I am a very cautious person by nature and i even worry about things like somebody possibly guessing my seed word correctly. Is this a far remote possibility given such enormous number of possible permutations? Is this essentially as impossible as guessing someones private keys or breaking an aes 256 encryption? I have heard stories like some wallets like Jaxx getting hacked just by hackers cracking the seed words correctly and stealing coins without even having any contact with the owners computer. As i understand, ledgers have seed words too. How are they different from Jaxxs and are they 100% safe?
I'm not sure what the Jaxx problem was (have not read anything about it) but when these old wallets that are tested for many years like electrum or ledger in case it uses seed, are using seeds you can consider them safe because in case there were any bugs they are already found so you can be pretty confident about using them. Jaxx is somewhat new...
Thanks. My understanding of the paper wallet is that they are safe when storing but inconvenient and vulnerable when trying to use. For example, i heard one way to use btc paper wallet is by typing in the private keys into a blockchain.info wallet. If your computer is hacked, wouldnt this be a huge risk? This makes me think a hardware wallet is the safest method of storage and usage but still not sure that is foolproof.
paper wallet is for cold storage that you don't want to access every day! for example if you want to become a long term hodler to keep bitcoin for more than a year.
also in risks are always in how you use the private key. blockchain.info is one way which is not even good. you can still use an offline setup to do this. here are the steps:
1. choose a method to create an unsigned raw transaction (use core, electrum or even coinb.in website). you only need your bitcoin address for this.
2. download Linux, and burn the ISO on a DVD/DC/USB and then disconnect network and boot into Linux
3. install a wallet that allows you to import keys (nearly all of them). now import your paper wallet key there and sign that unsigned tx.
4. go back online on your main OS and broadcast this.
there is a step 0 too which you have to create a new paper wallet in case there is any change (leftover after spending) to send to that new paper wallet address.