Quote from: Chris! on July 03, 2019, 09:57:01 PM

Isn't that wiki article just horrible? I've always used a "paper" wallet, stored it properly and never had any issues. I do agree that the name should be retired. It's just an offline backup or air-gap generated private key.

You never have to worry about some kid hacking your device with offline private keys. The only risk is physical access or your house burning down. There are many materials out there that won't burn in a house fire. Get creative.

Quote from: whotookmycrypto on June 24, 2019, 05:41:51 AM

OP, you might want to check this article out by Trezor: https://blog.trezor.io/paper-wallets-a-relic-of-the-past-1f711ba82b8c

I wonder why a company selling hardware wallets wouldn't want people storing their funds more securely, and for free Grin

. Strange /s

Chris... I appreciate your replies. And you seem to have a good handle on this subject. So I am now at a point where I want to ask another question. This is regarding the private key.
Is there any discernable pattern in a private key? I am assuming no based on what I know about them.

So my question is. Would it be obvious to a person if a couple of the characters in a private key were swapped? Let's say for example that I create my paper wallet. I have nosy relatives that I don't trust. So I swap the 13th and 27th characters around. A simple swap. I then pound the characters into my crypto steel plate and put it into my top desk drawer for safe keeping. Fast forward to Thanksgiving and one of my nosy relatives sneaks into my study and finds the plate. He photographs it with his smart phone and later after getting back home attempts to sweep the public address into his own wallet. The problem is he get's an error message (I'm assuming he would either get an error message or the notification that there is no bitcoins to be swept) saying wrong private key or maybe he just gets a message saying there are no bitcoins. Of course he sees them in the public address so he knows they are there. Could he at that point realizing I mixed up the private key figure out how to unscramble it? Would there be a way for a good hacker to do that? It is my understanding that it would not be possible. But I want to be sure. Would there be a way for them to determine that the key is good up through the first 12 characters? Then realizing Character 13 is bad could they somehow run some kind of key hacking software to figure out what Character 13 should be? Is swapping just 2 characters around in a private key enough? Or should I swap 4 or 6? Obviously the more I mix it up the harder it would be to hack it but I don't want to make it impossible for me to unscramble either. I'm assuming a thief wouldn't really have a clue what to do if the private key does not work. They wouldn't even know that it was almost correct would they? My original intent was to save the addresses separately from the keys and have a system for marrying them up. But I like this idea better. Partly because it looks like a normal paper wallet. And I myself can certainly sweep the contents of it whenever I please. I might leave a paragraph in my will on how to decode these for my children on the off chance I don't spend all of them before I die.

Anyway, I appreciate your time in reading this and would like your thoughts on it.

Thanks Chris!

The Digital Man