What is the best way to securely store Bitcoin for the long term?
There are many tradeoffs.
There is a tradeoff between danger of theft and danger of losing your coins, and a range of options depending on technical proficiency. There is a tradeoff between security and effort, as well as expense.
Serious enterprises like Coinbase and Gemini use very intricate schemes requiring special hardware, air gaps, and a lot of knowledgeable collaborators. Their coins have to be secure even when the incentive to rob them is in the hundreds of millions. Unless you are a crypto whale, the incentive to steal your coins is probably less, and therefore your security measures can be less extreme.
To understand the basic principles in play you have to know the following (which you probably already know). Bitcoin is based in part on public key cryptography. (You might want to review this if is unfamiliar to you). Each bitcoin wallet has a private (secret) key. Associated with that private key is a public key, and a bitcoin address is essentially a hash of the public key. Anyone can pay to your public key hash, and no one can derive your private key from your public key hash.
The essence of protecting your bitcoins is to keep your private key private. Hardware devices do a good job of this (assuming the manufacturers can be trusted) by keeping the private key on the device. For instance if you buy a Ledger Nano S (which I personally recommend) the private key never comes off of the hardware — no one ever needs to see it. However the key will be encoded as a collection of 24 words, and it is your responsibility to keep these private, by using a fireproof safe for example. To my mind this is the optimal compromise for non-whales.
Another option is to use a paper wallet. Paying money to a piece of paper is a pretty weird concept, but it can be done in bitcoin. There are various services which do this for you, but of course you are implicitly trusting the services with your money. Here is one method for producing a secure paper wallet:
Make a disk image with Debian Linux and the bitcoind software installed.
Get a cheap dedicated computer and load it with the disk image. This computer should never be connected to the internet. If you are very paranoid, you could take out the networking hardware.
Use the bitcoind software to generate a private key and an associated public key hash (viz. bitcoin address). Instructions for how to do this can be found in the book Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos.
Write your private key on a piece of paper, and the bitcoin address on another piece of paper.
Secure the paper with the private key (in a safe, for example).
Pay money to the bitcoin address.
With a little more effort (but more complexity and risk of losing your money) you could split the private key into two or more parts and store them separately, for instance in independent safe deposit boxes.
Another option is to write the private key to a file on your airgapped computer, encrypt that file (the resulting ciphertext will be very short) and copy the resulting hex by hand into a file on a non-air-gapped computer, where you can safely store it in the cloud. Of course you will have to remember the password you used for the encryption, and your security will only be as strong as the password you choose.
1.6k Views ·
Originally Answered: What is the safest way to store bitcoin?
You can choose Hardware wallet or Paper Wallet (Read The full Article)
Hot Wallets (i.e Online Wallets like , UnoCoin (India), or Exchange wallet : Like : , ) or are never completely secure. Your password can be misplaced , their server can be hacked , your security can be compromised anytime - anywhere.
Your computer is hacked and web wallet password is stolen
Web wallet server gets hacked and bitcoins are stolen
Web wallet company goes bankrupt
FBI or other enforcement agency announce Bitcoin as illegal Then Your web wallet company must to shutdown the operations.
Web wallet provider points to Term of Service violation and takes coins
Owners of web wallet company run away with coins
Bug in web wallet software leads to loss of coins
Your computer or cell phone is stolen while you are logged in and thieves then steal your coins
HARDWARE WALLET
If you want to store your completely secure then go for Hardware Wallets. They are hack proof. My First best is ( I and My Family member using). and The Second one is (I am using) .
is only available for 58$and they ship to all over the world.
PAPER WALLET
You can Make gat a paper wallet for free by going .
WHY I PREFER HARDWARE WALLET OVER PAPER WALLET
You can’t send a partial bitcoin to other account, You have to send it all
A situation like hard fork it better to go with / as they support the double coins but you can’t do the same with Paper Wallet.
You can’t store Multiple crypto coins in but The same can be done on and Hardware Wallet
Hope I answered your question Successfully.
If You like it Please Upvote it
566 Views ·
Originally Answered: What is the safest way to store bitcoin?
Basically, yes.
that are properly generated offline and securely stored are immune to hacking/malware/etc. The idea is you never enter the private key into a networked computer until you're ready to spend the Bitcoin, and even then you can sign the transaction on the offline computer and transfer it to an online computer for transmission using software like Armory. The only way they could be compromised is by physically stealing the printed private key, or perhaps a weakness in the cryptography.
How paranoid are you?
If you're not very paranoid, you could use a web based generator like to generate a paper wallet. Ideally you should audit the JavaScript source code, use your browser's private browsing mode, and disconnect from the internet while generating and printing paper wallets.
If you're somewhat paranoid, you should boot a machine using a Linux live CD, generate the paper wallet, print it, and shutdown the machine, all while completely disconnected from the internet. See:
If you're very paranoid you'd use an N-of-M scheme to generate M keys, any N of which could be used to recover the actual private key (e.x. 2-of-3, or 3-of-5), and you'd distribute the keys to M different safety deposit boxes
If you're extremely paranoid you'd destroy the computer and printer after generating your paper wallets. Or just compute your paper wallets by some rolling dice and performing the math by hand

5k Views ·
Originally Answered: What is the best way to store Bitcoins? Online? On computer? External drive?
The best way would be:
1. Boot your computer up with Ubuntu Live CD
2. Create a wallet, encrypt it using a strong password (). Make sure you do not forget the password.
3. Back up the wallet multiple times (e.g. email+Dropbox).
4. Practice its decryption using
5. Finally, transfer the bitcoins to the wallet.
If your password is strong enough, nobody should be able to brute force it ... so online storage is good enough. Be aware that the standard Bitcoin encryption only encrypts private key - if you want to protect against anyone viewing your bitcoin addresses, you should use something like instead - make sure to choose a high amount of encryption rounds.
2k Views ·
Originally Answered: What is the best way to secure a bitcoin locally?
There are lots of ways to secure your Bitcoin. The suggestions already provided aren't necessarily bad, but they exclude a lot of other options. For instance, they don't take into account your use cases. Are you planning on using the Bitcoin any time soon or are you simply looking to lock it away and hold it for future use? Are you looking for absolutely secure or are you looking for a balance of hassle and security?
The most secure way to store your Bitcoin is to produce paper wallets from a copy of a website using a browser on an offline computer booted from a secure OS on a CD printing to a wired printer with no internal memory. I describe this process in my tutorial .
However, that only works for long term. If you're looking for security, but usable storage, I recommend installing Mycelium wallet on your phone. You can then get a hardware wallet like a Ledger or Trezor that will very securely store your Bitcoin while still being usable. I'm personally a bigger fan of the Ledger series. I use Mycelium for regular pocket money. I use a Ledger Unplugged connected to Mycelium for larger amounts of money I want accessible on the go. I also use a Ledger HW.1 connected to Mycelium for even larger amounts stored long term. The last one I have stored in a safe and only take it out when I need it.