Hardware Wallet - Should I buy it?

[ibrahim11]

Hi, I currently store my bitcoins on an exchange. Yes I know that is very bad. Should I buy the Ledger HW.1 USB wallet? Its 18Euros and is it reliable/safe? thanks

[RustyNomad]

Hardware wallets are convenient to use. Personally using a Trezor and it simplified things a lot.

The Ledger wallets have thus far had very good reviews and their security seems to be up to standard so it should be a good buy.

You could also, if you don't want to spend the money right now, just get a wallet on your computer like for example Electrum or MultiBit or one of the others.

[jackg]

As I understand it, this is a type of cold storage of bitcoin (or omething similar). You could instead use another account such as a Coinbase Vault. This requires 2 factor authentication AND other email varifications. This may be quite useful. They also hold onto the coins for 48 hours until they release them from their "vault". You may also consider using just a pendrive if you already have a bitcoin wallet on your computer.

All you need to do is use the wallet.dat file and rename it to wallet.dat.backup and move it onto another storage medium. Alternatively you could rename it to wallet.dat.backup. Run bitcoin-qt.exe and follow the setup methods, then send bitcoins to the wallet.dat file that is created, then move this onto another storage medium such as a pendrive and rename your previous wallet.dat.backup file back to wallet.dat. This should ensure the data is saved in cold storage (it only takes up less than 1mb so could possibly be stored in most drives without taking up much space. When you need this file again just change the name back to wallet.dat and change the name of the other data file there.

Alternatively, you could use a paper wallet.

Hope this helps you!

Jack G

[Dorrittulx]

Buy a trezor, way better than the Ledger. Not cheap, but worth it.

[FanEagle]

Buy a trezor, if you think your bitcoin will worth one day,

[Dorrittulx]

Buy a trezor, if you think your bitcoin will worth one day,

Buy it even if BTC crashes, Trezor = awesome!

[smith coins]

Well if you have bitcoins that worth more than $1,000,
Coinbase automatically suggest you to move to vault.
But i would suggest Trezor or the ledger as you mentioned.

[Slunt]

Yes you should buy one. I would recommend the ledger nano as it is very cheap and secure. Just make sure you set it up on a safe computer. Send a little amount of coins to it first and if it doesn't get knabbed you should be alright lol.