Guide — a legacy method
Paper wallets, and why not to
Paper wallets were the original cold storage and they were a reasonable idea in 2013. Three specific weaknesses make them a poor choice now — and if you have inherited or found one with funds on it, here is how to move that money safely.
- 3 Structural weaknesses, none fixable
- Sweep The right way to empty one
- NZ$99 What replaces it properly
- Not the same A metal seed plate is a backup, not a wallet
On this page
What a paper wallet was
In the early years of Bitcoin, hardware wallets did not exist. If you wanted your key off an internet-connected machine, you generated a key pair on an offline computer, printed the private key and the matching address — usually as a pair of QR codes — and put the paper somewhere safe. That was a paper wallet, and given the tools available it was a sensible thing to do.
It also satisfies the definition of cold storage properly: the key exists only on paper, unreachable by any network. On that narrow test, a paper wallet generated correctly is as cold as anything.
What has changed is not the concept but the alternatives. A hardware wallet does the same job while fixing every one of the weaknesses below, and a Ledger Nano S Plus costs NZ$99 delivered inside New Zealand. There is no longer a scenario where a paper wallet is the better engineering choice, which is why this page exists mainly to explain why not — and to help anyone who has found one.
The three ways they fail
One: generating one safely is harder than it looks. The key has to be created on a machine that is genuinely offline, using software you have reason to trust — and then printed. Printers are the problem people forget: many cache print jobs in internal memory, some network printers keep logs, and an office printer is a shared device. The moment your private key passes through a printer, you have introduced a component you cannot audit into the most sensitive step. Historically, some paper-wallet generator websites were also outright malicious, quietly using attacker-known keys.
Two: spending from one is where it stops being cold. A paper wallet cannot sign anything — paper does not compute. To spend, you import or sweep the private key into software, and at that instant the key exists on an internet-connected machine. Worse, a partial spend is genuinely dangerous: change from the transaction may go to an address the paper does not represent, and people have lost the remainder of their balance believing it was still on the paper. Practically, a paper wallet is a one-shot instrument — you fund it once and empty it entirely once.
Three: paper is fragile and the format encourages reuse. It burns at a low temperature, dissolves in water, and cheap ink fades over a decade — relevant in New Zealand, where flood exposure in parts of Auckland, Hawke's Bay and the West Coast is real. And because a paper wallet has exactly one address, every payment to it lands on the same identifier, which links all of them together publicly. Modern Bitcoin wallets generate a fresh address per payment specifically to avoid this. See our addresses guide.
Never use an online generator
If you are determined to make one anyway, understand that any website generating a private key in your browser is asking you to trust code you cannot inspect, delivered over a network, on a machine that is by definition online. Several such sites have been malicious. There is no version of this that is safer than a NZ$99 device that generates its key inside a certified chip and never reveals it.
Safely emptying a funded paper wallet
This is the section that matters, because people do find these — in an inheritance, in a drawer, in a box from a house move. Work through it in order.
Check the balance using only the public address. Enter the address — not the private key, ever — into a public block explorer. That tells you whether there is anything there before you go to any trouble. If the balance is zero, you are done; the wallet was emptied at some point and there is nothing to recover.
Set up a modern wallet properly, first. Before you touch the paper key, have a destination ready: a hardware wallet or a reputable software wallet, with its own recovery phrase written down by hand, a second copy in another building, and a wipe-and-restore already completed to prove the backup works. Our setup guide covers this. Do not improvise a destination in the middle of a sweep.
Use the sweep function, not import. Most wallets that support raw private keys offer both. Import adds the paper key to your wallet and keeps using it, which means the paper key remains live and any change behaviour becomes your problem. Sweep moves the entire balance to a new address the wallet controls and abandons the paper key. Sweep is what you want, and it should be the whole balance in one transaction.
Do it on a clean computer. The moment that private key is typed or scanned into software, it is exposed to whatever is on that machine. A freshly updated computer with nothing unusual installed, and no browser extensions, is the minimum. Do not do this on a shared or work machine.
Treat the paper as spent afterwards. Once the private key has been entered anywhere, assume it is no longer secret. Do not send anything back to that address, ever. Destroy the paper or keep it only as a record, clearly marked as retired.
Record the transaction. Sweeping a paper wallet you own into another wallet you own is a transfer between your own wallets, so it is not a disposal for New Zealand tax purposes. If you inherited it, the position is different and worth asking an accountant about — inheritance and cost base interact in ways that depend on circumstances. Either way, record the date, amounts, both addresses and the network fee. See our tax guide. General information, not tax advice.
Metal plates are a different thing
This confusion comes up often enough to deserve its own section, because the two objects look superficially similar and are conceptually opposite.
A metal seed plate stores a recovery phrase — twelve or twenty-four words — for a wallet whose private keys were generated inside a hardware device and have never left it. The plate is a durable backup of a modern wallet. Stamping words into steel means fire and water cannot destroy your only route back to the wallet. We recommend these, and The Bitcoin Shop in Tauranga stocks TinySeed plates domestically.
A paper wallet contains a raw private key generated on a computer. The paper is not a backup of anything — it is the wallet, and the key on it has already touched a general-purpose machine and a printer.
So "put it on metal" is excellent advice for a recovery phrase and meaningless for a paper wallet: stamping a raw private key into steel gives you a durable copy of a key with a questionable generation history and no ability to sign. Our backup guide covers plates properly.
What to use instead
If the appeal of a paper wallet was that the key never touches an internet-connected machine, a hardware wallet delivers exactly that and more. The key is generated inside a certified secure element, never leaves it, and the device shows you what you are signing on a screen your computer cannot alter. It can spend partial amounts without the change problem. It can be replaced from a recovery phrase if lost. And it can be updated when someone finds a flaw.
In New Zealand a Ledger Nano S Plus is NZ$99 delivered domestically from GROOV in Christchurch, or around NZ$95 to NZ$120 from PB Tech and Mighty Ape. A Trezor Safe 3 is US$79 with fully open firmware. A Blockstream Jade is stocked in Tauranga. Any of them is a categorical improvement over paper for less than the cost of a decent dinner.
If the appeal was cost — and paper is free — then a good non-custodial software wallet with a properly written and tested recovery phrase is the honest comparison, and it beats paper on every axis except key isolation. Our hardware versus software page covers where that trade-off sits.
Our view
Paper wallets get defended on the grounds that they have no firmware, no supply chain and no company. That is true and it is a genuinely good argument in the abstract. It loses to a practical one: the generation step and the spending step both require a general-purpose computer, which is exactly the thing you were trying to keep the key away from. Hardware wallets removed the computer from both ends. That is the whole reason they won.
Frequently asked
Questions on this topic
What is a paper wallet in crypto?
A printed piece of paper carrying a private key and its matching public address, usually as QR codes. It was the original cold storage method: generate a key pair on an offline computer, print it, and the key exists nowhere digital. It is genuinely cold, and it has been superseded by hardware wallets that solve the same problem without the three serious weaknesses described on this page.
Are paper wallets still safe in 2026?
Safe against remote attack, yes, and unsafe in three practical ways that matter more. Generating one securely requires an offline machine and a printer you trust — printers cache documents. Spending from one usually means importing the key into software, at which point it stops being cold and often means moving the entire balance at once. And paper burns, dissolves and fades. A NZ$99 hardware wallet solves all three.
How do I spend from a paper wallet?
You import or sweep the private key into a software wallet, which then signs the transaction. "Sweeping" moves the entire balance to a new address you control, and this is the safer of the two options — importing leaves the paper key active in software, and any change from a partial spend may go to an address the paper does not represent. If you have a funded paper wallet, sweep the whole balance into a modern wallet and retire the paper.
I inherited or found a paper wallet with funds on it. What should I do?
First, check the balance by entering only the public address into a block explorer — never the private key. If there are funds, set up a modern wallet properly with its own recovery phrase written down and tested, then sweep the paper key's entire balance into it. Do the sweep on a clean computer. Treat the paper as compromised the moment its private key has been typed anywhere, and do not leave any balance behind on it.
Is a metal seed plate the same as a paper wallet?
No, and the confusion is understandable. A metal plate stores a recovery phrase for a wallet whose keys were generated inside a device — it is a durable backup of a modern wallet. A paper wallet contains a raw private key that was generated on a computer and never lived in a device. The plate is a backup; the paper wallet is the wallet. Metal seed plates are excellent and we recommend them; see our backup guide.
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