What is a paper wallet?
A key printed or written on paper rather than kept on a device. Once common, it's now mostly outdated and risky to make safely.
A paper wallet is cold storage at its simplest: an address and its private keyPrivate keyThe secret number that lets you spend your bitcoin. Whoever knows it controls the coins, so it must never be shared. on paper, kept somewhere safe. To spend, you import or sweep the key into a wallet app.
Making one safely is the hard part — a compromised generator site or a printer with memory can leak the key. Modern wallets with recovery wordsRecovery words (seed phrase)A list of 12, 15, 18, 21 or 24 words that can restore wallet keys. Anyone who has them can take your bitcoin., or a hardware walletHardware walletA small device that holds your private keys and signs payments inside itself, so the keys never touch your internet-connected computer or phone., do the same job with fewer ways to go wrong.