📄Paper Wallet — All 7 Wallet Types

Before you start

The site is a bitaddress.org fork (v3.6.2) rebranded for PotCoin. Every key is generated locally — your private keys never leave your machine. For real money, follow these rules every single time:

• Disconnect from the internet first. Download the page (right-click → Save As, or grab the GitLab release zip), unplug Ethernet, disable Wi-Fi, then open the saved HTML.
• Use a clean OS. A Linux live USB is ideal. Avoid your daily browser session.
• Print on a USB-connected printer. No Wi-Fi or networked printers — they cache.
• Treat the printout like cash. Anyone holding the private key controls every POT at that address.

Adding entropy (do this first, every session)

The page seeds its random pool from window.crypto.getRandomValues, but it also asks you to mix in human entropy:

1. Move your mouse randomly around the page — the on-screen counter ticks down as you do.
2. On mobile, swipe across the screen to do the same.
3. Or paste / type random characters into the "OR type some random characters into this textbox" field.

Wait until the entropy meter is full before generating any keys. If you see "WARNING: A secure random number generator was not found" — close the page and try a different browser. Do not proceed.

1. Single Wallet

What it is: Generates one fresh keypair and shows it on screen with two QR codes side by side — the public address (labelled SHARE) on the left and the private key (labelled SECRET) on the right.

When to use it: Quick keypair generation for testing, a one-off cold wallet, or to grab a key you'll print elsewhere (e.g. on the retro paper wallet).

How to use it

1. Open the Single Wallet tab

   This is the default tab when the page loads.

2. Wiggle your mouse to add entropy

   Until the page stops nagging you about it.

3. Click Generate New Address

   Two QR codes appear plus the textual address (P-prefix) and WIF private key.

4. Copy or print

   Click Print to send to your USB printer, or copy the address/key into your password manager / cold-storage notes.

5. Verify the address by sweeping a tiny test deposit first

   Send 1 POT from your hot wallet, confirm it appears at https://explorer.potcoin.com/address/<your-address>, then load the rest.

2. Paper Wallet

What it is: Designed printable cards with PotCoin artwork. Multiple wallets per page, optional fold-and-seal layout that hides the private key behind a flap, optional BIP38 encryption.

When to use it: Long-term cold storage. Generate a stack of wallets, print, fold, seal, vault.

How to use it

1. Click the Paper Wallet tab

2. Set Addresses to generate and Addresses per page

   Common config: 6 addresses to generate, 3 per page = 2 sheets of paper, room for hand-written labels.

3. (Optional) tick Hide Art? for a cleaner ink-saving layout

4. (Optional, recommended for high value) tick BIP38 Encrypt?

   Enter a strong passphrase. The printed private key will start with 6P — useless without the passphrase. Keep the passphrase separate from the printout.

   BIP38 trade-off If you forget the passphrase, the funds are gone forever. Use a passphrase manager you'll still have access to in 10 years.

5. Click Generate, then Print

   Print on heavy paper if possible — thermal receipt paper fades.

6. Cut along the edges, fold along the seal line, store

   The site's own guidance: "Store in a zip lock bag in a fireproof safe — treat them like cash."

3. Bulk Wallet

What it is: CSV-style output of thousands of keypairs at once — one row per address: index,address,private_key.

When to use it: E-commerce, exchanges, donation campaigns. Generate (say) 10,000 receive addresses up front, upload only the public side to your webserver, and keep the private keys air-gapped.

How to use it

1. Click the Bulk Wallet tab

2. Set bulklimit (how many) and bulkstartindex (resume number)

   Generating 10,000 addresses can take 30-90 seconds depending on the machine.

3. (Optional) tick bulkcompressed

   Smaller addresses, same security. Most modern setups use compressed.

4. (Optional) tick BIP38 Encrypt? + passphrase

   Adds significant generation time but every key in the CSV is then passphrase-protected.

5. Click Generate

   The CSV appears in the textarea. Copy it out into a file you keep encrypted.

6. Split storage

   • Public columns (index,address) → safe to upload to your webserver to assign to customers
   • Private column (private_key) → encrypted USB stick in a safe, never online

4. Brain Wallet

What it is: Generates a keypair deterministically from a passphrase you type. Same passphrase → same keypair, every time, on any computer.

When to use it: When you want zero physical artifacts — only your memory. This is also the most dangerous wallet type. Short or common passphrases get cracked routinely.

How to use it (safely)

1. Click the Brain Wallet tab

2. Generate a high-entropy passphrase elsewhere

   Use Diceware. Roll five dice five times for each word, look up the wordlist. Aim for at least 8 Diceware words (≈100 bits of entropy). Never use anything you've ever spoken aloud, written down, or that exists in any media.

3. Paste the passphrase into the Passphrase field

4. Confirm by re-typing in the second field

5. Click View

   Shows the resulting address + WIF.

6. Memorize the passphrase, never write it

   If you wrote it down, you have a paper wallet — go use the proper paper wallet tab. The whole point of brain is that nothing physical exists.

5. Vanity Wallet

What it is: Generates many keypairs in a loop and stops when the resulting address starts with the prefix you specify. The browser's vanity grinder is single-threaded and slow — useful only for short prefixes.

When to use it: Vanity addresses for branding (PTip…, PFund…, PShop…). For longer prefixes (5+ chars), use the native C grinder in Projects/CryptoToolkit/UTXO/vanity-address/ — orders of magnitude faster.

Roughly how long it takes (in-browser)

How to use it

1. Click the Vanity Wallet tab

2. Type the prefix you want into the Prefix field

   Always starts with P (the network prefix). So for "PShop" you'd add Shop to the P.

3. (Optional) toggle case-insensitive

   Speeds up the grind significantly. PShop, pshop, and PSHOP would all match.

4. Click Start

   The page churns through keypairs, displaying current attempt count and rate. Leave the tab focused — background tabs throttle.

5. When it hits a match, it stops and displays the keypair

   Treat the resulting WIF like any other — back it up immediately.

6. Split Wallet

What it is: Splits a private key into N shares using Shamir's Secret Sharing. Any K of the N shares (K ≤ N) reconstruct the original key. Fewer than K shares reveal nothing.

When to use it: Inheritance planning, multi-location backups, multi-person treasury control. Example: 3-of-5 split — give one share to your lawyer, one to your sibling, one to your spouse, and store two in different geographic vaults. Any three together can recover the funds.

How to use it (split a key into shares)

1. Click the Split Wallet tab

2. Generate or paste the private key you want to split

   If you don't already have one, generate via the Single Wallet tab first, then return here.

3. Set Total shares (N) and Threshold (K)

   Common patterns: 2-of-3 (lightweight), 3-of-5 (typical), 5-of-9 (institutional). K must be ≤ N.

4. Click Generate Split Wallet

   The page shows N share strings (each unintelligible on its own).

5. Distribute or vault the shares separately

   Never store K or more shares in a single location. Document where each share lives somewhere your heirs can find — but never list the share contents themselves.

How to recombine shares (recover the key)

1. Open the same Split Wallet tab.
2. Click the Combine Shares sub-section.
3. Paste your K shares (one per line).
4. Click Combine. The original WIF is reconstructed and shown — import it into your wallet immediately, then sweep to a fresh address.

7. Wallet Details

What it is: The Swiss Army knife. Paste any private key in any common format — WIF, WIF-Compressed, raw HEX, Base64, Base6, Mini, or BIP38-encrypted — and it shows you everything: the address (uncompressed and compressed), the public key (full and compressed hex), and the same private key re-encoded in every other format.

When to use it:

• Recovering a paper wallet you want to verify before importing
• Decrypting a BIP38 key with the passphrase
• Encrypting a plain WIF into BIP38 for safer transport
• Translating between WIF and HEX for use in CLI tools
• Sanity-checking that a backup decodes to the address you expect

How to decode a private key

1. Click the Wallet Details tab

2. Paste the private key into the input field

   The page auto-detects the format.

3. Click View Details

   If it's BIP38-encrypted (starts with 6P), it'll prompt for the passphrase first.

4. Inspect the output

   You'll see two address rows (uncompressed and compressed) — verify the compressed one matches what you printed/expected. Below that, every alternate format of the same key.

How to BIP38-encrypt a plain WIF

1. Paste the unencrypted WIF.
2. Tick BIP38 Encrypt.
3. Enter a strong passphrase + confirm.
4. Click Encrypt. The output starts with 6P — that's what you print/store. The plain WIF should be deleted from clipboard and screen.

Sweeping a paper wallet later (any type)

Once you're ready to spend the coins, you "sweep" the paper wallet by importing the private key into a hot wallet:

1. Open PotCoin Core or the web wallet

   Or any wallet that supports private-key import.

2. If BIP38-encrypted, decrypt first

   Use the Wallet Details tab above with your passphrase to get the plain WIF.

3. Import the WIF

   $ potcoind importprivkey "<your-WIF>" "swept-paper-wallet" false

   The trailing false skips the rescan; pass true to scan immediately.

4. Sweep to a fresh address — DO NOT REUSE THE PAPER WALLET

   $ potcoind sendtoaddress "P<new-address>" <balance-minus-fee>

   Once a private key has touched a networked machine, treat it as burned. Generate a new paper wallet (offline) for whatever you didn't spend.

5. Physically destroy the old paper wallet

   Shred + burn. The address still exists on chain forever — anyone with that key can spend whatever lands there.