Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Merits 12 from 2 users
Re: Making paper wallets.
by
Forsyth Jones
on 17/02/2025, 23:14:34 UTC
⭐ Merited by LoyceV (6) ,vapourminer (6)
I like paper wallets because of how easy it is to add heavy encryption (BIP38). I'm still working on a project to use that on seed words (BIP39).
I'm curious and would like to try it as soon as you can make it available for testing. Although there are already tools that encrypt the recovery seed, like Seed-XOR (which I won't go into detail about now), it's always good to test new tools to make our Bitcoin more secure.

@OP, again emphasizing what other members have said here, the recovery seed from Electrum or a wallet that uses another protocol (BIP-39) is the only thing you will need to restore your wallet with your funds. Writing down a list of 12 familiar words that we’ve been accustomed to since kindergarten is much easier than noting down a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters followed by numbers.

Keep in mind that writing down a single character incorrectly or mixing up the order when noting a 52-character private key can give you a huge headache if you need to recover it. Of course, it’s possible to recover if you’ve only made a few mistakes, but it’s not worth the trouble.

If you still want to save your private keys for the addresses, Electrum can export a list of private keys in the menu: Wallet > Private Keys (it will ask you to enter your password encryption wallet if you’ve set one up), and Electrum will list all the private keys for your receiving and change addresses (there will be about 30 addresses in total).

If you want it to export more, you’ll have to increase the gap_limit via the console, but again... is this really necessary for you?

You’ll have another concern, which is encrypting the dump file of private keys that Electrum will create. You’ll need to decide which encryption software to use because you can’t simply store the file Electrum generates on your computer or USB drive without encryption, since it is generated without encryption, and you’ll be exposed to the risk of theft by malware or anyone who has access to this file.

For this reason, it’s much more practical and safer for you to just write down the initial list of 12 words that Electrum generates when setting up your wallet and store it in a secure location, never online, such as in a notepad .txt file, email, etc.

When you import the recovery seed generated by Electrum into another wallet, like Bluewallet (the only one compatible with Electrum seed version), it will generate EXACTLY the same receiving and change addresses, without the need to use each private key from one of your addresses.

Although Electrum works online, it’s recommended that you generate your seed on an offline, air-gapped device (without internet connection, usually an old laptop that you won’t use for anything else or connect to the internet). This offline computer will only be used to sign transactions, and on the online computer, you’ll only import the master public key to view and monitor your balances... and to receive of course.