<p>I followed the instruction for cold-offline in BitKey and created my cold wallet on a USB key with BitKey burned and booted from a CD-ROM. I noted the encryption password and the seed phrase on a paper which I will store in a secure location.</p>
<p>The workflow described on the BitKey website would use cold-online mode for watching the wallet (and preparing transactions).</p>
<p>Now, is there anything wrong in adding the watch-only mode (I think BitKey stores the proper information unencrypted on the USB key) to my normal work PC running Electrum on Win 10?</p>
<p>In my opinion, it shouldn't because no single secret will be exposed. However, I am wondering why the documentation is so keen on emphasizing the workflow with cold-offline and cold-online.</p>
<p>Lastly, I intend to store my Bitcoins for long term. In 10 years I may have forgotten details about the sofware, BitKey may not exist any more, I may not have a CD drive any more, Electrum may be at a completely different version and who knows, it may be hard to import the data.
For that reason I really love the simplistic idea of paperwallets. But individual paperwallets are hard to deal with. Hence I would like to store an export of the public/private key list of my wallet as well. I feel this format will be most barebone and most likely to be importable also in ten years or more (I know that the seed could re-generate them but I hope you get my point).</p>
<p>For backup purposes, I also want to store the AES encrypted contents of the USB key on my NAS. I am thinking of packing the public/private key export into this file as well. Using a very long passphrase and storing it in a KeePass database.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-12T11:09:20.677Z
I don't know BitKey, but is you intend is to store your bitcoin for the long term (10 years) why you don't use an official wallet? such as Bitcoin core and make some backup operation? Bitcoin core born with Bitcoin and it is one of the software that in the next 10 years will be here.
vincenzopalazzo
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-12T11:11:57.237Z
In addition, by the theory, you can change your key with different software, with bitcoin core you can change software and use some other type of software, so I suggest to use this type of software without coupling with the actual implementation, because you don't know what happening in the future. p.s: I repeat my self, I don't know how work BitKey.
vincenzopalazzo
<wallet><electrum><coldstorage>
Is there anything wrong using a cold wallet from BitKey in watch-only mode on my normal desktop Electrum?
divB
# Is there anything wrong using a cold wallet from BitKey in watch-only mode on my normal desktop Electrum?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-01-12)

I followed the instruction for cold-offline in BitKey and created my cold wallet on a USB key with BitKey burned and booted from a CD-ROM. I noted the encryption password and the seed phrase on a paper which I will store in a secure location.

The workflow described on the BitKey website would use cold-online mode for watching the wallet (and preparing transactions).

Now, is there anything wrong in adding the watch-only mode (I think BitKey stores the proper information unencrypted on the USB key) to my normal work PC running Electrum on Win 10?

In my opinion, it shouldn't because no single secret will be exposed. However, I am wondering why the documentation is so keen on emphasizing the workflow with cold-offline and cold-online.

Lastly, I intend to store my Bitcoins for long term. In 10 years I may have forgotten details about the sofware, BitKey may not exist any more, I may not have a CD drive any more, Electrum may be at a completely different version and who knows, it may be hard to import the data.
For that reason I really love the simplistic idea of paperwallets. But individual paperwallets are hard to deal with. Hence I would like to store an export of the public/private key list of my wallet as well. I feel this format will be most barebone and most likely to be importable also in ten years or more (I know that the seed could re-generate them but I hope you get my point).

For backup purposes, I also want to store the AES encrypted contents of the USB key on my NAS. I am thinking of packing the public/private key export into this file as well. Using a very long passphrase and storing it in a KeePass database.

**Tags:** wallet, electrum, coldstorage

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: I don't know BitKey, but is you intend is to store your bitcoin for the long term (10 years) why you don't use an official wallet? such as Bitcoin core and make some backup operation? Bitcoin core born with Bitcoin and it is one of the software that in the next 10 years will be here.  
> **username_1**: In addition, by the theory, you can change your key with different software, with bitcoin core you can change software and use some other type of software, so I suggest to use this type of software without coupling with the actual implementation, because you don't know what happening in the future. p.s: I repeat my self, I don't know how work BitKey.  

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## 0 answers

