Cold storage
Offline storage
Cold storage means keeping the private keys for bitcoin on a device or medium that is not connected to the internet, signing only rarely and deliberately.
Cold storage can be a hardware wallet that is kept unplugged, an air-gapped signing device, or a wallet whose keys exist only in a tested seed phrase backup.
The point is to reduce how often keys are exposed to networked devices. Receiving coins does not need the keys at all, so a cold wallet can accept payments while its keys stay offline.
Cold storage moves the risk to physical security and backups: fire, theft, loss and forgotten passphrases matter more than malware.
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