Buying Maidsafecoin & storage

Thanks for clarifying @gonefarmin

A lot of great information here. Thanks everyone. It would be cool to see a guide put together from this but not sure if necessary as when the SAFE is launched the methods here will be mostly unnecessary.

Sorry I should have been clearer about what Iā€™m saying, what Iā€™m saying is:

  • Make a clean install of tails linux on a usb/cd, disconnect from the internet
  • Do the importprivkey thing

You can also go the extreme route and use Qubes OS

So you only leave one set of keys in the Live Linux USB key OS? You donā€™t back up your pub and priv keys?

I did, I forgot to mention that. Three USB sticks hidden in three different houses in three different cities. Password protected of course. :smile:

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That sounds like a bit of a cavalier attitude to security and seems a bit high-risk to meā€¦maybe 3 separate continents would be betterā€¦lolā€¦Iā€™m going to get hacked now arenā€™t I?..

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Is there a specific linux distro youā€™d recommend? Something small and easy to install to USB?

Donā€™t take this as definitive, but I was impressed with Bodhi Linux for its ability to install and run snappily on an old Thinkpad T41. Iā€™ve never installed to USB but I donā€™t think thatā€™s much of a limitation these days as they are cheap for lots of GB.

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I know @dallyshalla ā€œmadeā€ a couple of videos on how to buy maidsafe, but Iā€™ve opted to buy through Poloniex and store the maidsafe safecoins in a two-factor authenticated Bitcoin.info/wallet. However, I can NOT see the MaidSAFE coins labelled as such, only ā€œBTC: 0ā€, but I know that chunk of 0.000004 is MAID.

Is there a way I can see them in my bitcoin.info wallet balance labelled until we officially convert over to safecoins?

(Iā€™d rather not use Omniwallet because they do NOT offer 2FA.)

you donā€™t have to use omni wallet to store them, but you can use omni wallet to ā€œhave a lookā€ at the address and
see the MAID. for that, just import the address the holds the MAID (just the public key, not the private) into OMNI wallet and the MAID should be visible :slight_smile:

In Omni wallet you can add that address as your watched address. That has nothing to do with 2FA, of course - Omni wallet just interprets the contents of another address.

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Thanks @BambooGarden & @janitor ā€“ what about sending from bitcoin.info/wallet. Wouldnā€™t I have to import the private key and send from Omni? If I canā€™t specify Maid in the info walletā€™s send field, it would just send that number of satoshis?

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yeah, youā€™d have to send from Omni. import the private key for the address and then it will be possible. Iā€™d recommend using chrome browser in connection with Omni for now, i had funny stuff happening when using firefox.

For sending, yes, but for merely monitoring the balance, no (you could create and keep an "empty"Omni wallet and just use it to watch your blockchain.info walletā€™s balance - no need for private key).

I am new to this whole cryptocurrency thing, including MaidSafe and btc. While studying these subjects, I decided that it would be a good idea to write down all that I was learning for my benefit, and possibly the benefit of others. As others have stated, the first step is to establish a bitcoin wallet to transfer and receive your digital currency. I installed Bitcoin-Qt on my computer. This seemed to me to be the most secure wallet since no private key exists on my machine or a third party site (I wrote it down while offline and stored it in one of my safes). Purchasing bitcoins to put in my wallet using fiat currency has proven to be the most challenging aspect of this endeavor. To the left on the flowchart, I have provided a number of options with their various funding mechanisms. I intend to immediately convert all bitcoin to MAID upon receipt using Masterxchange. Once exchanged, I will transfer all MAID to my Bitcoin-Qt wallet where all balances can be viewed using omniwallet and a public key. I am looking forward to the launch of the Maidsafe network and hope that beginners find this post useful!!!

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Your private key is in your wallet.dat. You can, of course, store this file (ex. usb memory) and delete from your computer but, if you are looking for maximum security, is safe to use a paper wallet to store your MAID.

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I am new to crypto-currency and perhaps getting a little muddled from all the reading. I have one set of related questions about storing coins in wallets.

If I generate a public/private key and import them into a particular wallet (say desktop one) and send some coins to the bitcoin address, can I then import those keys into another wallet and effectively that new wallet has the coins?? Or perhaps keep the keys on paper destroying the wallet and at a latter time import the keys into another wallet to ā€œrestoreā€ the coins into the wallet??

In other words am I correct in thinking that the coins are really associated with a set of keys and whatever wallet has the keys then becomes the wallet ā€œstoringā€ the coins??

I also gather that wallets are very useful because one typically has many set of keys each having their own coins associated with them. Thus the wallet conveniently keeps track of the keys and provides functionality to receive/sell/view/etc coins

Did I get this right or have I missed it by a country mile.

I would always store you wallet.dat on different places if you run a local Bitcoin client. In the wallet.dat are your private keys, these keys can be imported to the omniwallet. It takes some time, but it is possible.

I donĀ“t know what happends if you send some coins to your local Bitcoin client, and than send the BTC/side of the transaction to another wallet. You might loose your Maidsafecoins that way. The key here is to always have you private/keys available. I store them at home in my Bitcoin/wallet. Protected by a password as well. When I even want to trade them, IĀ“ll import the private key to my omniwallet, from there I could send it to Poloniex to trade.

I believe so , yes!
You just need the private key of the bitcoin address where your MAID is stored to transfer them. The transfer process is done using Omniwallet.

Recently I generated bitcoin paper wallets and sent my Maidsafecoins to them.
The process went as follows:
I used Omniwallet to import the unencrypted private keys of the address where my MAID was initially stored(blockchain,info) and then it automatically added/detected my bitcoin public address. In that address I also had some bitcoins that were needed to pay for the minerā€™s transfer fee.
Everything went well, I now have the paper wallet addresses as Watch-only in Omniwallet, displaying nicely the amounts of MAID on each one.
Later on, I will import the private keys of those addresses into Omniwallet to send my MaidSafeCoins to a burn address and exchange them for Safecoins.

I assume that a step occurred here where you used omniwallet to send the coins to your paper wallet address.

And that you now use omniwallet to view the coins at your paper wallet address

Am I correct??