• Should I have a cold wallet AND a hot wallet at all? Like, should I for example use a hardware wallet to receive, mine, and send Monero, instead of having more wallets?
  • Should I make a paper wallet with the app that can be downloaded to make offline wallet keys? Then how would I see balance, sign keys, etc.?

For BTC, even though I never actually used it (never got BTC), I saw Electrum like this:

  • Create wallet in offline device
  • Export view key to online device
  • Create TX in online device
  • Sign TX in offline device
  • Broadcast TX in online device

But for Monero I’m clueless, because I haven’t found any guide properly explaining it.

  • arnoldnakamura@feddit.org
    1·
    1 month ago

    For Monero specifically, the hot/cold split works a bit differently than BTC because of how the view key works.

    Recommended setup:

    • Primary wallet (Feather or official GUI): Your main spending wallet. Synced, online. Keep only what you need for near-term use here.
    • Cold wallet (air-gapped, created offline): Long-term storage. Can be a paper wallet with just the seed, or Feather running on an air-gapped machine.

    The Monero-specific advantage: You can give someone your view key to watch the cold wallet balance without exposing spend authority. So you can monitor incoming funds without ever bringing the cold wallet online.

    Hardware wallets: Ledger and Trezor both support Monero now. Works well if you want the hardware security model. Feather has clean Ledger integration.

    For your paper wallet question: Yes, generate offline (e.g. on a Tails live USB with no network), write down the 25-word seed. To check balance without importing the spend key, restore as a view-only wallet using just the public address + view key. To spend, restore the full seed on an air-gapped machine, sign, then broadcast via a watch-only wallet (Feather supports this with USB transfer).

    The main risk with Monero cold storage is the 25-word seed — treat it exactly like cash. If someone gets it, funds are gone, and unlike Bitcoin there’s no way to trace the theft.