How Peter Todd saved Bitcoin in his brain wallet

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Bitcoin is hard money in one or more ways.

The never-ending task of keeping your BTC safe may be one of the most difficult. Hardware wallets, software solutions, and even multisigs can do tricks depending on how you implement them.

But if you’re Peter Todd, the legendary bitconnor, you might choose a reliable brain wallet. And fortunately, he showed me exactly how he would do it.

(PS catches Peter Todd on stage Unauthorized iv Later this month in Brooklyn, he sat with Pete Rizzo for an intimate chat to kick off the first day.))

First, Disclaimer: Todd shared the brain wallet process in August 2012, more than a year before BIP-39 was introduced.

BIP-39 brought mnemonic phrases to Bitcoin, creating room for 25 words to layer, which significantly increased the level of entropy and maintained a safe key from brute force attacks.
It only makes Todd’s process more impressive, even if he might use a different method today. He did what BIP-39 is doing effectively With his heart (And with the help from Bitcoin itself).

Methods

In Todd’s own words, this is the way.

“Generate individually remembered passwords. Personally, I use pwgen, a program that generates “notable passwords.” Used in 8 characters’ top/number/symbol mode.
Write down that password. Yes, this is heresy. You’ll safely destroy it later.
Memorize that password. This is much easier than you think. If you spend five minutes a day remembering your password, you can easily remember it in about a week or so, and probably a month or two later, for quite a long time. Do you remember studying in college? Use these techniques. Flash cards are very effective. An important part of memorization is that you are forced to remember what you are trying to remember.
Repeat until 5 different passwords are remembered. During this process, you can do things like encrypting different files with sub-passwords and help you practice decrypting them so that you don’t forget the individual parts. This also allows you to avoid copying the password part if you are fantasizing about copying the password part.
Take all five passwords and concatenate them into one big super password: eis9ui@r + vi4ug~ee + aet \ ito0 + ohb $oh9w + roh
Please use this password! Eventually you forget about it, but if it takes longer to forget about it, the longer you use it, the more exponential it becomes. For me, I emphasize using passwords every month. It’s enough to just remember it mentally. ”

As always, Certification.

Follow these steps to make your password 49 characters long. Ideally, Todd wants at least 128 bits of entropy, eliminating the risk of brute force. His own analysis shows that his optimal configuration of PWGen produces a 221-bit entropy.

In reality, this works by feeding the remembered password into the encrypted Villet feature of the Bitcoin client. The client re-clicks the wallet.dat file using that password as the key.

Potential Thief – Meatspace or Cyberspace requires you to somehow suck up your password from your brain before you can reach Bitcoin. Whatever you do, Don’t forget your password. “You really have to trust that you can really learn,” Todd wrote.