Secure bitcoin storage (e.g. offline wallets) not available to non-technical people #2355

Given this is the most-used bitcoin client, I think it's about time that instructions existed so that the average non-I.T. person can buy bitcoins and store them sufficiently safely from theft. Bitcoin is still being adopted mostly by I.T. professionals, and it's surely time that it become available to the wider population. For this to happen, there needs to be a "storing bitcoin safely for dummies" sort of document - and associated software changes to automate this as much as possible.

Have you tried Google? I heard it might have something.

NAI

@PartTimeLegend The very fact that you are suggesting using Google confirms this is an issue.

@Rebroad, look on this page: http://bitcoin.org/clients.html - it suggest Armory that can be installed on top of Bitcoin-qt and allows for 'cold storage'. If you really want to be secured from theft in an easy way, just install the client on a dedicated laptop and power off when done doing your transaction (don't forget to backup your wallet and keep it in a (second) safe location).

If you feel the need to have it included, then fork the code and implement. Then submit a pull.

I don't think the bitcoin community is taking the problem of backups for the non-technical bitcoin user seriously. It should be a no-brainer to publish official backup and restore instructions, or better yet, make those instructions part of the official bitcoin clients. E.g. a message saying "you could lose all of you bitcoins if you don't follow these instructions". These instructions should say explicitly "get this program, encrypt your file with this algorithm, and use a password like this, store the password in a vault/encrypted file that never goes online." etc etc.

I made a related issue about change addresses making bitcoins harder to backup: #3371 . Saying "backup frequently and often" is NOT sufficient. Most people are really bad at backing stuff up. We see it with people's files on their computers all the time. There needs to be a solution where you only have to backup ONCE, its easy to do, its easy and reliable to restore, and its not reliant on a very specific program that could be lost in the fog of history (e.g. a very specific address generator program).

For broad adoption the UX goal is Steve Krug's book title "Don't make me think."; a Great book on UX by the way. This is a very high bar of simplicity requiring a lot of complexity and deep thought but reaching that bar can increase adoption by orders of magnitude and thus BTC value (measured as socially transactional functionality) commensurately.

The Bitcoin Foundation education committee has started a set of "guides" available on github at: https://github.com/btcfoundationedcom/btcfoundationedcom.github.io/tree/master/guides

The issue of documentation for non-techies is very important IMHO

The documentation available improved a lot since 2013. Not so much as part of bitcoin core source repository, but certainly in the rest of the ecosystem. I don't think it is useful to keep this issue open.