Jump to: , A brainwallet refers to the concept of storing Bitcoins in one's own mind by memorizing a mnemonic recovery seed.If the mnemonic is not recorded anywhere, the Bitcoins can be thought of as being held only in the mind of the owner.If a brainwallet is forgotten or the person dies or is permanently incapacitated, the Bitcoins are lost forever.Using techniques like memory pegging allow them to be memorized and recalled easily.To create a brainwallet, use Bitcoin wallet software to generate a mnemonic seed and then memorize it.Such seeds are generated by wallets like Electrum, Armory and Mycelium.Contents 1 2 3 To memorize a mnemonic seed with this method you must invent a story which hits the words as "keynotes".Try to make it like a fairy tale story, use imagery.Make it somehow striking and emotionally resonant.When remembering you just remember the key words, not all the other words - the other can be remembered more as images and thoughts (which are hard to write down) Let's say we have this seed: You'd imagine walking through a building familiar to you, maybe your own home or workplace or school.

Repeat this story in your head several times over a short period - the first few days.It will sink in, deep, after that.You'll only have to revisit it very occasionally.After a while you can ignore it for months and it'll still come back, not that I'd recommend relying on that.From the BBC documentary The Human Mind (2003) by Professor Robert Winston.Approximately 31 minutes in.Memorizing a list of 30 random words.Despite the memory aids, human memory can be very fallible.So if your only storage is memory you may find that it just vanished one day.Keeping a copy stored on paper somewhere could be a useful backup, depending on circumstances.An early old-style brainwallet was created by by memorization of a passphrase and converting it a private key with a hashing or key derivation algorithm (example: SHA256).That private key is then used to compute a Bitcoin address.This method was found to be very insecure and should not be used.Humans are not a good source of entropy.Using a single address also has problems associated with address reuse.

Practically everyone who knows about or cares loudly yells at people DO NOT USE BRAINWALLETS [GENERATED BY HUMANS].We've seen pretty concrete evidence that users are resistant to good advice in this space, and they are shocked when their favorite quotation is cracked and they lose their coins (But it was 60 characters long!I even added a special character!how is this possible?!), the existing sites promoting this stuff won't use a KDF stronger than SHA256*1 because "users are stupid if they use weak passwords".[1] Ryan Castellucci gave a talk at DEFCON23 about cracking brainwallet passphrases.Although brainwallet passphrases were being exploited for years by this point, the talk helped bring the issues to more popular consciousness.[2][3][4]/ contains a GUI for generating the private key using the sha256(passphrase) algorithm.It's highly recommended you move the out as soon as you can.A brain wallet is a standard wallet that generates its address by hashing a passphrase to create a private key and therefore a public key and resultant address.

Seeing as a Bitcoin or a Litecoin address is usually a 256 bit string – the SHA-256 algorithm is usually used – although various levels of complexity can be added to this.psu for bitcoin mining and generate the private and public litecoin key pair shown below.bitcoin is a ponzi schemeBrain Wallets have a significant disadvantage that means they have a higher probability of being hacked.bitcoin calculator iosThat is that us humans are pretty predictable in what we use as a passphrase and password, and hacking technology has got a lot better through the use of rainbow tables and dictionary attacks.bitcoin founder killedAlso a few large databases of passwords have been leaked meaning so it is quite easy to hash all these passwords and then see if their corresponding address exists as an active address on the blockchain – if so you have the private key and therefore access to the funds.how to post on bitcointalk

A simple technique is using a hashing functions number of times over so that the hacker will have to guess both the hashing function and the number of times it was applied to a particular password.bitcoin bazaarThis is called key stretching.backing up bitcoin-qtSome tests have been done where simple passwords have been used and deposited with funds – they have been quickly stolen – also, reportedly, one Bitcoin user lost 4 BTC from his wallet after using a brain wallet private key generated from an unknown Afrikaans poem – proving that the complexity of some rainbow tables and dictionary attack programs are extremely sophisticated.bitcoin reward calculatorFor those CoinDesk readers who have started trading with Bitcoin, there is the inevitable concern of how to protect ones' wallet.bitcoin carding tutorial

The so-called wallet is a simple data file that contains a set of Bitcoin (or insert your preferred currency here) addresses.That's all you need to keep your Ecoins with you.The block chain is copied to every single client has a list of every single transaction and balance for your given currency, e.g.The security of the wallet depends on the security of your computer or smartphone.What if you could embed your money inside your mind?We explain how to create a brain wallet.The problem with Bitcoin wallets, is that the receiving addresses are difficult to remember, so you need to keep a record of them.If that record is lost, you won't remember them, and when gone all the money is gone with them.That's why it's imperative to keep it back up.Duplication isn’t a problem because the addresses are unique and are all kept up to date via the block chain.Even using different clients works well because all transactions, and thus balances, are synchronised via the universal block chain for your chosen currency.

Because of the ubiquity of the of the block chain, a public ledger which every virtual currency requires, transactions are globally in sync with every user of a given currency.The only benefit of so-called "cloud wallets" is that your addresses are backed up and synchronised across devices.Sure, the cloud services (e.g.Coinbase) will handle the transactions for you and so your multi-device experience should be faster because they  are not synchronising with the block chain, but with a summary of your cloud-based wallet.As stated above, if you lose access to your wallet you have lost your bitcoins.Also, if your wallet is not encrypted or if someone gains access to your bitcoin client, your funds can be easily misappropriated.Because the private key to each address must be used to prove you are you in a transaction is included, and someone could put in one of their addresses as a recipient and send from your client.One way to keep your wallet from being accidentally deleted, or emptied by an intruder is to keep the details of the account stored purely in your mind.

Now of course, a bitcoin address along with the accompanying public and private keys are far too much for the average person to remember.Fortunately, all of those numbers can be calculated from a single pass phrase (i.e.If you can think of a strong phrase, and jumble it up with deliberate misspellings and substitute some letters for visually similar numbers or symbols, you then have a highly secure system.The only problem you then face is law enforcement or criminals compelling you to give up your passphrase.In this case, you might be able to get away with creating a dummy pass phrase to an address that you already have some bitcoins on.However, due to the block chain, whoever is forcing you to divulge your pass phrase may know you are lying.However, in most cases the legal precedents are still being set for whether you are required to give up a key to law enforcement.In the US,  it's still being debated on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment.The Silk Road case is very interesting in this regard.

To reemphasise, the pass phrase needs to be long and difficult to guess.For example, "coyn Desk is th3 mo$t !ncredible bl0G in teh werld".Here, I've gone for phonetics, character substitutions and misspellings.Importantly though, I've used them inconsistently.If you want multiple addresses to build up your wallet, simply put a description or number index at the end of the passphrase.Once you have something you will be able to remember, you need to generate the address and keys.It allows you to reconstruct from not just the pass phrase, but also from its SHA 256 digest or the original private key.Once you can generate your bitcoin address from your passphrase you'll need to put it to use.If you are completing a transaction in your browser, you can just paste the relevant codes into a form.Alternatively you cold import the wallet back into your bitcoin client.To do this, open bitcoin-qt on your desktop, open the Help menu and select "Debug Window".Then, click on the "Console" tab, and type in Importprivkey [Your private key here without brackets] "The label that you want in quote marks" It will take a while for your client to import the data as it has to trace the bitcoin address back through the complete block chain to obtain the full balance of bitcoins.