Exercise 28: Clearing practice wallets and creating a long-term wallet

If you’ve followed all the steps in the exercises, all wallets should be cleared out and empty, except for the Alice wallet. That’s the only one that should contain bitcoin.

If this isn’t the case, go ahead now and do that. You don’t want to have bitcoin sitting around in multiple wallets, unless you have a specific purpose in mind. If you always want a place to experiment and practice with bitcoin transactions, you could leave a small amount of bitcoin in the Alice wallet. Otherwise, you can transfer it to a new wallet.

You’ll probably want to create a “real” wallet now, a long-term one, and one that may potentially hold a substantial amount of bitcoin. Go ahead and do that, using what you’ve learned. Below are some best practices to consider.

Keeping your seed phrase safe

The guidelines that you follow when working with this new wallet will be different—you’ll need to think more about privacy and security.

The wallet you’ll be creating—unlike the ones you just used in the exercises—is not a short-term wallet for learning purposes. So, treat the seed phrase more carefully. Here are some of the ways to keep your seed phrase secure and private:

·       Never tell anyone your seed phrase. Anyone who asks for it is a scammer.

·       Never take a photo of your seed phrase. Don’t create or use a seed phrase anywhere with any cameras (webcams, security cameras, doorbell cameras, etc.).

·       Never type your seed phrase online. There are numerous websites that will ask you to type in your seed phrase to “check” it. These are run by scammers, they will immediately steal your bitcoin.

·       Never send your seed phrase via text or email.

·       Never speak your seed phrase out loud, especially where there are listening devices (like Alexa devices, phones, etc)

·       Keep a backup of your seed phrase in a safe place. Consider having multiple backups in different locations. Also think longer term—what if a flood or fire damages your home? Some people write their seed phrase on metal plates.

·       Don’t talk about how much bitcoin you own. That information is best kept private.

·       Understand that making your bitcoin security too complex can also be a problem. Apparently a large amount of bitcoin has been lost through over-complicated security schemes.