How to Set Up a Split Bitcoin Wallet

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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

  1. Create a fedora-25-electrum template using the Qubes VM Manager or running qvm-clone fedora-25 fedora-25-electrum in dom0.

  2. Start the new template: qvm-start fedora-25-electrum qvm-run fedora-25-electrum xterm

  3. Install electrum to fedora-25-electrum template VM. From fedora-25-electrum terminal enter: sudo dnf update. sudo dnf install electrum.

  4. Shut down your fedora-25-electrum template

  5. Create an offline-bitcoin qube based on fedora-25-electrum using the Qubes VM Manager or running qvm-create -t fedora-25-electrum -l black offline-bitcoin and qvm-prefs -s offline-bitcoin netvm none in dom0.

  6. Follow the electrum documentation in creating an offline wallet

  7. Create a watching-bitcoin qubes based on fedora-25-electrum connecting to the internet how ever you prefer using the Qubes VM Manager or running for example qvm-create -t fedora-25-electrum -l green watching-bitcoin and qvm-prefs -s watching-bitcoin netvm sys-whonix in dom0.

  8. 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
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It might be prudent to deprecate this guide in favour of other methods of installation.

Installing electrum via dnf (or even via apt with a debian template) installs release 4.5.8 (Oct 23, 2024) which is outdated. The latest release is 4.8.0, released on July 8, 2026.

In light of this I think users should install electrum via other means when setting up the split-bitcoin configuration to ensure they get the latest version and stay up to date.

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Debian backports is more up to date than Fedora, presently on 4.7.2 (Apr 20, 2026).

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4

sudo apt search electrum gives me 4.5.8? Do I have to do something to get a newer version to show up?

5

sudo apt search -t trixie-backports electrum

and add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb https://deb.debian.org/debian trixie-backports main
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Thanks. Did some reading on the security implications of this and I found the following:

Backports, on the other hand, is not part of the official Debian distribution. It is just a service that some Debian developers offer in their free time to the users of Debian stable. Hence, backports doesn’t receive any security updates – it’s up to the backports maintainers, if they’ve got enough free time, to update the packages that have known security problems.

gives me some pause to this method…

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I’m not qualified to assess the security impact of of using Debian backports in a Qubes template, but seems that a pause to consider the comments on that forum is both warranted and possibly not as much of a concern in the Qubes context.

At a minimum I’d create a new Debian template and take a look at the dependencies the backported electrum package will pull in. Then compare that setup to building the latest from rpm in Fedora, and then compare these options to relying on (outdated) stable.

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