There are many ways to generate a Bitcoin cold storage wallet offline (dice, a deck of cards, shelling out cash for a ledger). As so many centralized exchanges are suddenly going bust, it's important to remember: (1) DCA through the bear market ("plant seeds in the bear market to harvest in the bull") and (2) DCA into your own wallet, not someone else's.
I shared this process with a bitcoin-only sub and got a positive response. Since it can be used technically for any cryptocurrency I figured I would share here. So let's get started:
I have previously made one a cold storage wallet back in 2017 on an offline computer using a fresh copy of Tails, but that was a ton of work. This time, I figured I would roll up my sleeves and generate entropy the old fashioned way: using skittles. So here are the steps to make your Skittles cold storage wallet (remember: do not use any online tools if you actually plan to generate your own wallet for real money).
Acquire Skittles
Sort them so you have an even amount of all colors
Mix them up (I used a cocktail shaker).
Pull them out one by one and write down the first letter of the color [(Y)ellow, (R)ed, (G)reen, etc], then recycle this Skittle back into the cocktail shaker. Repeat 111 times. Why 111? This is the number needed to generate the 256 bits needed for your private key.
Give each color a number. E.g., "Yellow is 0, Red is 1, etc." Now take your long string of Skittles colors (e.g., RYGRRP) and replace the letters with numbers (e.g., 102114). This happens to be a "base 5" number. Convert this base 5 number to base 16 (sounds hard, really isn't -- its very google-able). This new base 16 number will look like an ETH wallet address (0x...). This is your private key.
Using some python scripts you can find on like the bitcointalk forums (or stackoverflow), you can generate your public key from your private key.
Or if you don't like math I made a tool does all the hard parts for you. Do not use this tool for real money. If you are actually going to generate your bitcoin wallet from something like dice or skittles, you should do it completely offline.
It's very important to own your own private key. It's ironic how a centralized exchange has become the default place to store digital wealth. To help fix this problem, I wrote an ios/android app that rounds up everyday purchases and invests the spare change into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (basically, the "Acorns" of crypto). It integrates with Coinbase, and will soon offer an easy offramp from centralized exchanges so beginners and veterans alike can easily and safely offramp and start taking custody of their own wealth. I made it free with no monetization plan (it’s in the app store, so reviewed by Apple/Google).
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