be meaningless. We are at equal risk you just bought a fancy USB drive. ooooOOOOoooOOooo who cares.
fundamentally what did you mean by this
>muh sessoned cripto investor accessories
paper wallet only.
I bought one and transferred my linkies today. At first I didnt realize you cant see the tokens on ledger live so I almost had a heart attack. Thought my linkies were gone ;_;
Why is paper wallet better?
make it 2 of 3 you mong and store the 3 keys at 3 separate locations!
also you can use a mnemonic wallet 24 words with 3 groups of 16 at 3 separate locations...
or better commit 6 words to memory and make 3 groups of 12 words (omitting the last 2 lines from write down)
but as this user said hardware wallets are not actually secure cold storeage they are a failure waiting to happen and a potential physical attack vector. hardware wallets are best as hot wallets to protect against hacks / malware.
>TELL ME. WHYYY does it matter that my stack is on MtGox. If MtGox actually gets hacked to the point where everyone loses even me, why would anyone value crypto anymore after that? It would be meaningless. We are at equal risk you just bought a fancy USB drive. ooooOOOOoooOOooo who cares.
Could you elaborate on why hardware wallets are not secure? I was told they were the most secure way for an average user to hold their BTC.
1 it's free.
2 it's more predictably secure (bip38) based on math not gadgets.
3 you can have greater redundancy against theft disasters and accidental loss.
4 you can post/store them online without worry which makes it impossible to confiscate if you have to run.
5 coins distributed over multiple paper wallets gives you more control over exposure and mitigates the astronomically unlikely key collision.
binance has insurance, your thumb drive doesnt. Binance gave back 40 million dollars to the people who got there btc stolen
they are most definitely not. hardware wallets rely on "secure chips" for security which are side channel attack protected and tamper proof. according to the manufacturer but in reality it's fairly easy to dismantle them and read out the eprom where the private keys are either stored unencrypted or at best case (and note this is unproven) protected by the pin. once the eprom is read it's just a matter of time max a day.
jamal won't be able to do this, but he knows your wallet will fetch him a $100 at the fence and the fence will know the guy to call. your coins may be gone before you notice your wallet is stolen.
Thank you for the info. I am not an expert like you but I thought Electrum 2-of-2 multisig with 1 Ledger and 1 Trezor was supposed to mitigate a lot of these risks? Is paper wallet better even for an average user like me who doesn't know how to securely generate entropy for the seed? I thought hardware wallets were supposed to take care of that for you and using 2 different brands with multisig would reduce the brand risk, right?
Ok, so if I am understanding this you are saying the risks with hardware wallets are the physical access risks. That makes sense. But what about remote vulnerabilities, would Electrum 2-of-2 multisig with 2 separate hardware wallet brands be secure against remote attacks?
And the hardware wallets could be held in 2 totally separate physical locations. Then wouldn't this be a safe storage method?
>you are saying the risks with hardware wallets are the physical access risks
correct! think of them as an airgapped pc anyone having access you are fucked if no one has they are great protection from cyber attacks.
oh you mean you want to do multisig with the two hardware wallets? that's a bit overkill, but sure that is secure enough. in this solution your weak point would be the recovery phrases if you don't follow at least
Im convinced that this thread is full of Trezor and ledger salespersons
Thank you. Do you think there is a risk that Electrum BTC multisig could have a security vulnerability? For example Ethereum Parity multisig had a vulnerability and lost everything.
I'd assume BTC multisig would be safer than what happened with parity multisig, but I'd be too scared to do it now.
IMO follow some advice from Andreas Antonoctopus, divide up your stack onto multiple paper wallets
Use a laptop that has never touched and will never touch the internet to generate a private key and write it out on some paper. Don't print, because printers can store what they print, and who knows what kind of malware the new "smart" ones have. - this isn't foolproof because a wallet generator could give you "known" private keys, so be careful where you get it.
Once you have your private key on some paper, try to access the wallet from the piece of paper you wrote on the airgapped laptop, to verify you didn't make any typos.
Create 2 copies (verify both), keep one in a small fireproof lock box, preferably bolted down. Or a hidden compartment that won't be found by someone ripping the place apart. And one in a safety deposit box at a bank.
Or instead of just the plain private key, put together some obscure shit on top so someone can't just copy paste it, this gives you time to recover your seed before someone else if they do steal your locked box. Could underline a single letter/number in every page in a random book, then mark page locations on your piece of paper to spell out your private key. Shit like that, be creative, don't use a caesar cipher lol and just understand that random book with underlines is a security risk too. Different kind of risk because a robber will go for a safe and not sift through random books, but you or someone you know might toss away the book or it might get damaged.
Repeat for as many wallets you want to divide your crypto up. Nothing is risk free, but you can mitigate a lot of the risks.
>trusting a chink
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
>an airgapped pc
an airgapped pc with software you can't really do anything about. better to just set up a linux computer with no access to the internet.
no one owns more than 5k LINK anyway without larping its not worth the price for "piece of mind"
Damn, and here I was thinking hardware wallets were safe and now people are telling me they aren't.
you do know the crypto isnt stored on that device, right you obtuse and stupid fucking kike?
Yes I do know that. But I still want to make sure it is secure.
All this paranoia is so fucking unnecessary. Literally just get an old notebook, put Debian on it and use the official Bitcoin wallet. Problem solved. Unless you install some other shit on it, nothing is ever going to happen.
if you are worried about that i would suggest use paper wallets after all. they have been more thoroughly vetted. but no i don't think that is a danger here.
lol fucking assholes
i would argue these hardware wallets are more compact. which is a pro. but also you actually know what your machine you set up does you can pick and even audit the software yourself. no gimmicky shit.
ETH's "multisig" was a solidity code error written by someone and published to a public library that was shared by everyone. The multisig feature itself was a contract.
BTC's multisig is entirely different an is built into the chain.
Thank you smart user. So do you think Electrum BTC 2-of-2 multisig with 2 different hardware wallet brands is a good and secure cold storage approach?
Nothing is really safe if someone has physical access to it, I use a ledger nano s because it does prevent the more common threat of malware on computers, and it's way more convenient than typing out a private key on an airgapped computer and signing transactions from there. It's a whole lot better than nothing, but it's not risk free.
Also:
>hardware/firmware updates
nope
Thanks, but I am still not sure whether to use multisig or not. I see some saying it's a good idea because it reduces risk of being tied to one hardware wallet brand, but then I see people like you saying you wouldn't use BTC multisig. My concern with not using multisig is, what if Ledger company is somehow storing some of the seeds and could eventually steal the coins? That's why I want to use multisig with 2 separate brands. But then I have the worry about if multisig is not safe. Fuck.
>BTC's multisig is entirely different an is built into the chain.
nope it's also smart contract based bip16 p2sh which means if a client had a bug and created a bad p2sh script you would be fucked.
why not do both? divide up your stack with some on multisig, and some on paper wallets?
What about how the hardware wallet displays the details on its screen, even with multisig. You can verify the address on the hardware wallet screen. Does that eliminate this multisig risk?
Only because I am not sure if I trust myself enough to securely generate the seed for a paper wallet. I am not a security expert. Whereas with a hardware wallet, that is taken care of for me.
no, the balance belongs to the address which is a hash of the public key or in this case the script. even if a script is bad you you can never get your btc out you can see the balance and send coins to this sinkhole.
Ok, what about this then. If I first test using a very small amount of BTC and verify that I can send it. Then can I know that any future receive addresses generated are secure and I will be able to send from them as long as I confirm them directly on the hardware wallet screen? Or is that still not safe?
that's good precaution in theory but generally not recommended to reuse public keys, maybe if you didn't publish the tx just validated it with an other software...
now the other part if the script is not actually secure meaning an attacker can somehow steal your funds without knowing your private keys... there is only one protection to that you have to validate the script as standard multisig with your own eyes.
but this is highly theoretical i'm fairly certain we would know by now if electrum multisig was fucked.
>now the other part if the script is not actually secure meaning an attacker can somehow steal your funds without knowing your private keys
Wow so this can really happen? But I am not smart enough to validate the multsig script myself. Would you recommend I don't use it then? I thought the whole point of the hardware wallet was so I don't have to validate things myself.
Thats why you have a decent safe hidden somewhere in your home.
the point of crypto is to be trustless or as trustless as possible. if you can't code at least you have to trust in the community to be vigilant. that if there is an error or malicious tampering someone will spot it. the more attention a piece of open source software has the more safe it is to use for laymen. you place your trust in that too many people would have to collude or turn a blind eye.
what the fuck. excluding physical "steal", how the fuck is there any risk at all using a hardware wallet to generate the seed, copy paste the public key, and just sending your btc on it when you want to ? and use the phone with an electrum wallet with a small % of your wealth to pay and buy everyday's shit.
what the fuck, why some of you are saying it's not risk free.
read the thread you lazy piece of shit
yes hardware wallets are fine for hot wallets with small amount of crypto.
but for some reason a lot of people are hell bent on misusing them as cold storage. of which they are the least suitable perhaps.
You might be one of the smartest security experts I have ever read when it comes to BTC. In your opinion. do you think my idea of Electrum BTC 2-of-2 multisig with 1 Trezor and 1 Ledger is secure enough for an average user like me?
Nano S or Nano X?
I just want the most secure cold storage I can have as an average user. That is what I am thinking of using multsig for. I know you mention paper wallets for cold storage but I am not confident that I can securely generate the seed for it.
the hot wallet is the electrum wallet in my example, and the cold mega secure wallet is the hardware wallet literrally turned on once ever (2 different wallets)
Is this the new fidget spinner trend? Yikes
i think it's overkill.
for a hot wallet a good password protected wallet like electrum with a hardware multisig is perfectly fine.
for cold storeage it's too costly and elaborate for my taste. you also place too much trust in vendors proprietary hardware and often closed source software.
what i like for cold storage is bip38 paper wallet. while you can (if outstanding vigilance and good practice is not followed) steal funds from a hardware wallet solution from 1 hour to a day tops, a 20+ char password protected bip38 wallet would take 900 quintillion years for the entire hashpower of nicehash pool. and all it costs you is a few hours of your time (in which you learn a great deal) and some paper.
but i get the feeling some people are just attracted to these gadgets because they find them cool as fuck.
i truly can't see any reason to use a hardware wallet as cold storage. sorry. they are excellent protection against cyber attacks but present a single point of failure and physical attack vector.
>single point of failure
That's why I bring up 2-of-2 multisig with 2 different hardware wallet brands.
>physical attack vector
Doesn't this exist with paper wallets just the same way if you keep your seed info on paper? Someone could get the physical paper just like they could get the physical hardware wallets.
you are right and based, these fags are retarded
Tattoo the key on your dick. If any threats arise, you can beat them by calling them faggots for looking at your dick.
Super mode: Tattoo it on your dog's knot.
1) your paper wallet is generated from someone who wrote a piece of code, maybe some javascript; what tells you that the algorithm is not carefully crafted to give you a particular seed/private key that the creator of the algorithm could steal, because he made a very elaborate algorithm that seems cryptographically secure. isn't that code on github ? the code looks complex enough to put some very elaborate malicious element that can never be spot by any expert programmer in the history of mankind.
2) your paper waller is generated and printed from an offline pc. what tells you that there isn't some kind of malicious software lying somewhere in a firmware/SMM that is ready to send some particular bits of data to an unknown entity as soon as you finish reformating your pc and then plug it back online ?
also for it to be secure, you would need to destroy your printer if it fails (and it will given enough years). how practical is that?
that's assuming no one will ever connect your pc, if you have a family which is a very acceptable way of living, someone could very well plug your pc online once, given enough time. much less secure than an hardware wallet turned on once, no ?
>That's why I bring up 2-of-2 multisig with 2 different hardware wallet brands.
that's how you get 2 single points of failures
don't see it as a great improvement.
>Doesn't this exist with paper wallets just the same way if you keep your seed info on paper? Someone could get the physical paper just like they could get the physical hardware wallets.
if unencrypted sure. that would be awful bad practice.
>your paper wallet is generated from someone who wrote a piece of code
You can generate private keys using generic bash commands like openssl. I trust openssl
>printed from an offline pc
copied by hand and pen, try again
based
>that's how you get 2 single points of failures
I don't see why these should be considered single points of failure. Let's say you have a 2-of-2 multisig with 1 Ledger and 1 Trezor. If it turns out Ledger company has been storing some of the seeds, they still can't steal your coins because they wouldn't have the Trezor seed. If it turns out there is a vulnerability in the Trezor random seed generation, they still can't steal your coins because they wouldn't have the Ledger seed.
yes all valid points but come on the likelihood...
the source for these wallets is in github you can see the version history, thousand of people audited the code you can look into it yourself. it evidently uses good random pool for generating the keys involving heavy user input which is absolutely non deterministic.
i don't see the same transparency with hardware wallets. i think the last code change was in 2016 for bitcoinpaperwallet something like that. you can validate the download with sha256 hash or pgp signature.
but in the end nothing is 100% if you can't code and don't have shittons of patience.
as for the pc being online you boot a live os offline for generating the wallets after reboot all information is lost. there is no risk, in fact i don't even have a separate computer for that just but a mint linux from usb.
once the wallets are generated and the computer is rebooted the only way to access the bitcoins is knowing/breaking the passphrase.
yes in that regard they are better than 1 i meant literally the two hardware are two single points of failure. if the devices fail you no longer available from trusted source or they get stolen you can't access your coin. you try to circumvent this weakness by the seed backups but those are just vulnerabilities again.
i have been thinking a lot how i would use hardware wallets and it always come back to why would i?
>openssl ecparam -name secp256k1 -genkey -noout | openssl ec -text -noout 2> /dev/null | grep priv -A 3 | tail -n -3 | tr -d '\n[:space:]:' | sed 's/^00//'
Eth private key owner is you, congrats
>i have been thinking a lot how i would use hardware wallets and it always come back to why would i?
Maybe you wouldn't but you are clearly a security expert. Isn't hardware wallet a good and secure solution for an average user who cannot safely create and use a paper wallet?
Another idea: Wear a fake pacemaker with the key in a chip inside. Lulls your adversary into a false sense of superiority and really...who is going to check your pacemaker?
this is getting very complicated, it's fine to trust openssl, but apparently you're using an elliptic curve digital signature algorithm, and if you don't implement the algorithm properly, then someone could one day solve the whole thing and find your private keys. surely you have to type some code or commands to get your private key. how do you know the right ones? you need to be an expert in your field, because if you repeat what someone else tells you on the internet, you could again lose everything. even if that thing was coming from someone trustworthy. also that person could NOT be an expert and make his advise unsafe.
and to say that your script is secure, you have to be an expert to begin with. you surely knows how complex it can be, it's not just math, it's deep knowledge of tools created by other person, which can very well be unsecured.
a hardware wallet has a financial incentive to NOT steal the private key and to actually make sure the risk is as close to 0 as possible. better than what 99.999% of the population can do.
you only addressed one small element of point 2, a detail
Can you make a bip38 paper wallet for ethereum? If you could maybe tell me how to safely generate an eth/btc paper wallet that would be really nice desu. I know there's something related to a vm machine or downloading mew offline but am brainlet
You seem to know your stuff when it comes to security. Do you think Electrum BTC 2-of-2 multisig with 1 Ledger and 1 Trezor is a secure long-term storage solution?
>if you don't implement the algorithm properly
>not trusting openssl implementation of the algorithm which output is then cleaned using generic text processing tools
This is many orders of magnitude more trustworthy than any hardware wallet.
I still don't see how a cold storage hardware wallet turned on once has a higher risk than what I've described; remember that the HW is a company with a financial incentive to be secure. not the case for an open source code. I trust open source code, except for this very, very precise case where I consider open source not way better for mankind.
you boot a live os offline, still your pc component are used and those can host some malware. no way really to know you're infected. that's getting very technical. if you plug your pc back online after generating the key there's a risk. can't see why a HW is less secured again...you can easily screw up with the generation step. it's a code that comes from someone else.
>github.com
This bip38 thing is first class. Thank you to the user that mentioned it.
debatable again, to begin with openssl had countless vulnerabilities, and still what you're typing might be the direct cause of your future loss if you're not an expert.
a HW from a company must provide a secure tool or it loses a lot of money, millions or more. use a HW, turn it once, write the seed, copy paste the public key, done. why is it not the most balance and secure solution we have? it is
sorry I'm not an expert, can't answer
>not trusting raw generic linux and open ssl with legions of the most brainy individuals looking for flaws in because fo literally billions, if not trillions of $ at stake
>trusting something a single company does solely for crypto, therefore limiting exposure to security professionals.
>still your pc component are used and those can host some malware. no way really to know you're infected.
the live os does not attach any drive in a writable way. there are no persistent hardware stores big enough to record your actions and memory or just specifically the keys anywhere else on an unpowered computer. physics of computing don't let you hide something like that unnoticed. i would argue you need a specifically prepared honey pot hardware for this to be a problem no commercial device gonna be a problem.
don't overthink security if you get into what if games and start to give your opponent unreasonable powers you will always "lose". just follow good standard practice that has stood the test of time.
dunno man, i would assume it has an equivalent i only researched btc really. and no i'm not a security expert more like a programmer that is interested in cryptography as a hobby.
Isn't it really hard for a brainlet to safely send from a paper wallet?
yes what i like about it is we have pretty good idea to how long it take to try a scrypt password and what hardware requirement it has. this allows you to plan your security in terms of eons.
I have a question about the ledger, I'm not really sure how the recovery phase works in getting your wallet back. Say I put some coin in my wallet that isn't on the vanilla list of coins, do I have to get a new phrase every time I put a different coin on or are all new wallets generated by the initial phrase? Sorry about the brainlet question hard to know without actually having one in my hands yet.
yeah it's not exactly user friendly as of yet. first you have to decrypt the private key, and import it into a wallet. this operation requires a trusted computer. but i bet you in 2 years you will be able to swipe bip38 wallets straight to any exchange and decrypt them there.
>HW from a company must provide a secure tool or it loses a lot of money,
Enjoy your "firmware updates". Given that a company provides them, rest assured that a ill intentioned individual will have a lot of time to destroy shit. With flaws in openssl, those are fixed instantly and because you used a generic tool, nobody will assume you created an eth private key with it making any problems of that nature much more less severe
Unfortunately, didn't found a brainlet friendly way
All coins are stored under you generated 24 word seed.
If if every ledger in the world spontaneously combusted, if you have your 24 seed words you're good to go.
support.ledger.com
It’s rare that I’m serious on here but if you are talking about plus $10k of crypto. Get more than two devices and try not to monoculture it. Also don’t keep them all in spot along with the paper keys etc. Buy a fire safe. Put one in safety deposits box. Leave one at work. Have one in your bug out bag. Leave one at parents (unless you live with them then some other relative that you sort of trust) etc etc
it's not about that mainly, it's about not screwing up yourself. you will never naturally figure out what to type in bash. a mistake and you lose everything given enough time. it's not acceptable to assume being an expert. maybe you're one and you have an edge. others could use a HW that will, like every other things never have 0 risks. divide your wealth into 2-3 different tools like a ledger+a trezor+an electrum wallet and your risk of losing your wealth is realistically 0. fine you can make that paper wallet from bitcoinpaperwallet.com if you want but my point is no method is much secured than another. there's 2 best method : paper wallet and hardware wallet, equally secured, one of them is much more practical is suitable for us.
you can still have your seed stolen if the provider of the generating tool has a problem somewhere, either a malicious person or a very technical security flaw. comparable to a HW failure. so almost 0 chance of happening anyway. but it's not practical unlike the HW.
Also if you get the same of the same device make sure to get different colors so you don’t lock yourself out for a few hours because they all look the same.
Oh yeah... Fucking make a passphrase key. Even if they have access to hardware hack the device the non written word makes it harder.
okay but why would you ever want to update your HW? you just need to generate the keys once in your life, you can destroy it after if you want. but it would not be very practical if you want to move your funds. also why would you want to move your fund from cold storage. isn't that a problem with your money management to begin with?
do not ever write down all 24 words to the same piece of paper metal whatever! see 6 words is pretty good security. you can think of a word as 10^5 security, 6 words is 10^30. 8 words is 10^40.
so if an attacker gets a single group, you are still pretty comfy. altho i would recommend moving your funds to a new seed just in case as soon as you safely can after a break in.