What is a “Split” Bitcoin Wallet?
A “split” bitcoin wallet is a strategy of protecting your bitcoin by having your wallet split into an offline “cold storage” wallet and an online “watching only” wallet.
A “Watching” Wallet and a “Cold” Wallet
-
Create a fedora-25-electrum template using the Qubes VM Manager or running
qvm-clone fedora-25 fedora-25-electrum
in dom0. -
Start the new template:
qvm-start fedora-25-electrum
qvm-run fedora-25-electrum xterm
-
Install
electrum
to fedora-25-electrum template VM. From fedora-25-electrum terminal enter:sudo dnf update
.sudo dnf install electrum
. -
Shut down your
fedora-25-electrum
template -
Create an
offline-bitcoin
qube based onfedora-25-electrum
using the Qubes VM Manager or runningqvm-create -t fedora-25-electrum -l black offline-bitcoin
andqvm-prefs -s offline-bitcoin netvm none
in dom0. -
Follow the electrum documentation in creating an offline wallet
-
Create a
watching-bitcoin
qubes based onfedora-25-electrum
connecting to the internet how ever you prefer using the Qubes VM Manager or running for exampleqvm-create -t fedora-25-electrum -l green watching-bitcoin
andqvm-prefs -s watching-bitcoin netvm sys-whonix
in dom0. -
Follow the electrum documentation in creating an online watching-only wallet
Important Notes
- The private keys (xpriv) should never be moved outside of
offline-bitcoin
. - For copying out the public keys (xpub), Qubes provides two secure, convenient methods: the inter-VM clipboard and inter-VM file copy tools. Compared to traditional physically air-gapped machines, these tools make it very easy to copy out public keys.
This document was migrated from the qubes-community project
- Page archive
- First commit: 08 Dec 2020. Last commit: 08 Dec 2020.
- Applicable Qubes OS releases based on commit dates and supported releases: 4.0
- Original author(s) (GitHub usernames):
- Original author(s) (forum usernames):
- Document license: CC BY 4.0