Bitcoin Forum

I recently invested a large amount of money in Bitcoin, and added Bitcoin as a payment method for my business. I read that online wallets are not the safest, but that hardware wallets are the safest since they are not connected to the internet.

My question is, what is the best hardware wallet for security and for holding large amounts of Bitcoin? I plan on using it as a vault for my company, I would send the BTC from sales every week and hold for as long as possible.

First of all, congrats on getting yourself a nice bag of BTC

Secondly, glad you're thinking about security, and lastly, do look into Ledger they have several nice products that you could use for cold storing your BTC (and other alts if you so wish). I've only used Ledger and didn't let me down. Good luck.

You're not going to go wrong with a Ledger[1] or a Trezor[2] hardware wallet. A reputable hardware wallet from either manufacturer; and long as you have offline backups(written recovery phrase) in a fire-proof safe, then your security will be more than enough.

---

[1] https://ledger.com/
[2] https://trezor.io/

Another option is if you don't have a budget and you have an extra laptop or PC you could make cold storage. It's likely the same as a hardware wallet just make sure that you don't connect it to the internet forever for guaranteed safe.

Check the Electrum cold storage documentation here https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html
Or you could use Bitcoin core and never connect your PC/laptop to the internet.

You can make a transaction on that wallet if you created a watch-only wallet on another device by making an unsigned transaction and sign the transaction to your cold storage by transferring the unsigned transaction through a USB flash drive(It works like an airgap wallet.)

A piece of paper with words written by hand (no printing).

Forget hardware wallets for COLD storage, flash memory loses its data after a few years. A hardware wallet adds security when moving your funds, so its good for HOT wallets.

Savings should go into a cold wallet, and you should learn how to make one.

Basically: Boot up a decent OS, like Linux, make a new wallet (Core, Electrum or simillar), write down those words by hand (no electronic devices, no pictures, no copy paste), copy some addresses so you can send funds to, then delete everything and turn it off.

Repeat the process but this time instead of a new wallet recover the old one using the seed words.

Now that you know how to make and restore cold wallets, move the funds there. You can send money to it all you want, nobody can't touch it as long as the handwritten paper is safe. You should make a second copy of this paper also by hand, and store it safely in a different physical location.

You need to understand the cold wallets are the safest, but you have to learn to make it. Do not buy a hardware wallet and put it in a safe, BIG NO. The hardware wallet manual will instruct you to write down those seed words for this reason, they are not a reliable long term storage medium.

I think you also have to take a look at multi-sig storage and other options, especially if you're trying to make sure that there's no single point of failure just in case one of your wallets is stolen/break. Most modern HW support multi-sig, at least Ledger and Trezor do (cmiiw). If you can point out what kind of feature you're looking for, that will help people to give suggestions for you.

I strongly also recommend any of these two hardware wallets.

---

But, I will first recommend Trezor as it is completely open source wallet, but it will be good to include passphrase to protect yourself against any physical attack, the passphrase are not stored on the wallet and also will generate entirely different keys and addresses that will make this physical attack impossible.

This is exactly what I have utilised, both Trezor for coins which are not moving and
Ledger for regular movement of coins.

More importantly is recording the seed phrase and passwords in a preserving
way. Stamped metal plates, encrypted flash drives and fire proof safes or fireproof
lock-boxes.

Most important of all is to get your coins off platforms and out of wallets where you
have no control of the private keys, this is essential to taking control of your wealth.

Dont trust someone else with your coins

You should never use online wallets especially if they are unknown, and hot wallets should only be used for smaller amounts of pocket money.
Cold wallets are not connected to internet, and that can be separate airgapped computer with wallets like electrum or hardware wallet devices.
More important thing than hardware wallet is private keys or seed words, so keep that in safe place.

There is no best or perfect hardware wallet, and you will always have tradeoffs with any of them, but popular is not always the best.
I can tell you what wallets to avoid purchasing and that is closed source wallet like cheap safepal or ledger nano X that has many battery issues recently, than also avoid overpaying for hardware wallet.
Keystone, Bitbox and Trezor are decent open source options, they have active development team and they fully support multisig setup.
Best idea for company with multiple owners holding Bitcoin is to set up Multisig setup following instructions by some crypto security expert, and check out this List of Multisig Wallets (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5324749.0).

The fact is hardware wallet would be good but the probelm would be you transferring funds there every once in a while. Now this can make things more unsafe and complicated.

At the same time you should never use any online site to randomly generate the required things. I do think that you might have to get two main wallets ready, one offline where you can sort out the profits and one hardware which would be the main wallet, safer and better suited.

But whatever you do, you have to make sure to be extra careful with the options since personal errors are the fault of most of the mishaps in the community.

^ These are highly recommended wallets and plus additional paper wallets.
I suggest splitting your wallet into two, they called it hot wallet and cold wallet. For the cold wallet, it means you only created a watch wallet but you will never open it or rarely open it and the hot wallet is the wallet that you will use in your store. Y ou can purchase either which hardware wallets that I quoted above, they are good wallet so far that was always recommended it here. However, I want you to congratulate your business that accepts BTC, which was very inspiring to us to do the same.

If it absolutely has to be a hardware wallet, I would go for the old-timers Trezor or Ledger. It's even better to create your own airgapped solution and use a proven cold storage method. The steps to do so are well documented and it's not really hard to do.

In essence, you reformat a PC or laptop and install a Linux distro (recommended) on it. After that, you make sure the device never goes online by removing network cards from it. Install an open-source wallet, such as Electrum, and follow the instructions for setting up a cold storage that was mentioned in the comments above. You can use QR codes or a USB drive to transfer transaction data that needs to be signed/broadcasted back and forth between your airgapped and online device. 

The whole idea is to ensure that the private key is generated very randomly and securely and in an offline environment while ensuring that it remains that way or at least ensuring that there are no viruses or physical contact.
Therefore, you will need to purchase a new device with a secure operating system and hardware wallet.

Trezor or Ledger both are good but Ledger is better
If you set things up technically then the only problem remains in the physical access.

As you purchase and choose if it's Ledger, getting a Ledger Nano S is already sufficient. I've read this thread about some bug or issues that have been happening with the X version.

Thread: Ledger Nano X Battery Pandemic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5358741.0)

In my own experience, Ledger Nano S is still good and it's on my possession for years.

There are other options but I think the best ones you could get are from either Trezor or Ledger. They are the ones with long track records of flawless security.

The issue now is that who will keep the seed and the passphrase? Do you solely own your company? Do you have a board whose decision is higher than that of the CEO?

If you are the only person who could access your private keys, then that wouldn't be a problem. Just make sure nobody else could get his hands on your seed.

Have both of two worlds for diversification:

(1) Hardware wallet (Trezor, Ledger)
(2) Paper wallet
(3) Store each of them in a different place.

My safe bet is a properly stored and secured paper wallet.

I don't agree with you. I think that paper wallet isn't safer option than hardware wallet. Paper is very vulnerable material and you have to protect it very well. And even if you keep it safe, text with recovery seed may become blurred after few years.
Yes, hardware wallet isn't perfect too. You simply may drop it from table or spill coffee on it and dame device. But with hardware wallet you need to write down recovery seed and it will work as 2 layer security.