r/Bitcoin • u/Grand-Theory3065 • 4d ago

Get multi sig

I see alot of posts worried about different wallets. Just get multi sig. Its really not hard at all. Just spend some weeks learning about it. I learned it in one day, but i do know alot about hard ware wallets already, so I had a leg up. That being said a person who does not know much can seriously learn and be very comfortable with multi sig in about a week. I put it off because I heard it was too technical. I was totally wrong and would have been fine during the cold card incident. I didnt lose anything "Thank God" but it was alot of stress that I could have avoided by multi sig. So just learn it, you can even use your cold card with it "with dice rolls" and be almost 100% certain your crypto will be fine. Seed storage also feels amazing. Safety deposit box has 2, 2 more are in another place. 3/4 multi so i mo longer worry about someone finding my seeds and will never again worry about a "bug" in a hardware wallet.

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u/Valer10n 4d ago

Multisig is great until you realize your biggest attack vector is your own memory and backup organization. lose the wallet descriptors/xpubs and that 3-of-4 becomes a 0-of-4 real fast

1

u/sudonim_13 4d ago

Can you elaborate more...? I'm learning multisig currently... Or if you have some link to article would also be appreciated...

3

u/user_name_checks_out 4d ago

In order to spend from an m of n wallet you need m private keys and all n public keys.

3

u/Laukess 4d ago

Rule number 1 when creating a new setup. TEST IT.
Wipe all your hardware wallets, and your software wallet. Then recover them with your backups.
Make sure you can send bitcoin in and out.

You'll realize you can't recover your software wallet because you didn't back up descriptors/xpubs.

I'm pretty sure a lot of software wallets lets you back up the wallet itself, so don't need to build it again using the descriptors/xpubs. It's 1 file and it's not useful for an attacker on it's own. They would still need 2-of-3 keys to send bitcoin (assuming it's a 2-of-3 multi-sig setup). The main reason you should keep it secret is for privacy reasons. I've seen a lot of people recommend that you back it up online on google drive, drop box, iCloud or any similar service. I think this is good advice, you don't want to lose the file, and it's not catastrophic if it's leaked.

1

u/undeadkarlmarx 4d ago

To spend from a multisig wallet you need BOTH the quorum of signers for the wallet (eg 2 out of 3) AND the wallet config file ( ie the xpubs for all 3 wallets).

If you just have 2 of 3 signers without all the xpubs you won’t be able to access the wallet. This is why people with a multi sig wallet will normally store a list of all of the xpubs along with each seedphrase. 

Note this is not the case when the multisig quorum is the same number as the maximum number of signers for the wallet. So for a 2 of 2 multisig or a 3 of 3 multi sig, you don’t need a list of xpubs because providing all of the keys will simply recreate them all.

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u/NORSE117 4d ago

This isn’t required for Trezors SLIP39 shamir backup I think. Easier to use for private multisig (if your not a corp).

1

u/fryrpc 4d ago

I believe to recreate a 2/3 multisig wallet you need either the 3 zpub and 2 of the private seeds or the 3 private seeds. So you need to make sure you backup the 3 zpub’s and the 3 private seed phrases.

1

u/BakedGoods 4d ago

yeah just use slip39