What Is a Bitcoin Paper Wallet and How Do I Use One?

Bitcoin is a digital currency, meaning that it only exists in the digital world. Every token is stored in a Bitcoin wallet, which might be easier to think of as a bank account than a wallet. Most people keep their crypto in software wallets, often in the form of a wallet app on a mobile device. However, paper Bitcoin wallets are another option, acting as a physical representation of your coins.

How to Use a Bitcoin Paper Wallet

Bitcoin Wallet Basics

Every Bitcoin wallet has a Public Key and a Private Key. This holds true for software/digital wallets like the app on your phone, paper wallets, and any other kind of crypto wallet.

The Public Key can and should be shared because it’s essentially just your address. If someone wants to send you a bitcoin, they need to know your Bitcoin address.

The Private Key, on the other hand, should never be shared with anyone because it provides full access to the coins in the wallet. Think of Private Keys as the PIN to your bank account. But rather than just being a few numbers, Private Keys can take a variety of forms. They can be QR codes, “seed phrases” (strings of 12-24 random words), or strings of binary/hexadecimal code.

If you don’t have access to your Private Key, someone else probably does. When someone has access to your private key, they can empty your wallet at any time. This is why it’s never a good idea to store your crypto on an exchange: most exchanges keep your private keys to themselves. And as the saying goes, not your keys, not your coins.

Bitcoin Paper Wallets

Paper wallets are a way of “storing” Bitcoin without an app. But remember, Bitcoin is entirely digital, so a paper “wallet” isn’t actually storing your coins. Instead, a paper wallet is just a piece of paper with both your public and private keys printed on it. Thus, paper wallets allow you to access your bitcoins, which are stored digitally on the Bitcoin blockchain like all bitcoins are.

This is how every Bitcoin wallet works. Even if you “store” your bitcoins in a digital wallet on your phone, the coins aren’t on your phone. The app simply knows your Private Key, allowing you to access your bitcoins, which can never exist anywhere but the Bitcoin blockchain.

Because paper Bitcoin wallets are nothing more than a slip of paper, they typically aren’t used for long-term storage. If you lose a paper wallet or it gets destroyed, any coins “stored” in the wallet are gone forever. Similarly, if someone finds your paper wallet, they can take all of your coins.

That said, one advantage of using paper wallets is that they can’t be hacked. Because paper wallets can’t connect to the internet, they act as a form of “cold storage.” This is the term for any offline wallet, those which can’t connect to the internet. But there are other, safer options for long-term cold storage, such as a hardware wallet or a digital wallet on an air-gapped device.

Paper Bitcoin wallets are mostly a relic from a time when cryptocurrency was a new technology, when safe and user-friendly storage options were less plentiful. Although they are every bit as safe and functional as they have always been, these days paper wallets are typically used to store coins temporarily until they can be moved to a less fragile wallet.

How to Use a Bitcoin Paper Wallet – 5 Easy Steps

If you already have a paper Bitcoin wallet, you can use it to send or receive bitcoins. But you’ll need an app or computer to do so. This guide will show you how to import your paper wallet with the RockItCoin mobile app. If you don’t already have the app, download it from Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store now.

Alternatively, this guide will show you how to make a bitcoin paper wallet [unfinished content in a Google doc]

Importing a paper wallet into the app will give you full access to the coins in the paper wallet. However, the paper wallet still has a private key that can be used to import the wallet into another device.

Thus, it’s in your best interest to move the coins from the paper wallet into a more secure wallet and/or destroy the slip of paper. But if you plan on destroying a paper wallet, triple-check that you’ve imported it successfully or sent the coins to another wallet first. Otherwise, if you don’t have a backup, those coins will be lost forever.