Ethereum Sign up or log in to customize your list._ Here's how it works: Anybody can ask a question Anybody can answer The best answers are voted up and rise to the top up vote 5 down vote favorite 1 Some wallets for Bitcoin and Ethereum will give you a list of about 15 words to write down instead of giving you a private key.From what I understand, the list of words is derived from the key, and can be used to recreate it.The question I have, is basically whether or not ALL (or virtually all) implementations of this system are compatible.Imagine I try to recover my wallet using the seed years later on a totally different wallet.Can I be confident it will work.Are all seed mnemonics using the exact same math, and will they likely continue with the same scheme (or a backwards compatible one) decades from now?paper-wallets brain-wallets hd-wallets up vote 5 down vote There are several bitcoin standards related to creating keys from mnemonic seeds.

BIP 39 for making mnemonics to create a seed: /bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki BIP 32 for deriving keys from that seed: /bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki However, not all clients use all these standards (eg Electrum's mnemonic implementation is different - I think it pre-dates the standard and the developers weren't really happy with the standard) and there's a little bit of room for different ways of implementing things even if you're trying to follow it; For example, a wallet is allowed to have different derivation paths for different "accounts", but it doesn't have to.So no, you can't quite be confident your seed will still work as is on an arbitrary future wallet, although it might.But if there's a lot of money in there it should be possible to dig out the way the old wallet was doing the thing and re-implement enough of it to get your private keys out.Your Answer Sign up or log in Sign up using Google Sign up using Email and Password Post as a guest Name Email discard By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for?Browse other questions tagged paper-wallets brain-wallets hd-wallets or ask your own question.bitcoin usb rigBitKey is a bootable system image based on Debian containing everything you need to perform highly secure air-gapped Bitcoin transactions.litecoin ownerYou don't need to install it to a hard drive because it runs live from RAM.ethereum tutorial videoYou just write the ISO image to a USB drive or burn it to CDROM.bitcoin wiki hindiUnder the hood it contains a swiss army knife of handy Bitcoin tools that support a wide range of usage models, including a few very secure ones which would otherwise be difficult to perform.litecoin difficulty schedule

We created BitKey because we wanted something like it for our own use.We're avid Bitcoin fans but after going to our first local Bitcoin meetup we discovered the elephant in the room was that there was no easy way to perform cold storage Bitcoin transactions where the wallet lives on an air-gapped system physically disconnected from the Internet.litecoin mining with macThe idea was to see if we could use the TurnKey GNU/Linux build system to create a self-contained read-only CD/USB stick with everything you need to perform Bitcoin transactions with as much security as you wanted - including highly secure air-gapped Bitcoin transactions.bitcoin cours du jourWe've documented several common use cases right on this website's usage section.bitcoin atm london locations

Click on the various boot modes for instructions.Air-gapped systems raise the bar because they are physically prevented from communicating with the Internet.xapo bitcoin accountThat prevents an attacker that doesn't have physical access from actively attacking the computer and/or remote controlling it.But like all other security measures air-gaps are no silver bullet, especially when you don't trust the system behind the air-gap.There are many ways an evil air-gapped system can betray its user, including creating bad transactions and smuggling out secret keys via covert channel (e.g., USB keys, high frequency sound, covert activation of Bluetooth/wifi chipset, etc.)Not if you don't want to, or if you just don't need the extra security.BitKey also works online in two modes: cold-online and hot-online.See the usage section for details.At one extreme, using BitKey in just the right way is currently the closest you can get to perfectly secure Bitcoin transactions (without doing them in your head).

Even when you use BitKey in the most insecure mode possible (e.g., hot-online) it still provides better security than 99% of Bitcoin users are getting from their web wallets and Bitcoin phone apps.If the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin from the Bitcoin exchanges has left you, like us, with a healthy sense of paranoia, then you'll want to use BitKey in the most secure way possible in which case nobody in the world is getting better security for their Bitcoin transactions.In terms of pricing and availability, BitKey is free and runs on ubiquitous general purpose computers.In terms of security, it can provide equivalent or better security than a hardware wallet, depending on how you use it.In terms of convenience it's hard to beat a hardware wallet.Using BitKey to implement the most paranoid, trust-minimized workflows provides superior security at the price of not being as easy to use.For an in-depth analysis, read the discussion with Trezor developer Tomas Dzetkulic (better security than Trezor?)

and judge the pros and cons for yourself.Not if you're careful.In fact, if you have reason to worry we encourage you not to trust BitKey.In the words of our dear leader: trusted third parties are a security hole.As a Bitcoin swiss army knife BitKey supports many usage models.What's interesting is that this includes at least one use case which doesn't require you to trust BitKey at all.We call it the If I tell you I'll have to kill you usage model.It provides almost perfect security even if BitKey itself is rotten to the core.Also, if you don't trust the binary version, you can always build BitKey from source.We understand that people routinely trade off security for convenience, otherwise they wouldn't get anything done.We recognize that there is an inescapable trade off between convenience and security and that risk is proportional to the value of your wallet.So it doesn't make sense to enforce any specific trade off.We want BitKey to help make the most paranoid usage model practical for day to day use but at the same time, we want to let the user decide how high (or low) to raise the bar.