How can I securely create a QR code from a bitcoin address?

Question

My Problem

I am trying to generate a QR code for a public bitcoin address, preferably using command-line tools. The process poses a security risk because malicious software can generate a QR code that represents an address different than the one given as input.

What Have I Tried

Searching this site and Github. I only found some unmaintained repos with very low usage.

My Question

How can I securely generate a QR representation for a bitcoin address from the command, using open-source software I can trust?

Answer 1

Use any software you normally use to create QR codes. Ask it to create QR for text bitcoin:<address>.

That's all you need: a QR generation tool you trust.

Answer 2

A simple approach to this problem is simply to check each and every QR code that the software you want to use creates. You already know what the address you're supposed to be encoding is, so once you have the QR code, just scan it with a QR scanner and compare the output to your input. Of course, they should match.

A word of warning: there is a long history of scammers creating 'Bitcoin QR Code' making apps. As a naive user, this sounds great, but really its just the scammer's way of luring bitcoin users towards their fraudulent software. I would actively avoid any QR software which is marketed towards bitcoin users in this way - just your run of the mill QR code generating software should work just fine.

Answer 3

Having a similar problem, I tried:

as with:

nicholas@mordor:~/qr$ 
nicholas@mordor:~/qr$ qrencode -o wallet.png '1F63UTxXHi7Cff4aDFdMGzgLt1CKuHpRot'
nicholas@mordor:~/qr$ 
nicholas@mordor:~/qr$ uname -a
Linux mordor 5.11.0-41-generic #45-Ubuntu SMP Fri Nov 5 11:37:01 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
nicholas@mordor:~/qr$ 

I, at least, would interested in the inverse operation from the console. I tried a website and it seemed to return what I expected.

Although, I'm not at all sure that's what is required. Comments requested.