New Paper Wallet Videos Launched

Hi everyone,

This project has been going on behind the scenes in the marketing forums for a couple weeks now, and I’m pleased to bring forward the finished work today. We now have two new informational videos covering the use of Peercoin paper wallets.

Paper Wallet Overview (why to use paper wallets): http://youtu.be/lybAGSH2VkI
Paper Wallet Walkthrough (how to use paper wallets): http://youtu.be/p78Xp6qEpU4

Enjoy!

Thanks Chronos, I spread the videos around for you on social media.

added links to http://wallet.peercointalk.org/ thanks again for the videos, anything clever we can do with offering subtitles for different languages?

Fuzzybear

Thanks Chronos for continuing to create these clear and informative videos.

I do see one small error in the Walkthrough video. At around 3:45 you state that the Peerunity option to “Unlock Wallet for Miniting Only” is sufficient for importing private keys. This is not true. The mintonly parameter only allows signing POS. You can’t import keys or create new addresses in that mode.

Also, I tend to disagree with the notion of using a GUID (or any un-memorizable long string) for BIP38 encryption of the private key. This does not offer any true security advantage beyond a thin layer of obfuscation. A thief will be interested in any random characters found stored in a safe, etc. I would rather recommend a unique phrase or formula that can be stored only in the mind.

Ah, thanks for catching this. I actually didn’t know this. Fortunately, when the user sees the error message, they’ll continue by trying the walletpassphrase step shown in the video, so it shouldn’t be a major problem for viewers.

A GUID has its own strengths and weaknesses, to be sure. For extra security, you could keep the paper with the GUID in a different location than that of the paper wallet. I agree with your criticism, but it’s hard to cover the wide variety of security options in a video that’s meant to be a walkthrough.

Fuzzybear, I went ahead and wrote the captioning for the overview video free of charge, to explore YouTube’s features for subtitle translation. This was a time-consuming process, and was much more difficult than I expected, so it’s not something that will automatically be included with future videos. However, now that it’s done, YouTube will automatically translate into a huge variety of languages! (Click the gear, then Subtitles/CC, then Translate Captions.)

If anyone wants to write a specific translation, I’ve included the English transcript below. Simply replace the text with your translated text, and PM me the result, and I’ll integrate it in the video. Thanks!

0:00:00.660,0:00:04.380 Hi, this is Chronos, with a video on Peercoin paper wallets.

0:00:04.380,0:00:07.960
Paper wallets are a great way to store cryptocurrencies for a long time,

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while minimizing the risk that they will be lost or stolen.

0:00:10.860,0:00:14.755
They have some limitations, though, and we will cover some of those in this video.

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If you are looking for how to create and use paper wallets,

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I have put together a separate video walkthrough on that,

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and you can jump to it by clicking the link in the video description.

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In this video, we will cover advantages and disadvantages of paper wallets,

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plus the best practices you should follow when using them.

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Let us get started.

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First, let us talk about some of the limitations of paper wallets.

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One paper wallet will store just one Peercoin address.

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It is recommended to use a separate address for each transaction,

0:00:45.854,0:00:50.734
so that someone you send Peercoins to cannot link that back to other transactions you have made

0:00:50.734,0:00:52.493
on the Peercoin blockchain.

0:00:52.493,0:00:54.660
If you want to do this with paper wallets,

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you would need a lot of paper wallets,

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and your life would get complicated quickly.

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Also, when you go to import paper wallets into your computer,

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you have to import the entire wallet. You cannot import just a few of the Peercoins on your wallet.

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So paper wallets are better for large transactions, and very rare ones,

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rather than day-to-day transactions.

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Another limitation is that in-person transactions are not very possible with paper wallets.

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If you meet someone in person to do a transaction,

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and you hand them a paper wallet,

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they do not know if you are keeping a copy of the private key that is written on that wallet

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separately, somewhere at home, or with a friend,

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so they do not know if you are really giving them the Peercoins.

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You could be secretly spending the Peercoins on that paper wallet at the same time that you are giving them.

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That means that paper wallets cannot really be used as a bill.

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You cannot use a paper wallet like a 5-Peercoin bill, for example, as you are giving it to someone.

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They are not meant to be used as transactions, but rather, as a way to store Peercoins for a long period of time.

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Now, let us look at some of the advantages of paper wallets in doing just that.

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First, paper lasts a long time.

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A piece of a paper will last maybe a couple hundred years.

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It will turn yellow and start to curl up,

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but you could read the QR code or read the private key off of that Peercoin paper for a long, long time.

0:02:13.055,0:02:16.774
Compare that to a hard drive, which will last maybe 20 or 30 years,

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or a CD which wears out in 10 or 20 years

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even a flash drive, a lot of people do not know this, a flash drive might last just 5 or 10 years,

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and it wears out quicker if you use it more often.

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I had a flash drive once. It only stored 128 megabytes, that tells you how old it was.

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I put it in my computer recently, and it was blank.

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The problem is, it was not supposed to be blank!

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It got so old, it forgot everything that was stored on it.

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You do not want that to happen to your Peercoins.

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By using a paper wallet, you put your Peercoins on a medium

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that is going to last longer than most digital options that are out there today.

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Another advantage is that it is a lot of fun to give something physical when you are giving Peercoins.

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I recently gave 10 Peercoins to a friend,

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and it was worth 15 dollars at the time (it has since lost value, but we will not talk about that),

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but it was a lot of fun to write a message on the back of the wallet, wrap it up, and hand it to them.

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It is just not the same thing to write them an e-mail and say,

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Hey, what is your Peercoin address? I would like to pay you some Peercoins.

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It is nice to make Peercoins physical, and paper wallets are a fun and cheap way to do that.

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You could also buy physical Peercoins, with the private key stored inside of them,

0:03:24.520,0:03:26.300
but that is a little bit more expensive.

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It is very easy to print out your own paper wallet, and make something homemade,

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which is fun to give as a gift.

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Now let us talk about some of the best practices you should follow when using Peercoin paper wallets.

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First, keep them away from cameras!

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If you are creating a video, or doing video-conferencing, like I am doing now,

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and you have your paper wallet in the background,

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say, right here next to this interesting MacBook I have behind me,

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well, if that were a Peercoin paper wallet, and you could see the QR code on it,

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then anyone watching this video could spend the Peercoins without my knowledge.

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So you have to keep them very carefully away from cameras.

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This means, do not keep a Peercoin paper wallet in your wallet, for example,

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because if you open up your wallet at the grocery store to use your credit card to buy groceries,

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the security camera in the grocery store might see your QR code.

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Now it is pretty farfetched to say that someone is going to review the security tape,

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and see the QR code, and spend your Peercoins,

0:04:22.815,0:04:28.813
but still, as a best practice, you should keep your Peercoin paper wallet far from cameras.

0:04:29.180,0:04:34.940
Secondly, it is a good idea to encrypt your paper wallet with what is called BIP38 encryption.

0:04:34.940,0:04:40.980
That is a way that you can encrypt the private key, so that if the paper wallet is stolen or seen by a camera,

0:04:40.980,0:04:46.360
the receiver cannot spend the Peercoins unless they know the pass phrase that was used to encrypt it.

0:04:46.360,0:04:49.560
Again, if you are interested in how to use these tools,

0:04:49.560,0:04:53.114
you can jump down and check out the video description,

0:04:53.114,0:04:56.980
where you can see a link to a video I put together on exactly how to create paper wallets

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and how to use BIP38 encryption to encrypt your paper wallets.

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Well, that is everything I have got. There is not much to it.

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Like I said, jump over to the other video for how to exactly create a paper wallet. They are a lot of fun to play around with.

0:05:09.500,0:05:12.480
Even if you have just a little bit of money in Peercoins,

0:05:12.480,0:05:16.734
it is still fun to put some on a paper wallet, and give to a friend. Try it out!

0:05:16.734,0:05:20.765
Let me know if you have any questions. You can post in the video comments below the video.

0:05:20.765,0:05:24.314
Or head over to the forums at http://peercointalk.org. We would love to hear from you.

0:05:24.314,0:05:26.360
I am Chronos. Thanks for watching!

Chronos:
Well done on the two new videos. Glad you mentioned about the bit about disconnecting the internet - as you say, the threat of attack is unlikely, but better safe than sorry. Good point also about the temporary memory of flash drives

Fuzzy:
The links to the videos on wallet.peercointalk.org might be missed at the bottom - can you re-position them, so they are at the top of the text box? (i.e. above the words, “A Peercoin wallet is as simple as a single pairing …”)

I would adjust the link descriptions to:
Overview Video - why to use paper wallets
Walkthrough Video - how to use paper wallets

The whole security part was quite good. I liked the fact you mentioned that generated paper wallets should stay away from cameras.

On a side note, I wouldn’t recommend the use of UDIDs for the BIP38 passphrase as the charset is very restricted and the format unique. Proper password generators exist (i.e. https://lastpass.com/generatepassword.php).

Good point. Upon further research, I see GUIDs aren’t recommended over passwords, in general. They don’t have the full 128 bits of entropy when generated through a website in this way.

That said, it’s still pretty much impossible to guess them. :wink:

[quote=“Chronos, post:8, topic:3074”]Good point. Upon further research, I see GUIDs aren’t recommended over passwords, in general. They don’t have the full 128 bits of entropy when generated through a website in this way.

That said, it’s still pretty much impossible to guess them. ;)[/quote]

Indeed, thanks to BIP38 which is very slow down to brute force :).

French translation submitted for the video.

Translation is now added to the video. Nice work. Thank you very much!

[quote=“RobertLloyd, post:6, topic:3074”]Fuzzy:
The links to the videos on wallet.peercointalk.org might be missed at the bottom - can you re-position them, so they are at the top of the text box? (i.e. above the words, “A Peercoin wallet is as simple as a single pairing …”)

I would adjust the link descriptions to:
Overview Video - why to use paper wallets
Walkthrough Video - how to use paper wallets[/quote]
Thanks for the feedback, I’ve updated the code.

I put it in the footer as this is shown on every page when you click the different types of wallets, but agreed people should see these as the first thing so I have added them above the text where you suggested to.

Fuzzybear