Post
Topic
Board Wallet software
Re: Safest cold storage options currently
by
bob123
on 07/08/2019, 07:22:02 UTC
The solution to a $5 wrench attack, and other similar attacks involving physical force to you as a person is to keep a small number of coin associated with a BIP 39 seed with the passphrase/last seed word being something different than the passphrase that secures the majority of your coin. This will allow you to give something to the attacker while both preserving a portion of your coin and maintaining your safety.

Well, but this is only possible if either 1) the person attacking you doesn't know the magnitude of BTC's you own or 2) you have an amount large enough accessible without the passphrase.

If an attacker knows (e.g. because you are telling everyone, or because you are some known person in the community) that you own about X - Y bitcoins, he won't be happy with seeing 1/10 X or even less of that in your non-password protected wallet.
I mean.. you might be able to deceive attacker which aren't familiar with BTC and wallets, but in any other case it will be pretty obvious that the full amount is protected with an additional password.

This might be useful for plausible deniability regarding a person which doesn't know how much you own, but it won't protect you if he knows how much approximately own.