PC

downtherabbit

So creating a Linux partition is the safest way? Or a dedicated air-gapped PC/Laptop that is never connected to the internet? I am genuinly curious because if exchanges and hardware wallets aren't the best, what is the best!?!?

10kpizza

If people had put their coldcard or ledger in a 2-of-2 with an ordinary online malware-ridden windows PC, they would still have their money today. Multisig this way is great for protecting against supply chain attacks, RNG attacks, bugs, zerodays. It's the same physical security as having a single sig but vastly better cybersecurity. A big benefit that nobody talks about is with 2-of-2 (or any N-of-N) you dont need to store the descriptor. The 2 seeds alone are enough. Yes there are ways to backup the descriptor but they all suck. With 2-of-2 you only need to backup the two seeds and nothing else. How many people even realize that to recover a 2-of-3 you need two seeds and **the third pubkey**. If you cant get the third pubkey you've lost it all. You can have a 2of2 with one key on a hardware wallet or airgapped laptop running Electrum or Sparrow, and the other key on an online wallet on your main desktop or phone.

Gears6

> Screen recorder or keylogger spyware on a PC or a smartphone is not a MITM either. Keylogger would be if that communication was encrypted and intended to be secret. A screen recorder isn't a man in the middle, because that's intentional by design that the content be shown on the screen. Anyhow, you're trying to make a distinction when there's none necessary.

SteveW928

Your key shouldn't be on your PC... that's the whole point of a hardware wallet. The AI shouldn't have any ability to get the key. But, yeah, the Ledger attack was unique, in that hardware was added to steal the key right from the screen that displays it to you, and then transmit it. AI can't do that, but specially designed hardware embedded in a tampered device can. So, where you buy from matters, as you greatly increase/decrease the risk of a compromised device.

Ketheres

Every form of energy degrades into heat at some point, sound and light included. And computing isn't work per se, it's still just turning power into heat in a way we can use to calculate stuff wicked fast. But a PC sucking up a kilowatt of power to do its thing is still effectively a 1 kilowatt space heater with computing power.

barnz3000

A heatpump is approximately 5 times more efficient than a bar heater, or some PC hardware..

Cilantropologist

I thought matx is what's considered as a full size PC 😂

Zestyclose-Turn-3576

I saw a secretary using a Silicon Graphics PC for ordinary secretarial work at USAF Materiel Commabnd many years ago – had to use that budget up!

Cilantropologist

There's standards for form factor. Smaller form factors have gained popularity over years but a bit of extra size is the price you pay for compatibility. There's also plenty of actual mini desktops available. I have Asus NUC as my home office PC.

MelangeBot

I have said this for over 10 years now. Rather then bitcoin meaning with heat as the byproduct it makes much more sense to heat with bitcoin as the the byproduct. If I had enough capital I would design a very effecient warm water boiler for constumers and then sell it a little bit under the price of my main competitor, even if that meant not making a profit on it. Why? Because my boilers would heat by mining bitcoin, after all a PC that draws a 100W also outputs a 100W of heat. Exactly the same as a 100W heather. And my boilers would have a 4G chip in them to connect to the miningpools. That way I am mining Bitcoin for free on the electricity of the people that bought my boilers .... but without stealing from them! Every time somebody buys a new boiler, I get more hardware. Ofcourse the only flaw in this plan is the price of the Bitcoin mining chips. But the day will come where the hardware no longer depreciates so much and new Bitcoin miner is good for 10 years. Then such a boiler/mining plan becomes feasible, if 2 years of Bitcoin mining is good for paying of all the hardware that last 10 years. Regardless, with how much electric heating we do in the world ... you know all the buildings in winter , and the outdoor swimming pools, etc etc. With all the heating there is really no need to waste 1% of the world's electricitry on Bitcoin mining. We can just heat and mine Bitcoin as the byproduct instead of the other way around.

Malavero

No. Those two are really all you need. Who cares what the UI looks like? No hardware wallet is better than these. These two are more versatile, reliable, and secure than any hardware wallet. As far as I know, no hardware wallet offers the same capabilities—such as Lightning Network management, multisig, UTXO management, fee control, etc.—as these two. You want "hardware"? Then turn it into hardware. Find an old PC you have—kept completely offline—and use Sparrow; then you can have Electrum on your regular PC just for withdrawals. No, you don't need to buy a hardware wallet.

MUFNyourteam

I was agreeing with that fact, what you do with a PC/Crypto Miner is up to you.

Correct-Potential-15

i coded my own in python and use that PC only as a wallet

MUFNyourteam

A heat pump will always be more efficient per watt. (Within its operating temperature range) But if you have a resistive space heater, that you turn on to heat a room that gets cold. It is just as efficient. This is true for most computers. LTT did a video forever ago on this exact topic. Using a PC as a space heater.

10kpizza

A big benefit that nobody talks about is with 2-of-2 (or any N-of-N) you dont need to store the descriptor. The 2 seeds alone are enough. How many people realize that to recover a 2-of-3 you need two seeds and \*all three pubkeys\*. If you cant get the third pubkey you've lost it all. If people had put their coldcard or ledger in a 2-of-2 with an ordinary online windows PC, they would still have their money today. Multisig this way is great for protecting against supply chain attacks, RNG attacks, bugs, zerodays. You can have redundancy without 2of3. I have some hard disk backups of my old photos, and they are redundant backups (the same photos copied on all the different hard disks). The hard disks are in multiple locations. What's not redundant here?

DimensionPrize8168

When I first joined the army in 2003, I was “stealing” trashed RAM, CPUs, and GPUs from PC the government didn’t want anymore. Which at the time, was the equivalent of throwing away Nvidia 5060/5070 GPUs. Like why? Why are these in the dumpster?

Drassazuru

Ah, another person fucking up the PC market to make. A quick buck.

ConstantinopleFett

3 year old software isn't safe enough, you should write your own wallet software on the 2007 PC, then you can be sure it's not malicious.

TheresNoSecondBest

>Ledger also has backdoors to extract your seed which most people aren’t aware of. Ledger is just a fancy hot wallet, marketed at newcomers because they can load in thousands of different shitcoins. NOT FULLY OPEN SOURCE. >Cold card had bad gen. That was a horrible duck up, thanks to the fact Coinkite didn't want anyone else using their software. Should they do full FOSS open source, the issue would be discovered and fixed by a different manufacturer pretty soon. NOT FULLY OPEN SOURCE. >Trezor recently had database hacked and device tampered with. People are trying to attack Trezors since a decade ago. Even the company keeps saying you should use a strong passphrase in addition to the seed words. Nothing new. >Tangem has just been hacked. I have never thought there would be a worse hardware wallet manufacturer then Ledger. I was wrong. Tangem topped up Ledger's bad reputation within very short time. Hey, it's a shitcoin wallet after all. When I'm looking for a new cold, REALLY COLD wallet, it has to be **fully open source**, **Bitcoin only**, and **air-gapped**. Can I build it up myself? Even better. SeedSigner and Krux are IMHO the best and the least talked about true Bitcoin cold wallets. Yes, you can create a cold wallet on your own old PC or mobile phone. Yes, it's easy to get bitcoin in while staying offline by using a watch only wallet or copying the receiving addresses on the go. Spending the bitcoin is much more difficult. That's where a hardware wallet excels. Hardware wallets are IMHO really great addition to security, the problem is, people jump on the first one, some rando on the internet mentions, and these people end up using a shitty device like Ledger or Tangem. Worse, they'll buy a ColdCard but let the device to generate the seed words instead of using dice, because of "what if something goes wrong".

RetiredAvocado

Online banking is a giant target that gets hit all the time. But they spend big money to keep your accounts safe, with firewalls, 2FA, fraud alerts, lockouts, and even deposit insurance that the banks pay for. Hardware wallets are relatively cheap consumer grade products. For a couple hundred bucks and if properly used, they do a whole lot. Many are open source, inviting copycats. Coldcard's efforts to protect their work (which they allegedly heavily borrowed from someone else too) has lead to them making mistakes, and their downfall. And it didn't stop Passport wallet people from basing their product on Coldcards. And all that is a good thing, making these special purpose devices more accessible to people with multiple competing offerings. I don't see myself buying a $25,000 crazy blackbox with MPC and time locks, and multisig, and NFC + eye scan, and fingerprint reader. But a $250 device that generates keys and lets me sign without exposing them.. pretty nice deal. Hardware wallet itself is not impenetrable, and likely cannot withstand physical attacks. If lost or stolen, it's best to consider it compromised, recover elsewhere, and move everything to newly created wallet with all new seed. I do not buy them believing they will securely store and defend keys forever. Safe storage is on me. And adding some entropy is also on me, with dice or passphrases, whatever. But I do trust them to sign a transaction without revealing the keys to my PC. That's what I want it to do, and I have to assume it does. As for the world moving at a fast pace, I do upgrade my wallets over time. I did have a Coldcard MK3 and it was fine, until it wasn't. But by the time the bad entropy theft happened, MK3 was 3 years without firmware updates, and guess what mine did. It was collecting dust, empty, because I've moved on from a product that reached its end of life. And that probably saved my ass, who knows. I will keep buying newer and better hardware wallets, to support the companies that make them so they can continue to improve and release new products, and to protect my coins in newer, better, more usable ways as the tech and UI and safety features get better. People upgrade $1000 phone every 2-3 years. It's not a huge leap that people can also buy a new $250 device that keeps their btc safe on about the same schedule. Learn how to use it properly, and stay at the industry's pace, and that's it. In my anecdotal one person experience, never lost any BTC, and very comfortable using my hardware wallets, kinda regularly, maybe once a week or more.

Automatic_Army3309

Thanks for the real reply. 1. Checked is the original website 100% 2. I had the id and password on the computer. 3. No idea what email I was using back then we could create dozens of wallets just with one email but not sure if I ever verified it. 4. Did try to log in from a different PC. Got same error. I do have a json but I can’t open it. Tried to use the tool decryp my walllet from the original blockchain GitHub. Not succes Need a real expert willing to help

Backrus

Did you miss the point about using iPhone exclusively as wallet, and not as a phone? Good luck "hacking" phone in Faraday's cage. Good luck exploiting battle tested open source wallets. You have no idea what you're talking about, even script kiddies know more about "exploits" than you. But your list is valid for using PC with a hardware wallet, I doubt you have dedicated box just for using blockchain.

fan_of_hakiksexydays

ooof this is terrible advice. Yes, in theory you can make a really good hardware wallet IF you REALLY know what you're doing because you need to build the right software, update it for continuous security risks, know how to do encryption to protect your key, and more importantly know how to interact online safely which is the tricky part. But you will still have one flaw you'll need to work on. There is a reason hardware wallet have their own integrated screen separate from your PC and online app, so you can verify if the software is compromised and if there is any spoofing.

Dragnskull

i've written down my most secret of secrets (financial passwords, etc) and hidden them away in a place no one would ever look and left a note on my desktop PC, I've set up a method that notifies the correct family member(s) to read the file on my desktop upon my death and in the note there's information pointing the correct family member to that exact location via a piece of knowledge only the two of us know. If I die suddenly events will unfold that guides the desired person to the desired information. If the desired person to get that info dies along with me then said information is gone forever

G-T-L-3

**Use Metal for Large Holdings:** Paper works for temporary or test setups, but grade 304 stainless steel or titanium plates protect against fire, water, and fading. Popular metal options include [Cryptosteel Capsule Solo](https://www.google.com/search?ibp=oshop&prds=pvt:hg,pvo:29,mid:576462528901184339,imageDocid:2416853081351409412,gpcid:16029306505636329243,headlineOfferDocid:10582973243871690226,catalogid:10854976345264721435,productDocid:1777040794860842803,rds:PC_16029306505636329243%7CPROD_PC_16029306505636329243&q=product&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjh4Nmjw7CXAxXVwjgGHRFeE4IQxa4PegoIAggACAAIFBAJ), [Billfodl](https://www.ledger.com/academy/bip-39-the-low-key-guardian-of-your-crypto-freedom), and Cryptotag Zeus. Don't know why you're being down-voted though. I think I've seen enough hacks on cold-wallets to not put large amounts in them (which I wish I had)

Backrus

No, a iPhone is a different architecture than amd64 PC. Your phone doesn't have to be connected to the internet. It doesn't even have to be on, and you can use Faraday's cage. 3rd paragraph is just imaginary problems, when you assume you use that spare phone as phone, and not as just wallet. Ofc you set up your phone accordingly to that use case. If you want to transmit tx, you have to connect to net anyway at some point, even if you're airgapping to PC. Infinitely more secure than hardware you can't verify. Hardware wallet is against basic "don't trust, verify" principle, but y'all got finessed into thinking that it's somehow good setup by shillers and podcaters (Ledger, Cold card, etc). Spoiler, it's not unless you use at least 3/5 multisig. And even then, like I said, y'all lack technical know-how to verify if hardware does only what it is supposed to do. Not to mention vibe coded software. Zachxbt also shares similar opinion on hardware wallets, and advises to never use them. Just like most BTC OGs. You do you, but parroting marketing talking points isn't good. Good luck.

MelangeBot

It's very simpple to put your key in to bitcoin software on your computer, but the moment you do all the hardware on your PC has the secret as well. All the software has the secret, and the entire internet has the software. By bye coins!

MelangeBot

A PC that was made before 2007 that you physically disable the network card on with old linux and Elektrum software where you check the GPG signatures against as many possible sources you can find. Then when you are alone with zero electronic devices around and your internet shut down you have this PC generate your seeds. You write them down on paper. And then you never update. This PC will act like a hardware wallet. using qr codes or a thumb drive you bring a unsigned transaction over from your laptop or desktop that is connected to the internet. You sign them on your offline PC and then bring the signed tx back where it can be broadcasted. Same as a hardware wallet but because the hardware is from before 2007 you can 100% know it was not tampered with to try and steal Bitcoin. And on the software side you use software at least 2 or 3 years old and you verify the signatures againt 20 or so different sources to make sure it's legit. Now you can be 100% sure the software wasn't tampered with eithere. And then you NEVER update. Imagine Trezor or ledger the company gets hacked and the hacker publish a new firmware and then you update. Boom, coins are gone!

MelangeBot

Find a desktop computer that was build before 2008. remove all network capabilities, if it has a lan card on it, physically sabotage it. Find a good and trusted source for the hashes of older versions of linux mint or any extremely popular linux distributions. Use a thumb drive to install linux on it. Download Elektrum, check the hash and find the PGP keys of the developers and quadruplle check them against as many sources as you can possibly can. Once you are absolutely sure you older signde versions of a popular linux distro and Eletrum have both installed on this offline desktop PC. Then it's there that you have that machine randomly come up with your seeds. Make sure you are alone in the room with no phones or no electronics nearby other then the desktop PC and create your seed and write them down on paper. Copy the xpubkey to your thumb drive and install Elektrum also on your online PC. Import the xpubkey there, now you have a watch wallet. You can see but not spend. Now when you need to make a transaction you can make it on the online computer but it's not signed. Save the unsigned tx on your thumb drive and sign it on the offline pc. Then bring it back to broadcast. Make sure the offline PC has a bios password, has a good strong linux password and uses an encrypted partition! (extremeley important). Or if you already have like an trezor model T for many years and you NEVER HAVE UPDATED THE FIRMWARE AND NEVER WILL, you are also safe.

stumblinbear

USBs are not safe, because that necessarily requires you to save your keys on it somehow. Which means they exist on your PC at some point. And you have to plug it into a PC to use it

Ramast

I think one good added level of security is to create your wallet first and then import it into your ledger/trezor. The reason is that most compromised devices are designed to generate predictable wallet addresses that attackers could then drain later. Importing an existing wallet protect you from this sort of attack. Of course a much more sophisticated compromised hardware wallets could - in theory - send the attacker your wallet keys directly so this is not fool proof but it helps. Also there is of course the risk that the software you use to generate wallet key or the PC running the software are compromised. so you decide what is best for you

MelangeBot

Soooo much shit has already happened with ledger that if you still use them or bought them after I can only conclused that getting your crypto stolen is a kink. Fuck it I don't even fully trust trezor either, I have a model-T I bought years ago but the bulk of my Bitcoin is on a old desktop PC that was made before 2007 without any network capabilities running linux mint and electrum. on my normal PC I use electrum to make unsigned transactions then put those on a tumb drive and sign em on the offline pc then broadcast on my online PC. Since I have had that PC from before satoshi invented Bitcoin it can't be compromised and I verified all the PGP keys of the bitcoin software I installed. Been using it since 2013 and not gotten hacked yet, the most Bitcoin that was ever on there was maybe 300 or so. So I must be doing something right ... But yeah if you have an old enough trezor you DIRECTLY bought from trezor and you also set up a new seed and you NEVER update it then you are probablly safe ... still it's not impossible somebody intercepted it before it was delivered at your house ....

Lolvidar

At the start of every course I would set up a Gemini gem designed to function as an expert in that course's subject. If you're not familiar with these, a Gemini Gem can be considered as either a custom mini-agent or a persistently prompted LLM wrapper, depending on whether you go by Google's marketing definition or the technical definition. It's easy to set up and there are tons of YouTube videos on the subject. It's simpler to do it on your PC rather than on your phone.  I would use Gemini's Pro model, which, if I'm not mistaken, is available to students at a discount these days. It's way more effective at complex tasks (like tutoring a student) than their Flash model. I would give the gem a title and a short description, and in the gem's instructions block I would tell it: \- What role it was performing  \- What skills it was an expert in \- What tools it was an expert at \- What our objective was \- My personal preferences on how I wanted it to perform its task  As an example of personal preferences, I would always include the instruction to keep a professional tone and avoid any unnecessary "back patting" and encouragement. I'd upload to the gem whatever documents I thought would make for a good knowledge base. If I could get a digital copy of the course's textbook, I'd upload that. Including the course name and number, along with the school I was in, often made the gem even more helpful. Sometimes I would get Gemini to help me write the gem instructions.  The result was an effective tutor and study partner that was available 24 hours a day. I passed every final on the first try.

DankShibe

Negus using a software wallet on a PC instead of a Samsung /Google / Apple phone or something else with secure element and biometrics and also downloads random shit . You deserve what you get

Dragnskull

1. i can barely understand what you type because it's in jumbled english that seems to be paired with various auto-correct mistakes 2. i don't know what happened to you im a stranger on the internet 3. but i can tell you just because you had a virus on a completely different PC a decade ago doesn't mean the person that ran that virus was the BTC thief from 5 days ago, especially if you've long since replaced devices and changed and used new passwords since. 4. i can also tell you your password for the btc wallets secret phrase wasn't brute forced because the average time to do so would be MILLIONS of years now, what COULD have happened: if you were infected with a virus, changed passwords on that PC first, THEN replaced the pc, your new passwords could have been compromised immediately as you would have used them on the already infected PC. if you did that then sure, someone could have been watching your accounts and linked them to enough to be able to get access to however you stored your BTC. Again, i don't know what happened but your account wasnt brute forced, and even if it was (it wasn't) there's no reason to imagine there's a lone hacker running malware from a decade ago whos been sitting and watching you become a millionaire for a decade then pulling the trigger to brute force your password with future tech that doesn't exist yet.

Dragnskull

what you're describing is standard malware from 10 years ago, nothing special. there's no scenario where an infection from 10 years resulted in 1 million in lost BTC after you've changed addresses and replaced computers and gone a decade into the future with all new passwords and hardware. if your story is true then then whoever did it is unrelated to a virus you had 10 years ago on another PC with old passwords you long since changed.

Sonidista84

You get another hw wallet and input the phrase there. NEVER on the PC.

eazybreeze

I do. But what if I need to recover that hardware wallet some day, and need to enter that seed phrase into my PC.

eazybreeze

How would one scan their PC for such malware? I've always used Malwarebytes in the past, is there something better ?

Successful-Plenty-27

your wallet might be drained by a virus. You might have installed a RAT hidden in some other software, and it has access to all your stored logins and automated logins (when they don't have 2FA), if you have a GPU it can be used for silent mining, and your IP can be abused as a proxy for hacking, bot traffic or carding. If you ever used cracked software or untrusted apps, and are not sure if your device is clean, it is a good idea to format that PC entirely. In that case, the lesson here is to never use apps with possible backdoors on the same device as your bitcoin wallet. A hardware device just creates an air gap so every transaction needs to be verified manually.

mfatalay

For the offline PC, I would use a very minimal OS with no network stack at all, rather than a normal Linux installation with networking disabled. It should run from USB, stay in RAM, and be stateless. Ideally, there should be no Wi-Fi/Ethernet support in the OS in the first place. On the online PC, I would use Sparrow as the watch-only coordinator. It is quite generic and works with many different signing setups. You can then move PSBTs between the two machines using USB or QR codes. There are some open-source projects taking this approach. Worth looking into.

Fun-Analysis-182

Sparrow's the usual pick for a dedicated airgapped box now: Bitcoin-only, clean PSBT signing, real coin-control. Electrum still works and is lighter, just an older feel. On the seed, "never enter it anywhere" is really about online devices and websites. A permanently-offline machine is safer, but a general-purpose PC still writes to RAM and disk, so a dedicated hardware signer where the seed never touches a computer is the cleaner setup.

bitusher

> if Im running an airgapped setup, no system can know I made a new wallet with my own passphrase. any malware that exists on the PC when you created the wallet or when you use it would . You can get malware even with no networking > It already has a receive address tho. The addresses in the wallet with the seed are completely different than the addresses in the wallet with the seed +extended passphrase >but doesnt the phrase need to be set up while making the wallet? Yes, which is why most people do this in an environment that has a smaller attack surface like a HW wallet and if you don't than that is why I asked you that long list of questions at the start >Im not storing the seed or the phrase in the pc With your original plan you would be. The seed would be encrypted in your wallet and the extended passphrase would be typed into the PC when you decided to send a transaction or make a PSBT >I understand once you generated a seed you cant just add a passphrase later. Incorrect . You can add an extended passphrase at any time to create a new wallet >And wouldnt making up your own words for a custom seed be more secure? That is the worst idea. Humans are horrible forms of entropy. The words need to be random. All extended passphrases should ideally be created as explained with dice or other means to create sufficient entropy >I thought the seed was just a way to access a certain part of the blockchain that made you put money in or out Most wallets use hierarchical deterministic (HD) key derivation after bip32. This means you have **Backup Seed words (BIP 39 or other)** consisting of 12-24 words that can than recover **Master extended private key (xpriv,ypriv,zpriv)** Which can generate many private keys **Master extended public key(xpub/ypub/zpub)** Which can generate many public keys As of which from the public keys many Bitcoin addresses can be derived from.

SpendHefty6066

You really should look into SeedSigner for a truly air gapped signing device. A PC does not make a good wallet. A PC makes a great node server. Use it for that. PC for your node, Sparrow for your software wallet, and SeedSigner for signing transactions. SeedSigner would be the only device that ever gets the seed. And it is stateless, so when you unplug it, all memory is wiped including the seed.

bitusher

> small chance that the same seed can be given to someone else as well? This is called a "collision" and while technically true is so unlikely that our solar system will likely end long before this happens due to how much entropy Bitcoin has so its nothing you should even consider to be worried about. >Also since you can make passphrases or even add custom seed words in electrum how do they work? It creates a completely new wallet that is hidden. More discussed in the pinned FAQ https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/g42ijd/faq_for_beginners/fouo3kh/ Keep in mind that extended passphrases need to be exact. Whitespace and capitalization matter unlike BIP39 seed words. Thus you should test it https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/1wjlevd/do_you_actually_test_your_recovery_phrase_or_just/pakeutr/ and be very clear how you right it down (and keep separate than your seed words). Additionally extended passphrases should be 6-8 **random** words as well **this doesn't directly address my concerns with your setup because if the seed words and passphrase are both setup in the same PC than that is a security concern** This is much different than setting you your extended passphrase in a hw wallet itself or elsewhere >From what I understand the seed allows you to control a certain part of the blockchain, no , creates a new wallet with different addresses >custom words are what you make them, no phrases , no sentences . You should ideally use dice to select these 6-8 random words https://www.eff.org/dice >Is the blockchain infinite as well? mathematically not , but so much entropy it may as well be

bitusher

>it still doesnt have any wifi passwords in it and disconnected the wifi dongle isnt that enough? If you never introduced the wifi passcode to the offline PC (like you downloaded sparrow elsewhere and moved it over with a memory stick) than it depends upon the strength of the wifi password Technically speaking a worm or malware can "crawl" over to your offline PC as you are doing PSBTs if you are not careful and share the wifi password or not even enable networking but just use keylogger software to record the passphrase you type in to share later. There are more attack vectors than just wifi networking and insuring no wifi networking doesn't stop all attacks. Hardware wallets limit the attack surface in many ways and not merely just lacking a wifi card

bitusher

Even an expert former Bitcoin core dev who used this backup method failed and had most his Bitcoin stolen so simply creating an "air gapped" computer is not enough. I suggest you use a linux live USB to create a new separate seed with multiple addresses for future deposits . Copy the seed down at least twice on paper or metal to store in separate locations. Use this as a cold wallet that you never send money from and keep distinct from the wallet you occasionally transact from. Consider one as your long term savings and the other wallet as your short term "checking account" that you might occasionally use . For your wallet you might send transactions from this might be a hot wallet in ios or android or your offline PC that you can either choose to temporarily use PSBTs or enable networking and not the linux live usb you temporarily used without persistence to create your main savings wallet

bitusher

For others to read - Its much more ideal to physically remove the wifi card , but at least disable the networking in the OS . Keep in mind that the right malware can potentially re-enable the networking. A hardware wallet physically doesn't have a wifi card typically which is one of many reasons it has a smaller attack surface. >and take it out when I need it and dont I need a pc to do transactions, how else can I do it? That is a contradiction. Taking it out literally means making a transaction which requires direct or indirect network access, thus making your PC no longer "cold" by definition. You can reduce the risk by 1) using a hardware wallet instead 2) Using offline qr code signing (typically used with a hw wallet) 3) Using PSBTs/ Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (with or without a HW wallet) Sparrow technically supports PSBTs but this is more complicated and advanced so you need to practice using it and understand that this limits and doesn't necessarily prevent malware or worms compromising your PC so you need to be careful. Hardware wallets simplify all of this. Choosing not to use one creates a lot of concerns and tradeoffs which are fine but you need to understand your choices Is this an issue where you cant afford a hardware wallet or just dont trust any of them ?

bitusher

>but Im guessing typing it on an airgapped pc is ok? You will have no choice but to enter the seed because you have made the decision to not use a hardware wallet that would normally keep the seed encrypted. With a hardware wallet you would pair it to sparrow or electrum and **not enter the seed**. You have made another decision which has its own set of tradeoffs. 1)Is your offline PC running a security focused OS such as Qubes at least ? 2) Since your offline PC has a much wider attack surface than a hardware wallet have you at least attempted to disable networking in multiple ways like removing the wifi card ? 3) Is the OS a new install or a version of linux live without persistence ? 4) Are you only planning on receiving transactions or also sending transactions out ? If so than why do you need the PC at all after you create the seed and multiple addresses? 5) If you will be sending outbound transactions how will you accomplish this with a offline "cold" airgapped pc? 6) How was the seed originally created ?

johnpress

When bitcoin was new you could go on a website, click a button and you're get like 50 btc. Thousands of BTC on my mom's PC probably hawked for drugs over a decade ago RIP. Good job on your milestone though!

BannanaPepperPizza

Bro I mined 300 of those in between WoW raids in school on a piece of shit computer and then threw the PC in the trash because wtf was I going to do with Bitcoin 15 years ago.

austin-delts

Sorry but building a bunch of websites is not the same as AI. AI is about as transformative as the internet or PC itself, or maybe even electricity. The .com bubble happened not because the internet was an issue but because people were trying to build every possible use case of everything as a website. Today, there are like 3-5 real hyperscalers and they are building concentrated services that will power literally everything in the future. Saying there is an AI bubble is the same as the people who were saying we were in a PC bubble in the 70s, not the same as the .com bubble, and you see how the PC bubble turned out.

faisal_yk26

Yeah, the site's a bit confusing. That big green download button on the homepage is actually Bisq 1. Open the "Downloads" menu at the top and scroll down to the "Bisq2 Downloads" section, that's the one you want. Bisq Easy isn't a separate program, it's the trading mode inside Bisq 2. So install Bisq 2, open it, and Bisq Easy is right there. If you're on Android you can skip the PC entirely. "Bisq Easy Mobile" is on Google Play and it's the same thing. Just don't grab "Bisq Connect", that one needs a Bisq node running somewhere else.

crunchyeyeball

I can see that you previously used [Metamask](https://www.reddit.com/r/defi/comments/1kl5r9h/curvefi_hacked/), and a [service (curve finance)](https://www.reddit.com/r/defi/comments/1kl5r9h/curvefi_hacked/) which has suffered multiple hacks & exploits. Were your Electrum keys generated by, and unique to, Electrum? were they ever shared with any external software? Did you ever install software from curve? and was it on the same PC as Electrum?

CanadianCompSciGuy

I do not recall the price of Bitcoin in 2009. I just assumed it was a buck. Even if it was a penny, that's $9k.  Look at that toaster of a computer. Ain't no kid with $9k to blow still using those fat ass tube monitors. Flat screens were the norm in 2009. That PC is from the 90s.

N3333K0

This is exactly what my PC screen looked like writing my honors thesis in 2009! No idea how I edited 25 pages with that size font. /s

Alert_Sprinkles_2044

Interesting, but isn't the coin hashes stored in the nodes, and are given signature/identity like they belong to this PC or this miner. So if internet is disrupted then how does this signature revoked??? Light me bud.

MagnusGruuns

\*Laughs in farmed all my coins before they changed how to farm them with a few PC's and laptops, around the clock for over a year, when BTC first launched\*

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Post is by: whoami1whoami and the url/text [ ](https://goo.gl/GP6ppk)is: /r/CryptoMarkets/comments/1wkxzue/dev_in_crypto/ Hello everyone! I’d like to hear your thoughts on potential areas in crypto that could be automated with a trading bot. At this stage, I’m mainly interested in exploring different niches that I could enter with an initial capital of around $2,000 and develop either a straightforward algorithm or a local neural network that could operate largely autonomously. My PC is capable of running a local model, so I’m open to experimenting with different approaches. For now, I’m considering various possibilities and am also thinking about testing the same neural network specifically for memecoin trading. I’d be interested to hear what other directions might be worth exploring. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CryptoMarkets) if you have any questions or concerns.*

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Post is by: whoami1whoami and the url/text [ ](https://goo.gl/GP6ppk)is: /r/CryptoMarkets/comments/1wkxpiw/crypto_dev/ Hello everyone! I want to ask about possible directions in crypto that could be automated for a robot. At the moment, I want to study niches that I can enter with an initial capital of around $2000 and develop a linear algorithm or use a local neural network (my PC allows it) that can participate in the process on its own. Basically, I’m open to any ideas right now and I’m thinking of trying the same neural network in memecoin trading myself. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CryptoMarkets) if you have any questions or concerns.*

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Post is by: DueStage2842 and the url/text [ ](https://goo.gl/GP6ppk)is: /r/CryptoMarkets/comments/1wkn57s/how_to_restore_damaged_partial_or_scrambled/ According to on-chain tracking from Glassnode and Chainalysis, somewhere between 3 and 4 million bitcoins sit completely dormant and untouched on UTXOs. A lot of newcomers imagine this is because people tried to crack secp256k1 or because of some cryptographic flaw in SHA-256. It is not. The real reason is almost always embarrassingly mundane: physical degradation of backups and human transcription mistakes. Someone wrote 12 words on a piece of paper, put it in a folder, and years later the paper tore along the bottom edge, destroying words 11 and 12. Someone else stamped their seed around the rim of a circular titanium washer to survive a house fire, but forgot to stamp an arrow indicating which word was word #1. Someone wrote 12 words across two neat columns of 6 rows in a notebook, and now cannot remember if they wrote left-to-right or top-to-bottom. Or someone has a coffee stain over word 7, knowing only that it starts with the letter "p" and has 6 letters. When you enter any of these into standard wallet clients like Electrum, Sparrow, or Ledger Live, you get an uncompromising error: \*\*"Invalid mnemonic checksum"\*\*. The wallet halts, and you are locked out. Over the past months, we built an open-specification workstation suite called \*\*bitResurrector v3.0.3\*\* to solve these exact physical disaster scenarios locally, offline, and without needing weeks of computing time. Here is the full engineering breakdown of how the math works, why constraint satisfaction beats brute force, how early-stage bitwise filtering speeds up recovery by thousands of times, the resolution of 7 real-world physical failure cases, and benchmark comparisons against tools like BTCRecover. \[!\[Click to Watch Demonstration Video\](https://pub-a4b1073f1580450bb819d561a783c78b.r2.dev/partial-lost-seedphrase.jpg)\](https://pub-a4b1073f1580450bb819d561a783c78b.r2.dev/Bitresurrector%20Review.mp4) \--- \## 1. Why blind brute-force fails vs why constraint satisfaction works Let us get the obvious out of the way: you cannot brute-force a Bitcoin private key from scratch. The secp256k1 curve order is: \`n ≈ 1.1579 \* 10\^77\` (a 256-bit number) Trying to find an active address by guessing raw 256-bit private keys is physically prevented by the laws of thermodynamics. There is not enough energy in the solar system to scan that space. However, recovering a degraded or scrambled mnemonic backup is \*\*NOT\*\* a raw keyspace search. It is a \*\*bounded constraint-satisfaction puzzle\*\*. When someone loses access to their backup, they are not starting from zero. They usually have: \* 10 or 11 known words out of 12. \* All 12 words, but the order was scrambled (e.g. unnumbered tiles or separate slips). \* A blurred word with a known initial letter and character length. \* Words arranged in a circular loop with an unknown starting point. Because BIP-39 and Electrum mnemonic standards enforce strict mathematical checksum rules, we can reject 93.75% to 99.6% of all combinations in CPU registers before doing any heavy elliptic curve or hashing calculations. \--- \## 2. The cryptographic mechanics: BIP-39 vs Electrum Modern v2 \### The BIP-39 16x bitwise checksum acceleration A standard 12-word BIP-39 phrase represents 128 bits of initial entropy plus a 4-bit checksum: \`Total bits = 128 (entropy) + (128 / 32) (checksum) = 132 bits\` These 132 bits are sliced into 12 chunks of 11 bits each (\`2\^11 = 2048\`), corresponding to indices in the standardized 2048-word BIP-39 English dictionary: \* Words 1 through 11 encode 121 bits of pure entropy. \* Word 12 encodes the remaining 7 bits of entropy and the 4-bit checksum. \* The 4-bit checksum is calculated as the high 4 bits of \`SHA-256(Entropy\_128)\`. Because that 4-bit checksum is strictly deterministic: \`1 / (2\^4) = 1 / 16 = 6.25%\` Only 1 out of every 16 candidate word combinations is mathematically valid. The remaining 15 out of 16 (93.75%) violate the checksum and can be discarded immediately. If you lose the final two words of a 12-word phrase, the unconstrained dictionary combination space is: \`2048 \* 2048 = 4194304 word pairs\` If you try to test 4194304 pairs by calculating full PBKDF2 in an unoptimized Python script, it takes almost an hour. But by checking the 4-bit SHA-256 checksum directly in CPU SIMD registers via AVX2, bitResurrector filters 4194304 pairs down to exactly 262144 mathematically valid phrases in fractions of a second, throwing away 3932160 junk combinations before PBKDF2 even starts. \### The Electrum Modern v2 256x prefix filter Electrum v2 modern seeds (version 2.0+) do not use BIP-39. Instead, Electrum computes an HMAC-SHA512 hash over the normalized mnemonic string using the constant key \`"Seed version"\`: \`Digest = HMAC-SHA512(Key = "Seed version", Data = Phrase)\` A valid Electrum seed must produce a 512-bit digest with a specific hexadecimal prefix: \* \*\*Native SegWit (bc1q...):\*\* Digest begins with \`100\` (byte 0 is \`0x10\`, high nibble of byte 1 is \`0x00\`). \* \*\*Standard Legacy (1...):\*\* Digest begins with \`01\` (byte 0 is \`0x01\`). This prefix rule is even stricter than BIP-39: exactly 255 out of every 256 candidate combinations (99.6%) fail this check. Out of 4194304 dictionary pairs, only around 16000 candidates yield a valid Electrum SegWit prefix. \### The PBKDF2 bottleneck To turn a valid mnemonic into a 512-bit binary master seed, the standard requires: \`Seed = PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA512(Password = Phrase, Salt = "mnemonic", Iterations = 2048)\` Each check requires 2048 iterations, which equals over 4096 individual 64-bit cryptographic hash rounds. Evaluating candidates naively in Python scripts crawls at 1200 checks per second. By pruning non-viable combinations before PBKDF2, execution speed jumps from hours to seconds. \--- \## 3. The streaming 12! permutation solver: resolving scrambled word order A very common disaster scenario happens when an owner wrote down all 12 words, but the sequence was scrambled (e.g. written on individual slips of paper, unnumbered flash cards, or an anagram puzzle). The total permutation space for 12 unique words is: \`12! = 479001600 permutations\` If you try to run 479001600 permutations through PBKDF2 and elliptic curve point multiplication in standard scripts, it would take more than 110 hours on a normal PC. bitResurrector solves this with a \*\*Streaming Permutation Engine\*\*: 1. \*\*L1/L2 Cache Lexicographic Generator:\*\* Permutations are produced sequentially in CPU cache registers without memory allocation overhead. 2. \*\*SIMD Checksum Pruning:\*\* Each generated 132-bit candidate is verified against the 4-bit SHA-256 checksum in vector registers. Over 449000000 non-viable permutations are eliminated in nanoseconds. 3. \*\*Multi-Core / GPU Derivation:\*\* Only the surviving \~29937600 valid candidates undergo key derivation across AVX2 threads or GPU compute kernels. 4. Result: the entire 479001600 permutation tree is searched in 1 to 2 hours on a consumer desktop PC. \--- \## 4. Resolving 7 real-world physical disaster scenarios Here are 7 typical physical failure scenarios encountered in recovery practice and how constraint solving resolves each one: \### Case 1: Torn paper edge (missing final words 11 and 12) !\[Case 01: Torn paper edge with missing seed words\](https://pub-27307244770c4d7abb0124f8f0731466.r2.dev/case-01.jpg) A paper backup card preserved inside an archival envelope suffered accidental physical shear when retrieved from storage. The mechanical tear sheared away the entire bottom strip, completely destroying words 11 and 12 while leaving positions 1 through 10 crisp and legible. When plugged into a standard wallet, the client immediately aborts because it lacks the final word pair and cannot verify the integrity of the sequence. Because two unknown dictionary words create an unconstrained product of 2048 by 2048 (4194304 raw candidate pairs), manual guessing would take days. In the recovery workstation, the 10 known words are placed into the first ten slots while slots 11 and 12 remain unassigned. The early bitwise SHA-256 checksum barrier immediately evaluates the 132-bit entropy boundary, rejecting 93.75% of non-viable candidates in vector registers. This winnows the 4194304 possibilities down to exactly 262144 legitimate BIP-39 phrases (or just 16000 Electrum candidates). Derived public keys are checked against the in-RAM positive-balance database, pinpointing the correct wallet and restoring funds in 1.5 to 4 seconds. \### Case 2: Fluid stain (word 7 blurred, initial letter and length known) !\[Case 02: Coffee stain blurring word on paper backup\](https://pub-27307244770c4d7abb0124f8f0731466.r2.dev/case-02.jpg) A beverage spilled across a desk soaked through a paper seed backup card. The water-soluble ink absorbed liquid, turning word 7 into an illegible smear. Although the middle and trailing characters are obscured by bleeding ink pigment, careful inspection under magnification confirms that the word starts with the letter "t" and occupies a fixed 4-character horizontal bounding box. In the standard 2048-word BIP-39 dictionary, an unconstrained single missing word generates 2048 possibilities. However, applying a parametric positional constraint of letter "t" and length 4 instantly slashes the dictionary space from 2048 candidates down to exactly 15 matching dictionary entries. The search complexity is compressed by 136x. The engine evaluates these 15 candidates, calculates their checksums, generates the target addresses, and matches the authentic funded wallet in local RAM in under 0.05 seconds. \### Case 3: Circular metal disc (endless ring with unknown start

GoldParticular3093

My advice is sell everything you have (House, PC , phone, appliances, your mother's jewelry) to buy more BTC

One-Cardiologist-462

To think that at one point I had about 20 knocking around, and spent most of them on font packs for the PC...

faisal_yk26

More like mid to late 2011. The Gawker piece about Silk Road ran in June that year and price went from about $10 to $30 in a few weeks. That's the first time bitcoin was on normal people's radar. Mining was already GPU-only by then though, so most of those newcomers bought instead of mined. The window where you could realistically mine on a home PC had basically closed.

Django_McFly

I cashed out during the 2021 pump. Great decision. I built a RTX 4080, 7800X3D, 32GB RAM gaming/media center PC and got a 55" 4k TV. Out of pocket was only like $800. Thank you based MOON. It's insane that there were people with like not retirement money, but definitely like big bags that could fund *years* of unemployment and pretty much any emergency outside of cancer and they didn't cash a penny of it out. Some of them saw the 2021 run and dump and still didn't cash out when it miraculously came back in 2024. That's impressive in it's own way.

Firm_Yogurtcloset835

Leaving your PC on 24/7 doesn't guarantee you'll manage to mine even a single block. It’s a war! Whoever has more computing power has a better chance, but there are no guarantees. It’s a completely different scenario. But just imagine—suppose you managed to mine every block in a full day: an average of 144 blocks per day times a 50 BTC reward per block. But that doesn't exist, and it never will. Back in 2010, the same guy from Pizza Day discovered that mining with a GPU was much easier... and the network scaled the difficulty. And so it goes.

creative_usr_name

Don't trust, verify applies to using BTC not obtaining it. In Satoshi's days anyone could mine easily on their home PC, or get it P2P, no one was buying from exchanges with KYC. ACIS miners have changed who is mining, but not how, and not how transactions work. No one is stuck on exchanges unless they choose to stay. There are more self custody options than ever (not necessarily all perfect)

Firm_Yogurtcloset835

You're totally right, and thanks for making me think deeper on this. To be clear, the government already knows 100% about my money, including my bitcoin. i don't keep anything on exchanges today, but every satoshi I own was bought through one. The OP’s post got me reflecting. I've read the whitepaper and Satoshi’s old Bitcointalk posts, and it feels like we've drifted far from the original blueprint. When ordinary people could mine on a PC, you had a truly decentralized on-ramp into digital cash. Satoshi foresaw industrial mining as soon as GPUs entered the game, then came ASICs... and what’s next? Today, the reality for everyday working people is choosing between government surveillance or trusting a random stranger. And that "trust" is my whole issue. The breakthrough of Bitcoin was solving double-spending to create a trustless system. Traditional finance needs heavy regulation precisely because humans can't be trusted, relying on centralized custody and clearing houses. If Bitcoin's essence is "don't trust, verify," why are we back to taking risks on human trust just to buy it? I'm just an everyday user trying to reconcile the original vision (a non-inflationary, trustless digital currency outside state control) with our current reality (a speculative asset where most people are stuck holding on exchanges). It's genuinely complex.

unvac

Left crypto on my Exodus on my PC; the PC died (PSU). I was so scared, thinking my SSD was fried and I lost everything. learnt a lot from that, thankfully didn't lose anything

lone_wolf1910

Yeah the same rules, Wait until your setup comes Risk only 1% A Time Window Trade should be closed on the same day Close the PC After TP/SL Hit... No Emotions During Trade Only 1 Trade a Day Simple rules, For A Beginner...

Illustrious_Ant_9242

A PC on average dies after 100.000 hours. GPUs may quit a bit earlier already.  In 2009 you would not yield anything because there was no real money exchange for Bitcoin. Maybe a pizza for 20000 Bitcoin or something like that. 

Illustrious_Ant_9242

PC pool is a room with 40 computers.  You can put multiple GPUs in a single machine. If it runs 24/7 it gets hot and uses lots of energy. 

RetiredAvocado

50000 BTC was mined every week by the entire network. It's unlikely that any one entity had a sprawling mining farm of PCs. Bitcoin was basically worthless and there was no incentive to set up hundreds of computers to mine. GPU mining was not big until late 2010 or so. It was a tinkerer hobby, with many people doing some mining here and there. Maybe some people abused their work owned hardware, or school PC labs to mine more than others. Most people did not have dedicated rooms full of GPUs mining because it was not worth doing. Not until later.

RetiredAvocado

All hot wallets load keys in clear text to work with them. Using closed source wallets like Exodus is not recommended. That's an added risk on top of everything else. Hot wallets are pretty convenient and serve a secondary function as well. Why would you trust a PC/phone to do your social media, shopping, healthcare, banking, taxes, but not trust it with a few bucks in BTC? I have separate hot wallets on all my devices as somewhat enticing honeypots. None of them run Windows. None of them had anything stolen. If your hot wallet BTC disappears it can be a cheap (or expensive) indicator that you cannot trust that device for anything else.

Michael-Ryder

50k BTC sounds insane now, but with a 50 BTC block reward that was “only” 1,000 blocks. For someone mining very early with a decent share of the network hash rate, it was possible — but definitely not something every random PC would just accumulate automatically.

FirstAmendmentIsDead

The initial theft occurred because they got the victim to open a Remote Desktop client and then they stole his private keys from Bitcoin Core. Who the FUCK stores over 4000BTC in a hot wallet on a PC???

Charly_m_

Fair point, 5% deserves an explanation. It funds pool infrastructure and operations, but also the Lab’s research, testing and development. Maintaining a mining research lab is expensive, and that work is a core part of what we’re building. The aim is to turn validated discoveries into practical improvements for the pool and its miners. We have demonstrated endtoend improvements for PC mining and are working to bring those gains to ASICs. **That could provide another form of value to miners over time, although it is nt a payout or a demonstrated ASIC advantage today.** Hybrid Solo also changes what miners get from participating. A small miner can mine for years without personally finding a block. Here, **85% goes to the finder and 10% goes to other eligible miners**, so your own block find isn’t your only opportunity for a reward. The fee still matters. But so does the community allocation, and the research that the Lab’s separate 5% helps fund. All payouts depend on actual block finds.

RetiredAvocado

Not a PC repair subreddit. Get the drive and get the wallet.dat file, then you can ask here.

RetiredAvocado

That's the weirdest 2009 PC mouse I've ever seen.

_Larry

This hurts me spiritually. I had the PC to mine it back then too..

echotwogift

The United States is a big country. If you're a citizen or permanent resident you can simply be a nomad within it and always have a new place to move on to. If you're not a citizen or permanent resident, consider not entering the USA and enjoying the rest of the big planet, as a US border is a surrender your rights zone. A distinction needs to be made between Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and the TSA. You've mentioned both but made no distinction. The policy posted is CBP, which applies when entering the USA. In the context of a domestic flight, you will only encounter the TSA and they are mainly concerned about aircraft safety. They are there to make sure only flight appropriate items end up in cargo hold and the cabin. They will involve other law enforcement when items unrelated to airplane safety catch their attention, but that's only for things that are big red flags and electronics is not one of those things as electronics are generally not a threat to aviation outside the context of lithium limits. When it comes to electronics, what they're looking for is to validate size of lithium cells and for the x-rays to align with electronics looking like electronics and not hiding something else (particularly) and there are also known sometimes to ask for power on tests as a way to demonstrate electronics are what they are. A power on test isn't necessarily invasive, and the reputation is that these are more for laptops than anything else and I'm not sure I've heard of smaller electronics getting much attention (can't hide much harmful to an airplane in them). Do more research on folk's specific experience with TSA power on tests -- even doing these with laptops may have become a thing of the past due to more sophisticated X-ray tech and explosive detection tech which makes power on tests obsolete per the TSA's aircraft safety mandate. This of course depends on the airport, bigger airports have better tech for faster screening throughput. Small airports will be 2002 era in their screening security. It is the CBP that is super invasive per the law and this policy. Their mandate, to prevent undesirable activity inside the USA by citizens and non-citizens alike by way of border control. That is a much bigger mandate. The border is a near-rightsless search heavy zone, even for returning US citizens. Though entry is a simple interview for most, as the article discloses things can get pretty invasive. The only counter measure when carrying a hardware wallet is to have it in a reset state. If questioned, you can honestly say you're not using it right now. To memorize a seed, use the memory palace technique, and consider generating a 12 word one which is plenty of entropy but half the memorization. Your palace is a super familiar place, hopefully there is something like "home" to you in your memory like a childhood home from before becoming a nomad. Put each group of three words in a room and create a colourful visual for those three words in that room. To build a strong long term memory, you have to re-enforce it, a of lot early repetition is critical (many, many times daily when starting out) but there has to be refresh down the line. Go for several walks on your first few days and in-between internal walks through the memory palace say to yourself "I am a sovreing citizen." Do not prepare a wipe code on any kind of device as a CPB countermeasure. A US citizen who was returning to the country is currently facing obstruction charges for refusing an invasive cell phone unlock request and giving a code that did a Graphene OS wipe request. BIP39 passphrases just add another layer where your memory can fail. If you can memorize a BIP39 passphrase that's not crackable (random words from this), then you can just memorize a BIP39 seed, no passphrase. A weak passphrase is crackable to a good adversary and finding a BIP39 seed on your person is a substantial starting port for a CBP agent giving you hell, way more than a hardware wallet in reset state. BIP39 passphrases only make sense for folks who have seeds in relatively secure places like their homes where they just need a little bit of search space as a thin defense layer against casual robbers and visitors. Consider pairing a memory approach with a distributed form of backups that can be distributed to insecure locations that you can turn to if your memory fails. The recently discovered Coldcard failure was a bad thing, but their device may be helpful for safe seed splitting. You don't need to trust it for seed generation, you can import one. They have a seed splitting scheme that uses the logic operation XOR, The output is BIP39 words. You could leave parts of the split with people you trust in your travels and/or open safe deposit boxes at banks / other safe keeping services. As these are built on the BIP39 wordlist you can use standard steel plates for encoding and for making things less subject to the "throw out that paper trash..." scenario. The point here is that the compromise of a single person or single physical location does not compromise the seed. After recovery with the XOR split scheme the Coldcard lets you see the original seed, handy if you had a memory failure and want to see what you forget after doing the recovery. There is a deterministic split and random splits. The deterministic split is helpful if you plan to bring a reset Coldcard mk4 through customs (looks like a calculator), as upon doing a recovery from memory you can regenerate that exact same split for your next deposit, for example if you already deposited deterministic part A and need to generate deterministic part B for your next drop off. If you use the random split you'll have to write down all parts down at the time of generation -- in that case you could bring one part at a time through customs and deal with any questions about it or bring all parts through unfunded. An alternatives: The SLIP39 scheme, which is well supported on device on the Trezor is also a key splitting scheme that using shamir secret sharing. BIP39 words are used, but in unusual lengths. There is also PC software available as an alternative to generating and recovering on Trezor. Generic shamir secret sharing can also be done on PCs, on Linux the command and package is "ssss". There are stories of this Winklevoss twins doing this and flying their shards around when they started building their crypto fortune.

IndividualAward2771

Start small, with a wallet on your phone is okay, so long as it is like less than 100K sats. Consider that a toy wallet, practise sending, receiving and recoery a few times before you move to put in any serious amount. Also, understand UTXOs and how tracing them can pose a threat to your privacy. This way, you do not end up revealing too much about your wallet (UTXOs and addresses you own) on the blockchain. Also important for privacy. If you choose to buy a BIP 39 words based recovery wallet, try one which does not even connect to a PC during set up. Remember, the coins are held in the chain, not in the wallet. The key to your coins is the wallet, OR the words+passphrase. Guard both. An attacker can get the coins he he has the words+passphrase without ever touching the wallet. Never ever put the words+passphrase anywhere except into the wallet itself (and an wallet that you have thoroughly researched). No website, no customer support, no _expert_ from the internet. Put the passphrase somewhere where your family can recover after you die, and at least one person in your family should be aware of how to use it. In general, how much you put in and your set up depends a lot on how much you understand. * Basic sending receiving...100K Sats * Wallet recovery and guarding seed+passphrase 10 million sats * 50 million sats and above...zpub for receiving, hardware multisig, smart UTXO management and use lightning for payment as much as possible and also you should have some basic understanding on what private key+public key, asymmetric key cryptography mean so that you don't end up making stupid decisions About lightning payment, if you use it regularly to pay (people or merchants), it is safe to keep some operational fund in a custodial wallet (I prefer CoinOS and Blockstream). But under no circumstances, you should put the keys of your hardware wallet into your mobile device. When I was starting out, I thought it is useful to have an on-chain address of my own handy to receive payments. But obviously, carrying my HWW around town is out of question. So I carried around the address and QR code in my phone. Silly and unnecessary, but fortunately not fatal. But I had no concept of zpub, hence. Then I learnt you can put the zpub in a mobile wallet to generate an address on the fly and also watch the transactions.

worldresident2021

I was on PC and my keyboard was a foreign one lol.

mfatalay

There are three main steps to holding and using Bitcoin safely: * Creating the wallet * Protecting the seed phrase * Signing transactions to spend When creating a wallet, I think you should use at least two different hardware devices. We've seen that relying on a single hardware wallet isn't safe enough. You should use two separate devices, like a hardware wallet plus a PC, or hardware wallets from two different brands in a 2-of-2 multisig setup. People usually view multisig as protection against losing or stealing one seed phrase. But now, I think it has another important job: protecting against hardware vulnerabilities. A 2-of-2 setup is enough for this. To protect your seed phrase, never store it online in plain text. This prevents theft. Preventing loss is even more important, so keep physical copies in at least two separate locations. When you spend Bitcoin, the process should be completely air-gapped. Create the transaction on your online wallet, sign it on your offline device, and move the signed PSBT back online. Always review it before broadcasting. Double-check the addresses, and pay special attention to make sure the change address is correct.

Classic93

Have you ever used PC with Intel chips? Or USB sticks, Waze, iPhone-s FaceID, VPN, Voice over IP or so on? All of those are based on tech developments done in Israel...

PixelatumGenitallus

> and your IP address and password please My questions are reasonable and covered by many how-to on creating airgapped Bitcoin wallet using old PC/laptop. This will serve newbies, letting them know that they don't need to buy hardware wallet if they know what to do. Your comment is sarcastic and unnecessary. I am about to do the same as my ledger screen has died and currently weighing my options.

Difficult_Letter_607

You do not mate. And you shouldn't think about that nonsense. Most people whom did what you were intended to do were the ones who sold BTC at 0,50€/btc and bought again at 2,00$/btc and sold at 2,50$/btc. This loop which did not make them rich. Bitcoin were only life changing for the ones who bought or mined it for the play and completely forgot about it... until one day searching their PC they find out about those old adresses for BTC and voi lá, rich!

rgnet1

Look up heurodeterministic wallets. That's the norm now, but back then, wallet software simply randomly generated a new bitcoin address every time one was needed. There was no seed words to regenerate deterministic addresses. This meant the ONLY place a private key existed was in that wallet.dat file on his local PC. And he wiped it for some reason.

Imaginary_Peak_3217

I remember I mined in college and thought I was a big shot mining and having like 20 BTC when it was like $20 a coin and when it bumped up to $100-$200 a coin I sold I think everything to buy a nicer PC. Cashed out way too early, could've been sitting on a beach somewhere probably never having to work again. And I can't remember what I was doing in highschool because I was mining, but my god I must've had hundreds. Spent too long trying to track it down. At least the ride was fun right?

Background_Item8659

Ask ChatGPT and it will help you build your node. I recently bought an old mini PC (dell optiplex) off ebay and upgraded it with a 2TB SSD drive in order to store the whole blockchain. I installed linux mint and bitcoin core, and use this as a desktop PC now. It's a lot cheaper to go this way than to buy a pre-made unit like a start9. I learned linux and got a new computer out of the process too.

na3than

Start9 on a Raspberry Pi or an old small form factor PC / mini PC for the node. Electrum on TailsOS to set up the cold wallet. Initialize it, back up your recovery info, fully reboot the device, restore the recovery info and verify that you successfully restored a wallet with the correct fingerprint. Then export the extended public key and import it into BlueWallat, Sparrow, etc. to created a watch-only wallet.

TheBestintheWest11

buddy, I lost probably around 40 coins back when I used to play RuneScape. Remember buying some BTC using my mom's cc back in the day thinking she would never know what a BTC is on her transaction (yes I know that's not how it works, but as a kid that's how I thought) and lost my account info and PC was thrown away. So yeah, I feel the pain but at the same time I drill it in my head that I never had BTC.

crunchyeyeball

Not familiar with "Dcent" so I can't comment on that model *specifically*, but in *general* the whole point of a hardware wallet is that your private keys are *never* shared with your PC. That means that no hacker or malware can extract them through your PC, or interfere with transactions, since only the signed transaction is ever visible. There are always other opsec concerns of course, e.g.: The weakest link is usually the user. Scammers are always looking for new ways to trick you into revealing your seed phrase, often through fake emails (or phone calls or physical mail) claiming to be from exchanges or wallet manufacturers. Malware on your PC might display the wrong address, or switch an address in your clipboard during a copy/paste to trick you into sending funds to the wrong address.

Tough_Rush6487

You're already ahead of most people just by using a hardware wallet, the device is designed so your keys never touch the PC even if it’s fully compromised.

qp0n

Welcome to markets. This is how almost every security or commodity works. Like 5-10 years ago RAM was one of the cheapest things you could buy for your PC, now its one of the most expensive.

eggchickenf

Now everyone is an expert in entropy generation, is just a time waiting untill all wallets will got cracked, its the reality guys, the randomness comes from the devices makers, even If is a PC laptop cold wallet usb etc

International_Long60

Same I missed it, cuz unfortunately one of my PC's memory sticks died out of nowhere. I was busy cleaning it up with alcohol swabs, amd by the time I got back online, it had already touched $79k and reverted.

na3than

> What exactly is written into the blockchain when cold wallet is created? Absolutely nothing. > By checking the blockchain can you tell from which country/location is holder at? No. > Type of the platform (phone, PC) he used to create a wallet? No. > When moving crypto to/from cold wallet is it possible to tap into the mobile phone to see when and which transactions took place? What do you mean by "tap into the mobile phone"? If you're creating or broadcasting the transaction from your mobile phone, of course you can see when and which transactions took place. If a certain mobile phone wasn't involved in creating or broadcasting a transaction, "tapping into" that mobile phone doesn't tell you anything about it. > By checking a specific blockchain location/transaction is quantity and list of crypto sitting there visible to the third party? "Sitting there"? If you look at a specific transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain, obviously you can see the quantities of Bitcoin that were inputs and outputs for that transaction. There is no "list of crypto"; the Bitcoin blockchain is 100 Bitcoin.

-johoe

The passphrase is not the seed phrase. For Trezor One there is no way to enter the passphrase on device. All newer Trezor models have capabilities to enter on device, but on Trezor 3 Safe it's really painful with the two buttons. On all Trezor devices you can also opt to enter the passphrase on the PC. You enter the seed on device only for most devices, although Trezor One still supports the "24 words in random order" method. But to be sure, use the advanced recovery that doesn't leak anything about your seed to the PC.

RetiredAvocado

Use a PC.