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353 sats \ 1 reply \ @jinformatique 11 Jun 2024 freebie \ on: How to MAKE your own Cold Wallet 🕶️ bitcoin

Hi Natalia,
Thank you for sharing this great post, it's nearly the same example I did when I start self-custody. I'm in IT since 12 yo, and learned about Tails 10 years ago, so creating my hardware wallet was easy. In fact, you can call it "paper wallet".
I'd like to share some tips here to let you know how you can improve this setup to go further on improving your bitcoin security.

  1. Never store your 12 words on digital form, that's bad practise. Even KeePassXC (or any other local password manager). Because at the end of the day, you will do copy/paste of this 12 words, and leave a trace in RAM. Of course the 3 letter agency maybe won't raid your house at this exact time of your wallet setup when you are running TAILS, but there are ways to hot dump all RAM if you leave your computer open for expert in this field. So by not leaving trace of your seed digitaly, you remove this kind of attack, even if it's a rare one, we all agree.
    Better to only write down the 12 words seed on paper, or different notebook to have paper backup.
  2. Instead of Electrum, I decided to go directly with Sparrow Wallet in TAILS. That means, when I prepared my USB stick with TAILS on it, I configure the persistent volume with a password, and downloaded the sparrow wallet .deb file on this persistent volume. This way I can install Sparrow locally on TAILS even offline.
  3. Border Wallets
    This is a great website to learn more about Border Wallets with paper wallet. The website has about 30 pages, it's a quick read, reading pages in the order like a book.
    https://www.borderwallets.com/
    Sparrow Wallet v1.7.4 introduced Border Wallets For Memorizable Seeds.
    https://i.ibb.co/W6dLPH2/borderwallet.png
    BTC Sessions made a great tutoriel video guide here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHQrvCGVkTw
  4. 10x Security Bitcoin Guide
    https://btcguide.github.io/
    This is one awesome guide that recommand to create a Multisig wallet. It talks about paper wallet and other hardware wallet. The principle remains the same, one could follow this guide and use 3 different paper wallet to create a multisig 2-3 for example.
  5. SeedSigner: create an air-gapped DIY Bitcoin Signing Device
    It is by listening to this podcast episode that I learned about the creator of SeedSigner and why he did it. To me, that will be my next challenge, to build one.
    https://thank-god-for-bitcoin.simplecast.com/episodes/seedsigner-on-career-change-digital-forensics-and-bitcoin-digital-defense-r5oqmSqF
    Here is one of a remarkable guide. SeedSigner Independent Custody Guide:
    https://seedsigner.com/seedsigner-independent-custody-guide/

Conclusion
Lots of resources, hope you can bookmark them and take your time to go through and hopefully write other articles mentioning these resources.

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76 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia OP 11 Jun 2024 freebie

thanks! That's part of the points in sharing, getting input for improvements:)

Never store your 12 words on digital form, that's bad practise.

agree! I normally don't store full words anywhere, and making it in a way only I am able to decode. 🤓

Instead of Electrum, I decided to go directly with Sparrow Wallet in TAILS.

I'm going to try install Sparrow Wallet in Tails later tonight!

Border Wallets

interesting, never heard of this, and thanks will check it out.

10x Security Bitcoin Guide
https://btcguide.github.io/
This is one awesome guide that recommand to create a Multisig wallet. It talks about paper wallet and other hardware wallet. The principle remains the same, one could follow this guide and use 3 different paper wallet to create a multisig 2-3 for exemple.

I think Multisig is a bit unnecessary for individuals? (I actually tried it before) why not simply use an extra seed phrase. 👀

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