A quick Newbies Reminder; is Ledger(Hardware wallets) the ultimate solution?

[Josefjix]

Remember that most of the people who became wealthy through cryptocurrency had their assets on sef-custody wallets, which they were able to reclaim after a few years. Buy and forget techniques only work on custody; do not trust any exchange with such techniques; your coins will be gone by the time you return. All of this will not stop, Binance is not safe, Okx is not safe, your favorite exchange is not safe, the fight is on, exchanges are exposing theirselves, it is a dangerous time, have you ever wondered why exchanges don't teach about cold wallet? the entire concert of crypto currency is to be decentralized; I don't feel sorry for anyone who lost money on exchanges. putting your money in the hands of random strangers on a random website with no idea how it works.


The simple concept of a cold hardware wallet (Ledger) is not widely discussed in the crypto communities; however, there have been some concerns raised about what happens if the company (Ledger) goes out of business in the future. I came across some of these questions on Reddit and Telegram and will respond to it for those of you who have no idea.


Well, as long as you have access to your 24 key words, you can regenerate your private keys with those words on another hardware wallet/online wallet and still have access to your coins anytime in the future as long as blockchain still exits.


Using and leaving your assets on exchanges is the same as using a bank; aren't we all in crypto to have complete control over our money? So, what's the point of keeping it on exchanges?

Not your keys, not your assets

[Charles-Tim]

Remember that most of the people who became wealthy through cryptocurrency had their assets on custody wallets, which they were able to reclaim after a few years.

It is noncustodial, self custody or self hosted wallet.

The simple concept of a cold hardware wallet (Ledger) is not widely discussed in the crypto communities; however, there have been some concerns raised about what happens if the company (Ledger) goes out of business in the future. I came across some of these questions on Reddit and Telegram and will respond to it for those of you who have no idea.

Ledger Nano is just a hardware wallet, not even airgapped, but better than hot wallets. You can setup cold storage wallet on an airgapped device, or make use of of the reputed airgapped hardware wallet.

Ledger nano is not only the hardware wallet existing, there are reputed existing ones like Trezor and some others that are fully open source.

[Lucius]

Using and leaving your assets on exchanges is the same as using a bank; aren't we all in crypto to have complete control over our money? So, what's the point of keeping it on exchanges?

I would not agree that it is exactly the same thing, because in some countries client deposits in banks are insured by the government, so although I don't know if that amount varies from country to country within the EU, but in my country that amount is EUR 100 000. I don't think any crypto exchange has anything similar, and what I know is that they have secured part of the client's funds that are in fiat, but if a big hack happens, the only thing clients can hope for is partial compensation, and that after probably years of waiting.

The reason why there are so many coins on exchanges is that people mistakenly consider them to be crypto banks, but also because of the ease of trading whenever someone wants. CEX encourages this in some way because they have implemented a withdraw/service fee which is not very cheap, especially if someone would withdraw and then deposit their crypto assets every day.

No hardware wallet is the ultimate solution, regardless of who produced it and what its specifications are. The only thing that leads to ultimate security is a properly created cold wallet, everything else is more or less an illusion of partial security.

[Charles-Tim]

I would not agree that it is exactly the same thing, because in some countries client deposits in banks are insured by the government, so although I don't know if that amount varies from country to country within the EU, but in my country that amount is EUR 100 000. I don't think any crypto exchange has anything similar, and what I know is that they have secured part of the client's funds that are in fiat, but if a big hack happens, the only thing clients can hope for is partial compensation, and that after probably years of waiting.

In my country, all I have known in reality is that if a bank is robbed, you can just still go to another branch and withdraw your money. Withdrawing would not even come mind because only one branch is robbed out of many which can be up to or more than 100 branches as my country has 36 states plus including the federal capital, just an attack on a branch is nothing at all.

I remember a time when the central bank made rules that forced many banks to close down, customers money were safe, the worst that happened was that some banks merged to be able to meet the rules set by the central bank. Yet, customer funds were safe.

The worst are exchanges, nothing to compare about them with banks in case of security. I have some money in banks and I am thinking that the money are secure, but that does not apply to exchanges.

[dkbit98]

All of this will not stop, Binance is not safe, Okx is not safe, your favorite exchange is not safe, the fight is on, exchanges are exposing theirselves, it is a dangerous time, have you ever wondered why exchanges don't teach about cold wallet?

Isn't it obvious why not?
It's not in their interest to do that, unless they make a deal with hardware wallets to earn more money.
Let's not forget that Legder made partnership with both FTX and Binance, so I would never say that ledger is universal solution for anything.
Ledger is closed source, this compnay had multiple leaks of customer information, and they are promotion shitcoins all the time.
Ultimate solution is using open source hardware wallets or signing devices as Bitcoin cold storage, best if it is airgapped.

Using and leaving your assets on exchanges is the same as using a bank; aren't we all in crypto to have complete control over our money? So, what's the point of keeping it on exchanges?

Centralized exchanges are probably worse than banks, especially if they ask you for mandatory kyc verification, they get hacked more easily, they can leak private information and more.
Some people still to use them for trading Bitcoin for bigger amounts of money, but i would never use exchanges as non-custodial wallets.

[Apocollapse]

Ledger isn't the only one hardware wallet, you can check on this thread Open Source Hardware Wallets.

Although Ledger has a good security and has been trusted by many users in this forum, but there's a problem where Ledger's data breached. So I'd say Trezor is slightly better than Ledger, if you only hold Bitcoin, you can use Bitbox as an alternative. Bitbox is still underrated even though it offer a good security and more feature, but the price is higher than Trezor and Ledger.