On Nov 17, 2014 7:39 AM, "Pieter Wuille" <pieter.wuille@gmail.com> wrote:

> That is inevitable for any wallet that offers any functionality beyond
> just maintaining a balance and the ability to send coins. In
> particular, anything that wishes to list previous transaction (with
> timestamps, history, metadata, messages sent using t
> What HD wallets (or any type of deterministic derivation scheme) offer
> is the fact that you can separate secret data and public data. You
> only need one safe backup of the master secret key - all the rest can
> at most result in privacy loss and not in lost coins.
>
> --
> Pieter

I agree but right now wallets not using stealth will only lose metadata, not coins, if their computer crashes and they have the seed backed up.

But if a user wants to upgrade to stealth, they then risk losing metadata AND coins if they either didn't manually back up after every transaction or use a centralized cloud backup service.

That's if OP_RETURN is not utilized for storage.