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Comment by sanswork | Hacker News Reader

>It's possible to store Bitcoin on sheets of paper

The process for making a secure paper wallet is far from convenient and brain wallets are about the worst possible way to store bitcoin and are far from safe and secure. If you're going to get some please do not use a brain wallet.

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Numerous wallets make it dead simple to create a paper wallet. With Electrum, you just open the program and it automatically generates 12 words which you can write down on paper or learn by heart. It doesn't get much easier than that, and it's perfectly safe and secure to do.

> It doesn't get much easier than that

I think a lot of people would argue that sticking with their current system (banks, fiat currency, etc) is, in fact, much easier than that.

They are more familiar with the current system, but after you have done it for the first time, you realise that electrum is actually way easier than banks. People just think its harder, but it is not really.

It's only easier if you ignore the part where you have to get bitcoin in the first place.

All the examples of "see Bitcoin isn't hard, here is $0.0005 worth" completely gloss over this point.

That's no fault of Bitcoin, however. Getting USD isn't magically easy either.

Sure it is. You can sit on a street corner and people will literally hand you physical cash. It doesn't get any easier than that.

Someone merely held a Bitcoin address sign on TV and received coins from all over the world: http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/1/5163926/one-college-footba... How awesome is that? It sure beats the reach of sitting on a street corner...

Oh? Something tells me I can't write a Bitcoin address on my direct deposit form.

Seriously, the interface provided by Citibank is pretty freaking great. I work, I swipe my credit card places. As long as I do the former more than the latter, I don't need to touch anything else. Also every few months I accumulate enough points to buy something on Amazon for $50-$100 for free.

Bitcoin could be even better if I got paid in Bitcoin and could pay people in Bitcoin, but I can't.

I had to physically go to a bank and talk to people to set up my bank account. I don't see how that can be considered more convenient than spending 5 minutes on a website.

How does spending 5 minutes on a website get you bitcoin without having already gone to a bank and talked to people?

Localbitcoins.com, buy with cash

I don't see how you think that avoids you needing to go see people in person which was the claim of the person I replied to.

Dead simple but no more secure than just storing the file encrypted on your computer.

Electrum is great and if you write down the words thats fine. If you try to memorize them without a backup there are a lot of events that can happen in your life that will lead to the total loss of your coins.

Agreed. I'm looking for a LiveCD style paper-waller generator, do you know of one?

I don't use paper wallets myself but any barebones linux bootcd/usb with https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org and BIP38 selected is the route I see most recommended.

Very convenient!

If you know what you are doing, brain wallets are very safe. However, if you don't, you might easily make a disastrous mistake. The casual user should not store coins in a brainwallet, but they can be quite useful.

If you know what you are doing you can get enough entropy that is true but there is still a lot of things that can happy in your life that will affect your memory but not be life ending. In those cases without a backup you'll lose your coins.

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