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If you received lots of bitcoins, like 100, and you are not comfortable holding them in your personal blockchain wallet, is it preferable to move them and hold them in a paper wallet for safety reasons?

Murch
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letyouearn
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  • You may want to check out this answer on options for holding bitcoin: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/43875/what-options-does-one-have-to-manage-bitcoins/43882#43882 – Jestin Jun 10 '16 at 13:22

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Yes. A paper wallet is basically nothing more than your private key on a piece of paper.

For usability it is often represented as a QR code though. You can make copies of it, and store several of them in different places, or even store half of the key in one location and another half in another. Bitcoins are never in your wallet, paper or otherwise; they are just entries on the blockchain. Your wallet contains only the private key to allow you to spend your entry on the blockchain.

Peter Mortensen
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Erik Goff
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    Also, remember that storing bitcoins in a paper wallet is only as secure as your ability to secretly store a piece of paper. Make sure it's protected from fire, water, and other people's eyes. – Jestin Jun 10 '16 at 13:46
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Yes it is safe. And to be extra safe have 2 copies of it at different locations to get back your bitcoins incase of a disastrer.

playlearn
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Generally, keeping a paper-wallet is safe as offline, it's unable to leak to the internet. Obviously, you need to keep it in a way that it won't be available to visitors as well.
There are options to add a password to paper-wallets, which might help to deter casual discoverers.

Previously unmentioned: You need to make sure that you create the paper wallet in a safe fashion! If your computer were already malware ridden when you create the paper-wallet obviously the paper-wallet wouldn't be a safe storage either.

Murch
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  • not only that, but using tools like https://tools.bitcoin.com/paper-wallet/ can seem safe while you are putting 100% trust into website owner that they did not save the private key generated and / or are not infected themselves. beware of online paper wallet generators. – michnovka Jul 03 '17 at 02:55
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It's safe, but I would suggest not let anyone know it's a paper wallet. And don't hide it in safes and all, because people won't usually even know it's a wallet in your home.

Peter Mortensen
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Ben Agg
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