I have some Bitcoin and Ethereum on Coinbase since 2018. Coinbase never failed me, but they ask for more and more personal details. Last requests made me look for alternatives. I read wasabi is one of the best privacy focused wallets, but what do you use? Im not trying to hide anything from goverment or anything like that, I just want safe place for coins that doesnt feel like someone is tracking every single step I make

Edit: made sentence more clear

  • corvus@lemmy.ml
    10·
    9 months ago

    The coins are on the blockchain, what you save in a wallet are the keys to access them.

    Contrary to the common believe you don’t need a hardware wallet to keep your keys safe, what you really need is a air gapped or cold storage and you can achieve this in many ways. I found that one of the best ways to do it is grabbing an old phone and following this guide

    https://medium.com/@fbonomi/a-bitcoin-cold-wallet-based-on-qr-codes-e8c130b3181f

    Tldr: install the wallet and never connect the phone to the internet again and use QR codes to sign transactions using the camera. Super practical, cheap, truly air gapped and doesn’t attract attention like a hardware wallet. Additionally I would disable the wallet app when you don’t use it, so the wallet will not be visible in case someone else grabs the phone (you can do this by installing the app as a system app using adb). And don’t forget to save the seeds of the wallet in safe place and always use fully FOSS wallets like electrum.

    • rambos@lemm.eeOP
      2·
      9 months ago

      Thanks. This looks perfect and I have an old phone that I could use for that. But im bit worried if I dont use wallet for 5 years and then realize the old phone is not working anymore. I can still recover with seeds (12 word backup) right? I guess Im asking the question that has the answer already, but want to be sure

        • makeasnek@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          This is a great idea until you forget whatever trick you used to encode the words onto that page, which becomes more and more likely the longer you store it and don’t look at it. Have fun trying all the combinations for the 250 words you put on the page, if you can even recognize the page in your pile of papers since there’s I’m assuming you don’t have “SEED PHRASE” plastered across it in big letters.