Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: Garrincha on August 31, 2013, 07:31 pm
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Is it a bad idea to use your SR account as your main BTC wallet? That's what i've been doing so far, but given the nature of SRs' marketplace, there are always going to be doubts over its long-term future and general security levels. Is it best to get an offline wallet and just transfer funds as and when it is necessary?
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Some potential issues with having SR as your main BTC wallet:
1. SR downtime means not having access to your funds
2. Phishing attacks. If you choose to use SR as your main wallet, be very careful to NEVER give out your PIN, and always double check the URL. (Its best to just memorize it)
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there's always that thought that the feds might shut down sr at some point. i can't imagine we'll get any warning if it does so any coin in your sr account is gonna be lost. my bet, the feds would rob the lot.
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I don't think it's a good idea to use SR as your main wallet. When I've made my purchases and I know I won't be buying anything else for quite some time I transfer the leftover coins to a different wallet, it just feels better.
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Yeah, those were my thoughts really. Is it advisable to use another online wallet, or is it best to use an offline one?
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if i use an offline wallet, like on my laptop, i'm guessing if the hd fucks up then i've lost my coin also?
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Not a good idea at all - someone broke into my account and emptied my funds last week. Lucky I had only 1 BTC but I kept it for like 2 weeks in the account - too much time. I don't know how did this happen because I haven't opened any Atlantis account with the same password and user and didn't log in from fake SR address... >:(
Always use a private offline wallet and then, when you want to buy just transfer the BTC into SR. That's the lesson I've learned today.
Stay safe everybody,
BPM
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if i use an offline wallet, like on my laptop, i'm guessing if the hd fucks up then i've lost my coin also?
Use Armory, print a paper backup. Simple
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Besides what's been posted, I find it important to be able to jump ship quickly if BTC crashes again, storing coin in SR adds a step of abstraction to cashing out. However when I do store them here, it's no biggie, especially because I've added a backup address in settings which you should do if you haven't allready
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I don't mean to sound like a total noob, but I didn't know about offline wallets. I really like the sound of them. Can anyone tell me more about them? How easy it to transfer between the two? What's a good one to have? How exactly does it work?
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I don't mean to sound like a total noob, but I didn't know about offline wallets. I really like the sound of them. Can anyone tell me more about them? How easy it to transfer between the two? What's a good one to have? How exactly does it work?
Do you know about PGP? It's a similar process, except your BTC address acts like a public key, and the private key is only accessible to you (hopefully) and is used to allow you to spend bitcoins. So a barebones offline wallet is just a copy of your private key. You can still recieve transactions, as you still have the private key to "unlock" the funds, but with your private key not available to a networked pc, you won't be able to send anything.
The simplest way if you are using the official bitcoin client, and simple move your wallet.dat file contianing private keys, transaction details etc to a usb. Unfortunately the blockchain the official client needs is several GB so it's not very worthwhile to download it just for this.
You could use an online service like the popular blockchain.info. They have several options for storing a wallet offline, like printing it to paper or exporting it unencrypted. https://blockchain.info/wallet/backups
The idea is you export the private key, and when you want to access the funds simply import it back to wherever you exported it from.
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is it technically possible for DRP to run off with all out coins? dont think he'd do that... just asking possible
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A good 'offline' wallet is multibit. Does not require 12GB of the blockchain to be downloaded. Has all sort of backup methods. The Bitcoin-qt wallet is an obnoxious resource sucking pig.
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wohoo... or government seizing all out coins. would even be worst than admin running off.... since seizing of SR is an actual possibility, we all should keep as little coins in here as possible.
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I do use PGP, thank you for the explanation, that actually made a lot of sense.
And thanks for the suggestion, I will definitely check it out!
Thanks everyone.
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Yes, thanks to everyone for their advice, and commiserations to the guy who had his funds nicked.
Are there any other offline wallets that people would recommend?
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I keep up to $500 USD in BTC in my SR wallet ($1-2K if I get a lot of finalized orders at once), which I can manage a week without access to. I would suggest only using it for quick transitions if you're a seller and don't keep a balance that you will be very pissed off to be without should the site experience a couple days of downtime.
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Another reason to not use your SR wallet is that sent coins don't come from your SR BTC address. What this means is if you send coins to someone for something, and they end up having to send some coins back, they won't come back to your SR wallet.