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Print your private key on paper and lose it all when your house burns down. vs Give your private key to an exchange, and enrich the shitheads running the exch

Print your private key on paper and lose it all when your house burns down. vs Give your private key to an exchange, and enrich the shitheads running the exchange when they run away with your money. First option seems preferable. If you're going to lose your money, better for the money to be truly lost than to enrich a thief.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
8ytecoder 4y ago
Print your key works fine if I’m locking my “money” under a mattress. If the point of Bitcoin I was to replace currency then I’d still need an easy way to keep it close with my all times. So, carry your signed transfer title to your house in the wallet and lose your entire house to a mugging seems more appropriate as an analogy.
andybak 4y ago
> If you're going to lose your money, better for the money to be truly lost than to enrich a thief. I'd quite like an option C
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  Become a goldbug?
nemo44x 4y ago
You could put it in a fireproof safe or a safety deposit box or both.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
horsawlarway 4y ago
Can we acknowledge that both of those options are utter trash compared to conventional banking, though? The system that the crypto advocates hate on, but provides 250k per person + per bank + per account type as insurance by default to all registered financial institutions?
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Abso-fucking-lutely. The best time to not be involved in crypto was always, and the second best time is now. Get out now if you have any sense.
  - nobody9999 4y ago
    >Abso-fucking-lutely. The best time to not be involved in crypto was always, and the second best time is now. Get out now if you have any sense. But I have drugs to buy and cannabis to smoke and joints to roll before I sleep.[0] More seriously, there are use cases for cryptocurrency (smart contracts are a different think, unaddressed here), they're just mostly illegal. Whether that illegality is appropriate or not is another question. That said, there are use cases for cryptocurrency. [0] With apologies to Robert Frost.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      > smart contracts are a different think, unaddressed here Let me address this, then: - they are not smart - they are not contracts - they are programs written in esoteric programming languages running on world's slowest and most inefficient VM - due to esoteric nature their own authors cannot find trivial bugs in their implementations that are exploited at scale which would make any real platform nonviable - cannot be updated or reverted because blockchain - have literally no use outside the virtual imaginary world of crypto - have zero legal standing, and cannot be enforced - in every single case would be more efficient and better served by Visual Basic running on a single Raspberry Pi from a sqlite database.
      - zeroclip 4y ago
alextheghost 4y ago
You do know there are fireproof safes that you can keep in your home right?
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  FYI, there is a world of BS around "fire proof" anything. It's all about the time it's around fire. If your house burns to the ground and collapses in on itself, the extreme majority of fire proof safes, aren't. If the fire dept shows up and it's out in an hour and it wasn't buried, your things will probably be alright. I dealt with a guy's gun collection stored in his $10,000 "fire proof" safe stored in his garage. Almost everything was garbage. Saved a handful of parts here and there.
  - alangibson 4y ago
    Exactly. Given enough time the inside of the safe will be the same temperature as the outside.
    - b112 4y ago
      No, man, it's like insulated and stuff!
alana314 4y ago
Put it on encrypted distributed backup that you control. I don't know why more people don't do this.
- unilynx 4y ago
  How do you manage the keys to this encrypted backup ?
notch656a 4y ago
I'm amazed how many people think the average person can't memorize a 12 word phrase. Most people I know can memorize their social security number, address, at least one if not more passwords, their own phone number as well as the phone number of at least one loved one for emergencies, the DOB of their children and their own DOB. Most of that is a gobligook of numbers rather than words. Absolutely no one needs to be putting a private key on paper in their house, that is insanity. --------------- RE: >The question is if you can reliably remember it in ten or twenty years without ever using it in the interim. I check my bank account daily for fraudulent transactions; it would behoove anyone storing any sizeable amount of value to check/refresh on that daily, however that looks like for your form of storage.
- alasdair_ 4y ago
  >I'm amazed how many people think the average person can't memorize a 12 word phrase. The question is if you can reliably remember it in ten or twenty years without ever using it in the interim.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

8ytecoder 4y ago

Print your key works fine if I’m locking my “money” under a mattress. If the point of Bitcoin I was to replace currency then I’d still need an easy way to keep it close with my all times. So, carry your signed transfer title to your house in the wallet and lose your entire house to a mugging seems more appropriate as an analogy.

andybak 4y ago

> If you're going to lose your money, better for the money to be truly lost than to enrich a thief. I'd quite like an option C

HideousKojima 4y ago
Become a goldbug?

nemo44x 4y ago

You could put it in a fireproof safe or a safety deposit box or both.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

horsawlarway 4y ago

Can we acknowledge that both of those options are utter trash compared to conventional banking, though? The system that the crypto advocates hate on, but provides 250k per person + per bank + per account type as insurance by default to all registered financial institutions?

MichaelCollins 4y ago
Abso-fucking-lutely. The best time to not be involved in crypto was always, and the second best time is now. Get out now if you have any sense.
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >Abso-fucking-lutely. The best time to not be involved in crypto was always, and the second best time is now. Get out now if you have any sense. But I have drugs to buy and cannabis to smoke and joints to roll before I sleep.[0] More seriously, there are use cases for cryptocurrency (smart contracts are a different think, unaddressed here), they're just mostly illegal. Whether that illegality is appropriate or not is another question. That said, there are use cases for cryptocurrency. [0] With apologies to Robert Frost.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > smart contracts are a different think, unaddressed here Let me address this, then: - they are not smart - they are not contracts - they are programs written in esoteric programming languages running on world's slowest and most inefficient VM - due to esoteric nature their own authors cannot find trivial bugs in their implementations that are exploited at scale which would make any real platform nonviable - cannot be updated or reverted because blockchain - have literally no use outside the virtual imaginary world of crypto - have zero legal standing, and cannot be enforced - in every single case would be more efficient and better served by Visual Basic running on a single Raspberry Pi from a sqlite database.
    - zeroclip 4y ago

alextheghost 4y ago

You do know there are fireproof safes that you can keep in your home right?

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
FYI, there is a world of BS around "fire proof" anything. It's all about the time it's around fire. If your house burns to the ground and collapses in on itself, the extreme majority of fire proof safes, aren't. If the fire dept shows up and it's out in an hour and it wasn't buried, your things will probably be alright. I dealt with a guy's gun collection stored in his $10,000 "fire proof" safe stored in his garage. Almost everything was garbage. Saved a handful of parts here and there.
- alangibson 4y ago
  Exactly. Given enough time the inside of the safe will be the same temperature as the outside.
  - b112 4y ago
    No, man, it's like insulated and stuff!

alana314 4y ago

Put it on encrypted distributed backup that you control. I don't know why more people don't do this.

unilynx 4y ago
How do you manage the keys to this encrypted backup ?

notch656a 4y ago

I'm amazed how many people think the average person can't memorize a 12 word phrase. Most people I know can memorize their social security number, address, at least one if not more passwords, their own phone number as well as the phone number of at least one loved one for emergencies, the DOB of their children and their own DOB. Most of that is a gobligook of numbers rather than words. Absolutely no one needs to be putting a private key on paper in their house, that is insanity. --------------- RE: >The question is if you can reliably remember it in ten or twenty years without ever using it in the interim. I check my bank account daily for fraudulent transactions; it would behoove anyone storing any sizeable amount of value to check/refresh on that daily, however that looks like for your form of storage.

alasdair_ 4y ago
>I'm amazed how many people think the average person can't memorize a 12 word phrase. The question is if you can reliably remember it in ten or twenty years without ever using it in the interim.