What is Paper wallet

A paper wallet is a piece of paper on which the private and public keys to the digital assets are printed or written down. The keys can be printed in their alphanumeric form or as QR codes. The public keys represent the user’s address, whereas the private keys are the means to access the user’s digital assets.

 

Paper wallets are being used less because of the impractical nature of paper which can be lost or destroyed. Moreover, printing the keys on a piece of paper must be done with caution in a secure manner, as hackers might discover them if the printer saves file data. Instead of printing the keys, if a user decides to generate a paper wallet, it is recommended he/she does so in manual way, by writing the keys down.

 

Paper wallets can be considered similar to cold storage, but sending digital currency relying on paper wallets requires a level of skill as the same address cannot be reused for several transactions. Other addresses should be generated offline, and the sender has to specify two addresses during the transaction: the address of the intended recipient and an address owned by the sender himself/herself to receive the change back. If this process is not followed, the sender risks losing the remaining cryptocurrency change to the miner that confirms the transaction.

Paper wallet

A paper wallet is a piece of paper on which the private and public keys to the digital assets are printed or written down.

Related terms

Phishing Private key Peer-to-peer (p2p) Progressive web app Ponzi scheme Plasma

Join our free newsletter for daily crypto updates!