What is a Bitcoin Paper Wallet?

Have you got any crypto currency? Well, if you have, then its safe to assume that you are constantly worried about its safety. If you aren’t, here is some information that will make you want to convert it back. Bitcoin is not like real money, which you can feel and hold. Real money can be locked safely somewhere while Bitcoin can be lost without a trace, because it is spent and received anonymously. Here’s the bombshell, once you lose Bitcoin, you can never get it back, unless you are or know an expert hacker. And also, almost 70% of the computer viruses are intent on sucking Bitcoin from your wallet. Then  there is also the possibility of  people stealing funds by stealing the PC in which you have stored your Bitcoin, if you have an offline wallet, in which case you can say farewell to your well earned money.


This sure is bad news, but what if you have a way of converting your Bitcoin to a paper form, which you can easily lock away somewhere, and no one can steal all of your Bitcoin? It would be nice, right? Fortunately, such a thing actually exists, and it is called a paper wallet. In this article you’ll find out how to create a paper wallet, and its pros and cons.
 
But before we start off with what a paper wallet is, let us see what a Bitcoin wallet is, and how it works. A Bitcoin wallet consists of two keys, the public and the private keys. The public key is what you know as your Bitcoin address, the one which you give to other people in order to receive funds in the form of Bitcoin. The private key, however, is a secure key that, usually, nobody else knows, which allows you to send money to other people. If anyone gets to know of your private and public keys, then it is child’s play for them to extract money from your wallet.
 
A paper wallet is nothing but a piece of paper that will contain the keys to your wallet in the form of a printed code. Obviously, since it is made up of paper, it is susceptible to all kinds of damage, like of it gets soaked or torn, in which case all of your money will be lost, since it will be the only copy of the key to your wallet. But, since the paper wallet is the only copy of the keys, it means that even if your computer fails, or if some hackers try to steal your info, no matter how hard they try for getting the keys, they will never find them. But before making the paper wallet, know that you should handle it with care.
 
To make a paper wallet, the steps are very easy for almost every wallet. Blockchain and Coinbase have their own dedicated paper wallet options. In case you want a very sophisticated paper wallet, you can go to bitcoinpaperwallet.com. Since this is storing of a very huge amount of money, you certainly should take some precautions while doing it.
 
First off, don’t let anyone see you making the wallet. This is a must if you really want to make the wallet since letting others see it will compromise its location. Second is that make sure you use a secure operating system while using the wallet, like Linux Ubuntu or Mac OS X. Third, make sure that you are printing it from a printer that is not connected to any network. And, as it goes without saying, don’t let it get wet. For this, you could either laminate it, or you can keep a soft copy in a pendrive which you are sure is clean, and then print it out after destroying the previous copy.
 
All this been said, I would like to conclude by saying that paper wallets are one of the safest ways of keeping sure that your cryptocurrency doesn’t fall in the wrong hands, while taking necessary precautions.