Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: SRtester on December 11, 2012, 12:55 am
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Do you guys keep using the same Instalwallet/bitcoin addresses over & over? Or do you generate new ones all the time?
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I use a new one every time. No reason not too plus it seems safer :)
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So how safe is Instawallet? I know it's convenient to launder your coins, but is it a good way to store your coins long-term?
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I'm interested in knowing the above as well. Are there other options like instawallet?
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So how safe is Instawallet? I know it's convenient to launder your coins, but is it a good way to store your coins long-term?
No I wouldn't store any significant amount of coins on Instawallet long term. Use a password protected wallet like blockchain or paytunia.
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So how safe is Instawallet? I know it's convenient to launder your coins, but is it a good way to store your coins long-term?
Using an instawallet does NOT launder your Bitcoin.
It's incredibly important that users understand that bitcoins moved from one address to another are incredibly easy to trace through the Blockchain. The only way to launder your bitcoins is by running them through a tumbler such as BitcoinFog for an adequate period of time; what you get back will not be the same bitcoins that you put in, thus you have successfully laundered your bitcoins. You can send them to a thousand instawallets if you desire and it will add no extra protection compared to sending them to just one wallet.
So how safe is Instawallet? I know it's convenient to launder your coins, but is it a good way to store your coins long-term?
No I wouldn't store any significant amount of coins on Instawallet long term. Use a password protected wallet like blockchain or paytunia.
As far as storage is concerned, you should never store your Bitcoin in an online wallet; you're trusting that the site's operators won't suddenly shut the site down and abscond with your Bitcoin, as has happened multiple times before. For long term storage you should be using either the official client on your computer with a sufficiently strong encryption password along with multiple encrypted backups, a brain wallet, or a paper wallet, again with encrypted digital backups.
The same goes for Silk Road - do NOT use it to store your Bitcoin. There is no guarantee that it will be here tomorrow, and no guarantee that the 'fail-safe' will work. The whole idea of Silk Road is that we do not have to trust the operators - we use PGP and sufficiently laundered Bitcoin as a method of payment for that reason, amongst others.
- grahamgreene
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what?
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pretty easy for a tumbler to run away with all those btc
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I normally use bitcoin fog but I also use Blockchain and I noticed the other day that they have an 'anonymizer' anyone know if it works as well as bitcoin fog? It would save me some time for sure. Also bitcoin fog goes down a lot which always worries me.
Either way you should never store your coins in a digital wallet for any length of time. Personally I only ever have as many coins as I need to get what I want so I don't usually have to worry about them getting stolen.
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pretty easy for a tumbler to run away with all those btc
Indeed, and it is incredibly easy to trace transactions through the Blockchain if you do not tumble all those BTC. BitcoinFog have maintained a good reputation and Tor presence thus far; however, to mitigate the risk to funds I would suggest tumbling small amounts of Bitcoin for a couple of days at the time, and then sending them to your Bitcoin client (run through Tor, of course).
Do this frequently and you'll always a pot of tumbled coins with which you can purchase products on SR.
- grahamgreene
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wow
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Instawallet does essentially tumble your coins for you.
If you deposit into instawallet and withdraw (even immediately and blockchain shows your coins are still in that instawallet address) they will come from a different address.
eg: I deposit into Instawallet address A and withdraw to my Wallet B. The coins that end up in Wallet B came from Instawallet address X not A.
This appears to be the case if you withdraw immediately while coins are still in address A or if you wait for instawallet to send them elsewhere first.
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thanks for this thread very helpful