What is A Paper Wallet? | How to Create a Bitcoin Paper wallet?

Setting up a Paper Wallet

Paper wallet is considered to be the most safe and secure wallet to store your cryptocurrencies.  It is meant for those who are willing to store cryptocurrencies for future.

Paper Wallet is not suitable for day traders who trades/exchanges cryptocurrencies on daily/regular basis.

We discussed about different types of wallets in our previous article including paper wallet.

Here we will discuss about “How to Create a Paper Wallet?”.

But before that, here is a short explaination about “What is a Paper Wallet?”

What is a paper wallet?

Paper wallets are basically an offline cold storage method of storing cryptocurrency. It involves printing out your public and private keys on a paper which you then store and save in a secure place.

The keys are printed in the form of QR codes which you can scan in the future for all your transactions. The reason why it is so safe is that it gives complete control to you, the user. You do not need to worry about the well-being of a piece of hardware, nor do you have to worry about hackers or any piece of malware. You just need to take care of a piece of paper.

Paper wallets are the safest option to store your cryptocurrencies. It is like printing your wallet on a paper and then storing that paper in a safe place.

How to Create a paper wallet?

Paper wallets are created by using a program which randomly  generates the public and private key. The keys will be unique, and the program that generates them is open source.

Those who have knowledge about coding can check the backend of the program themselves to check the randomness in the program

The keys are generated online. This removes the exposure to online threats like hacking, and deleting the simple program after use will destroy any trace of them.

How to Create a Paper wallet for Bitcoin/ Altcoin?

Following are the steps involves in creating/setting up a paper wallet for Bitcoins:

(Click here to read “How to Create Paper Wallet for Ethereum?”)

Step 1. Ensure your computer is entirely free from any form of malicious software. A brand-new computer would be ideal but is often not feasible.

Step 2.Visit the page WalletGenerator.net

Step 3. Download the zip file by clicking here

Step 4. Once the file is downloaded open the “index.html” file but before that make sure that your internet connection is off. This entire process is done to make sure that your wallet is offline and hacker free.

Step 5. Generation of private keys and public keys. Keep hovering over the highlighted text and it will generate more characters. You can also manually type in random characters. Just keep hovering the cursor until the counter goes to “0”

Step 6. Keys will be generated once the counter goes to 0.

Step 7.  Print the page or make multiple copies and laminate it to preserve it for a longer period of time.

Step 8. Delete saved web page history. You can now safely reconnect to the internet.

Step 9. Your paper wallet is ready for use. Store it securely.

The same process can be carried for creating paper wallets for other cryptocurrencies. WalletGenerator.net also supports creating paper wallets for other cryptocurrencies.

Just select your cryptocurrency from the list in the top right corner. The option appers once you complete the cursor hovering process and the counter comes to “0”.

Also Read:“How to Create Paper Wallet for Ethereum?” 

How to Spend Bitcoins/Altcoins stored in Paper Wallet?

You will need to import your private key in a real client, that you can download from the cryptocurrency website.

The exact method to do that will depend on the client.

If there is no integrated method, you can usually fall back to the debug console and use the command “importprivkey [yourprivatekey]“.

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Rohit Kukreja is a Commerce graduate with Financial Markets expertise involving Stocks, Forex, Futures & Options Market and now Bitcoins & Cryptocurrency Markets. Blockchain Enthusiast but not a techie, Rohit is an active member of various Blockchain & Crypto communities all over India.

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