Replying to Avatar MCBitcoin

Short answer, you don't need one to have cold storage, only to send the coins out of cold storage securely.

You can generate a valid bitcoin address entirely offline using an entropy source (coin toss, dice roll, etc.) to generate a private key then paper/pencil to do the math to generate a public address from the private key.
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The Beave 1y ago

I watched a video of a guy doing a mostly manual generation...

But how can you use that on the blockchain? I'm know I'm missing something really simple. But, gosh, I'm really frustrated with what seems to be really simple for other people.

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MCBitcoin 1y ago

Think of it like email. Anyone who knows your email address can send you a message, but you're the only one with the password to unlock the account and read the emails or send emails to other people from that account.

Bitcoin is similar. The public address is like your email address. Anyone who knows it and wants to send you bitcoin can send it to your public address. You would then have control over any bitcoin in that address to spend at a later time using your private key.

For example, I buy bitcoin from an exchange and decide to withdraw to self custody. I tell the exchange the public address to send the bitcoin to, they then broadcast a transaction to the network which gets included in the blockchain, giving me ownership of the bitcoin I bought from them.